ANALYSIS
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While Levine has described the birth of Ella Enchanted as being cemented in a need to make a once, in her words, annoying and obedience character better understood, it should be noted that Ella Enchanted has provided some context into the world of fairy tale adaptations in a more feminist and modern lens. Over the years, there have been various adaptations and revisions made for many well-known fairy tales and folk stories. While Disney surely paved the way in popularizing these stories through early works such as the animated films, Snow White and Cinderella, the earliest retelling and multicultural variant of Cinderella can be attributed to Ai-Ling Louie’s Yeh-Shen in 1982 (Leeper, 2002, p. 24). The 1970s and 1980s led to a sort of outpour of feminist retellings and reclaiming of traditional fairy tales by feminists, particularly by discovering or making “available again lost fairy tales with unconventional, empowered heroines in order to break the ‘‘limitations that are imposed by sex,’’ while “others have composed new fairy tales or rewritten the most popular fairy tales, this time with a feminist twist” (Joosen, 2005, p. 130).
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Since then, variations of fairy tales such as Marissa’s Meyers The Lunar Chronicles. The first installment in The Lunar Chronicles series, Cinder (2012), happens to be a retelling of Cinderella with a rather interesting twist; that is, Cinder, in this version, happens to be a cyborg and the hero of the series. Just Ella by Margaret Peterson Haddix (1999) is another variation of the Cinderella story with a feminist twist.
Regarding Ella Enchanted, however the feminist tones of earlier and later adaptations is just as strong. Levine’s attempt at making an unlikeable character who was subjected to absolute obedience and mistreatment with no complaints is, in itself, a critique of the patriarchal and stifling gender norms of the original version’s time. Ella Enchanted offers a heroine who, though cursed to obey any and all orders directed at her, no matter how ridiculous or dangerous, still rebels against her predicament as much as she can. This rebellion, to the point of making herself physically ill, offers Ella more agency than one would believe her capable of having. Furthermore, she is shown to be a capable and intelligent young girl, able to learning various languages while offering the different people and beings she meets the utmost respect and care.
Though Ella Enchanted does follow its predecessor down the same road of happily ever after via Ella’s marriage to Prince Char, gender roles and presentation are somewhat skewed in this retelling. This is especially visible, not only through Ella’s independence and the contrasting appearances of her god mother and Lucinda, but through Sir Peter and Prince Char. While Sir Peter is described as being absent, greedy, and self-centered, Prince Char is instead centered as his foil by being a kind, generous, and well-meaning prince that asserts himself in a manner wherein he wants to learn and help others as best as he can (Parsons, 2004, 148-149).
Ella Enchanted in its own way, subverts the “patriarchal tradition” of portraying “women as weak, submissive, dependent, and self-sacrificing, while men are powerful, active, and dominant” when Ella leaves to find a way to break her own curse, when she sacrifices her happiness to keep Areida and Prince Char free of the burdens of her curse, when she finds ways to rebel against Lucinda, her father, and step family.