The current movie “Ever After” is being billed as a feminist Cinderella story: Drew Barrymore wins the heart of her Prince Charming by quoting Thomas More.
Personally, I find I get a better response with John Donne. In fact, I have men lined up for miles just waiting to hear me discourse on all the metaphysical poets. Just yesterday morning, I stepped out on the front porch to pick up the paper and there stood the entire Bulls’ starting line-up, all chanting in unison: “Oh, my America, my newfound land.” Then they hopped on their pigs and flew away.
Despite what you may have heard, there’s really nothing new about “Ever After.” It’s part of a very long tradition of novels and movies designed to reassure bookish girls that someday their princes will carry them off to a fairy castle/library in the clouds.
For years, we’ve all been trusting and believing those tales will come true–despite all evidence to the contrary. As one disappointed bluestocking, Dorothy Parker, wrote 60 years ago, “I had been fed, in my youth, a lot of old wives’ tales about the way men would instantly forsake a beautiful woman to flock about a brilliant one. It is but fair to say that, after getting out in the world, I had never seen this happen, but I thought that maybe I might be the girl to start the vogue.”
You’d think that after a few decades the “gentlemen prefer brains” myth would be put to rest permanently.
The trouble is, we keep raising new generations of girls who read the novels, see the movies, and grow up believing that smarts and sass are the keys to social success. Then on prom night, they find themselves sitting on the sidelines with their honors English teachers, discussing the novels of Charlotte Bronte. To fill the empty hours, they write wistful books and screenplays about plucky heroines whose quick wits and clever conversation enchant the studly heroes of their dreams. Thus does the vicious circle begin anew.
Let us take a moment to examine the “Ever After” story. In this version set in the French Renaissance, Danielle (a.k.a. Cinderella) is a well-read, politically thoughtful young woman with a wicked pitching arm. When her father’s sudden death leaves her unprotected, she’s forced into household servitude by her stepmother, an impecunious baroness.
But Danielle doesn’t waste time sitting in the ash pile and dreaming up fairy stories. Instead, she acts boldly to help her low-born but loyal friends and to protect the remnants of her family estate.
Then she meets the incredibly handsome and equally erudite Prince Henri, heir to the French throne.
Although the movie does not specify, I assume he is supposed to be Henri II, formerly le duc d’Orleans, second son of Francois I and Queen Claude, who took the French throne in 1547 after the death of his older brother, the Dauphin Francois. (In my impressionable years, I once read a novel in which the plain but spirited heroine entranced a devastatingly handsome aristocrat with her encyclopedic knowledge of French history.)
Anyway, in the movie, the prince apparently doesn’t notice that Drew Barrymore is one total babe. No, what sparks his interest is her political passion, her sterling character, and her fearless willingness to speak her mind.
Their romance is helped along by the kindly intervention of Leonardo Da Vinci, who spent the last years of his life at the French court and was laid to rest in the palace church of Saint-Florentin. (When I was little, I saw a movie about a spunky governess who enraptured a millionaire with her sensitive appreciation of Leonardo’s matchless genius.)
As you might expect, the course of true love doesn’t run completely smooth. Overwhelmed by her intelligence, refinement and courage, the prince assumes that Danielle is of noble birth; when he learns the truth, complications ensue, and all seems lost.
In the end, the prince spurns the attentions of a blonde, bosomy, beautiful, and seemingly submissive aristocrat, and instead gives his royal hand to the brilliant, well-informed, politically liberal, outspoken tomboy who has won his heart.
And that, little girls, is why they call it a fairy tale.
