Re-engendering “Cinderella” on Screen: Andy Tennant’s Ever After: A Cinderella Story

The enchanted realm of the wonder tale has been gazed upon quite often by novelists, short-story authors and even poets, who have imaginatively translated into their creations their own personal wanderings in wonderland. I will thus read four very different wonder tale versions of “Cinderella”, on a par with Andy Tennant’s Ever After: A Cinderella Story (1998). I will focus on the gendered differences between wonder tale versions and film, as well as on their distinctive narrative techniques. I argue that this feminist revision of “Cinderella” re-engenders identities by being closer to the only version written by a woman author, both in narrative style and in substance, than to any of the male versions — including the alleged Grimm tale it follows.