Ever After – Still the Same Old Cinderella Story

In the movie, Ever After (1998), director and co-screenwriter Andy Tennant attempts to put a spin on the fairy tale we all knew growing up, Cinderella, by trying to empower the heroine and updating the film to appeal to a modern audience. Tennant explains, "I wanted to tell a very different version of Cinderella because I have two daughters, I did not want them growing up believing you have to marry a rich guy with a big house in order to live happily ever after" (Friedmeyer, p. 4). Did he accomplish? On the surface it would seem that Ever After is a modern feminist film, empowering women, but under the disguise, it still has the underlying traditional gender roles and stereotypes that Tennant tries to discourage and remove.
In both Disney’s Cinderella and in Tennant’s Ever After, the male sex is ranked higher than females and has real power and social status. Kelley (2003) explains, “Males are seen as rescuers; females are more passive" (p. 651). The King and his son Prince Henry are the two highest ranking males in the film and they are shown to have ultimate power; the power over life and death. After Danielle hits Henry with apples, making him fall off the horse she thought he was stealing, she feared for her life because she assaulted royalty and the heir to the kingdom. In the same scene, in an attempt to quiet Danielle as to not cause a ruckus which may alert the royal guards, Prince Henry drops coins to the ground while sitting on horseback with the sun glowing behind him, almost god-like. This was an example of male hegemony because it showed “dominance and subordination in the field of relations structured by power” over females (Lull, p.3). The gold coins act as power and by this exchange, it transferred a sense of power to Danielle. With her new found power, she tries to use the gold coins to try and save her friend and fellow servant, Maurice, from being shipped to America. Even with money and the power it came along with it, she ultimately fails. It is Prince Henry who is able to finally free Maurice and he does so with only using words from his mouth. Henry would also convince his father, the King, to release all imprisoned servants who were planned to be shipped to America because of debt that they owed. This showed that even with money, Danielle is still powerless. It did not matter that she dressed up as a higher class; she still was not able to rescue her friend with “fame and fortune.” The male characters in the film, the King and the Prince, were the ones who have real power and have the ability to change people’s lives.
Gender also determines occupation and activities. According to Melissa Taylor and Chris Segrin, “A traditional gender role refers to a view of close relationships in which men are expected to be the primary moneymakers and women are expected to be the homemakers and caregivers” (2010, p. 6). The Prince is rich so he does not need to work. Cinderella and Danielle both stay at home and do housework while the male figures in the stories are able to leave the house to do as they wish. Danielle wakes up early and does demeaning, dirty work-feeding animals, gathering and cooking food for and serving her step-mother and step-sisters. Danielle is their caregiver waiting on them hand and foot. She and the other servants clean the house and do their laundry. When they are selling produce at the market, it is only the female servants of the house who are there working and only women are shown in the kitchen, cooking and preparing meals. At the end of the film, all the servants who are doing the royal laundry were also female. The men in the film are shown riding horses, chasing each other, stealing and fighting with swords. They are pictured doing things that are stereotypically masculine while females are shown cooking and cleaning; things that stereotypically females do.
Another stereotype is that of gender expectations - that females are dependent while males are independent and strong leaders. According to Kelley (2003), “being dependent is identified with femininity” (p. 648). Ever After and Cinderella both have males that are heroes and, in the end, rescue the female characters. When Danielle’s father was still alive, the manor was prosperous with many servants. After his death the step-mother, Rodmilla, took over. Under her leadership, the manor grew deeper and deeper into debt and was barely getting by with the help of a wealthy landowner, Pierre Le Pieu. He would buy produce from them weekly and would also purchase stolen household items from Rodmilla. This was also evidence of male hegemony because without a man in her life, she was not able to sustain her household. With her husband gone, she required constant assistance from another man, Pierre Le Pieu. Without a husband, Rodmilla is not able to keep the house from falling apart. She even had to sell Maurice off as to trade off the debt she acquired. Her only hope of escaping debt and family ruin was having eldest daughter, Marguerite, marry Prince Henry and become part of the royal family. This further reinforces the idea that females need males “to give them protection, a sense of identity, and the proof that they are loved.”(Kelley, 2003, p. 648). Prince Henry also fights off the gypsies to save Leonardo’s painting, the Mona Lisa, which Leonardo regards to as female (more male rescuing female). It is also Leonardo who comes to free Danielle from the locked cellar. And it is Henry who eventually picks Danielle as his wife, giving her a sense of identity and rescuing her from a life of servitude working for Rodmilla.
