Ella Enchanted

Published about 20 years ago, Ella Enchanted has certainly made an impact on current literature for children. Ranked number 41 on the Top 100 Best Children’s Chapter Books, the novel can certainly relate to children today.  The main character, Ella, goes through many struggles in the story.  Her mother passes away when she is young, she tries to make friends, develops a crush on a Prince, and at the same time battles a curse that was placed upon her when she was born.  The book can  relate to female readers in any moment of time in their lives, and it can be enjoyed when they are older.  Ella Enchanted has both canon significance and canon sentiment qualities in the story.  

 

The story has elements of significance due to there being a potential of  academic integrity.  As Stevenson (1997) identifies canon of significance as a means to “justify, document, chronicle, or explain” in a scholarly fashion.  Feminism is one of the popular themes in fairy tales.  Although, there is one particular article that was written recently that discusses how the novel explores the characters in the novel being consumed by material things or power.  Reimer (2012) discusses in her article how Sir Peter, Hattie, Dame Olga, and the Ogres are dominated by consumerism to which that they are considered the “bad” characters. While Ella, Areida, Prince Char, Mandy, the giants, and the elves are seen as “good” characters because they don’t follow them in the same way.  The story does have a level of significance in today’s children’s literature, but there is also sentimental value.

 

Ella Enchanted  can have sentiment value to the readers.  “The sentimental canon, then, is formally a large custom; it favors books that comfort over books that challenge…” (Stevenson, 1997).  While the book is open to scholarly interpretation, Levine had written the novel in mind that readers would be able to enjoy the story being told.  The novel has humor, adventure, and romance that can make it appeal to children who want to read it for leisure.  It certainly resonated with young girls, due to the story being similar to that have Cinderella.  However, there is an element of gender reversal.  By the end of the story, Ella actually saves the Prince and breaks her curse by not accepting his marriage proposal, in which is seen as a selfless act.  She does eventually marry the Prince, but it is on her own free will.  “This text is an example of the difficulty of writing outside roman-tic discourse, yet the ending re-visions gendered roles” (Parsons, 2004, 149).    

 

Ella Enchanted is able to have an impact in academic study of children’s literature and have the same enjoyment of reading a book.  While it is fairly a new book when compared to others on the Top 100 Best Children’s Chapter Book list, it can be seen a classic that will be read for many generations.  It has the same context as every other fairy tale, but it allows the main character to be more independent as opposed to other stories.  This novel will certainly have more significance and sentiment in the next century, and maybe one day it will be higher on book lists.