Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Saving "Cinderella": History And Story In Ashpet And Ever After, Elisabeth Rose Gruner

English Faculty Publications

An orphan is mistreated by a cruel surrogate family. The orphan is special, however, and with the intervention of kind and magical parental substitutes, rises to dizzying heights and achieves a happy ending. It’s a familiar tale, from “Cinderella” to Harry Potter —the difference is all in the details. In two fairy tale films of the 1980s and 1990s, those details remove the Cinderella story from the realm of fantasy. Ashpet and Ever After take pains to “realize” Cinderella—to remove almost all elements of magic and fantasy and to imagine, instead, what might make such a story real. Both incorporate …