"Cinderella is usually portrayed with positive emotions….She is concerned with relationships, a real female value…" (Kelley, 2003, p.652) This trait is shown in Ever After when Danielle dresses up and pretends to be a Courtier to rescue Maurice, a husband to a fellow servant and friend. She says “This is our home and I will not see it fall apart.” She feels that the other servants are her family and saving Maurice was worth the risk of being thrown in the stocks (jail) for 5 days. She is also shown to fill with emotion when Rodmilla took Danielle’s wedding dress, which was the only heirloom left for her by her deceased mother, and planned to give it to Marguerite to wear to the masque. This enrages Danielle and she yells, “I would rather die a thousand deaths... than to see my mother's dress on that spoiled, selfish cow!” (Ever After, 1998). She then gets locked into a room by Rodmilla but later gets rescued by Leonardo, a man. There is also the double standard for women of double life. Females are expected to behave a certain way at home and another way outside the home. The heroine in both films is shown to be beautiful but only with the right clothing. The idea of femininity "includes beauty and appearance” (Kelley, 2003, p.648). Without the fancy outfits, the Prince would not have noticed them and seen them as marriage material. They use the idea of nice clothes to transform and empower the heroine. In Cinderella, the heroine is transformed with a beautiful dress and glass slippers to attend the ball. She has to be home before midnight because the magic would disappear and her true dirty self would show. In Ever After, Danielle has to put on a beautiful dress in order to get Henry’s attention and eventually become marriageable. When she was dirty and in rags at the beginning of the film, Henry did not take a second look at her and brushes her off. That same day, after putting on her disguise as a Courtier, Henry seems to fall in love at first sight, chasing after her until she gave him her name. Every time they met, planned or unplanned, she would change out from her rags and into a beautiful dress. This just “illuminates the double life that many women experience,” according to Kolbenschlag (1997, p. 525). Although the cores of the characters do not break the traditional gender roles, they exhibit some traits that detach from stereotypical norm. Danielle is shown as a tom-boy, fighting in the mud, running and climbing trees. She also saves Henry from the gypsies when he was outnumbered by throwing him over her shoulders and carrying him away. Henry, instead of facing his problems of an arranged marriage, runs away from the castle. He does not want to marry for politics but rather for love. Males stereotypically face problems head-on. Danielle rescues Maurice from having to go to America. After being traded to Pierre Le Pieu by Rodmilla, Danielle saves herself from Le Pieu with sword skills she learned from her father. In the beginning of the film, Danielle was shown to rough house it with a male friend, getting dirty and fighting. Females stereotypically do not fight or get dirty or even know their way around with a sword. Being skillful enough to fight off a male with a sword was shocking. Every attempt by Tennant to modernize the traditional Cinderella fairy tale with Ever After has only been superficial. Although the characters exhibit some traits that break the traditional stereotypical gender roles, they still stick to a majority of the traditional norms. Underneath the surface, we can see that gender roles are still present in both films even though they were made almost 50 years apart. Both heroines are trapped in a world where men are ranked higher than females and have a higher social status. They are shown to not have any real power and their only hopes of living happily ever after is to behave and act like how society deems right (like a lady), be dependent and wait for their prince charming to come save them one day and give them identity and meaning through marriage.

Works Cited:
Soria, M., Trench, T. (Producers), & Tennant, A. (Director). (1998). Ever After. [Motion Picture]. United States: 20th Century Fox
Taylor, M., & Segrin, C. (2010). Perceptions of parental gender roles and conflict styles and their association with young adults' relational and psychological well-being. Communication Research Reports, 27(3), 230-242. doi:10.1080/08824096.2010.496326
The Disneyfication of Folklore: Adolescence and Archetypes, Wendy Friedmeyer (2003)
Kelley, K. (2003). Pretty women: A modern Cinderella. In Behrens, L. & Rosen, L. (Ed.), Writing and reading across the curriculum. 8th ed. (pp. 648-652) New York: Harper
Kolbenschlag, M. (1997). A feminist’s view of “Cinderella”. In Behrens, L. & Rosen, L. (Ed.), Writing and reading across the curriculum. 6th ed. (pp. 522-528) New York: Harper
Lull, J. (1995). Hegemony. In G. Dines & J.M. Humez (Ed.), Gender, race, and class in media,(pp. 33-36). Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications