Ena Lucia Portela’s “Cinderella’s Secret Dream” highlights the problematic portrayal of the evil villainess. Portela demonstrates this through Cleis’ own criticism of the heroine, “Cleis couldn’t imagine anything more boring and stupid… She longed to play the “villainess,” an evil woman who gets her kicks committing all sorts of dastardly deeds” (2). The evil woman is active, she gets to do the “committing”; in contrast, the ingenue is acted upon, and the only thing she can do is cry. However, it is precisely the agency that positions the villainess’ as evil. They become transgressive figures and must be made into a villain in order to subdue their appeal. In the classic trope, there are only two options: you can either be the sweet, ‘morally correct’ woman that is submissive, or if you want agency, it must mean you are evil and monstrous.
However, Portela criticizes this dichotomy. In contrast to the original fairy tale, Cleis must have her own agency. She must be the one to buy her own dress, to bring herself to the party, and, most importantly, to get herself away from the party. Like her own stepmother, she must take action for herself. Perhaps also like her stepmother, she perpetrates the downfall of another woman. Just like how the old housekeeper now makes Cleis do the housework, Cleis makes Lotta take her place in the demented mansion of Price Charming. In this comparison, Lotta was truly the one without her own agency — her life is almost entirely determined by her mother. Cleis is the only one to make it out of the town and achieve her own dreams. Through the success of Cleis, Portela offers a different option from the classic dichotomy, one far more realistic and probable: we all have, and we all should, exercise our own agency, even if it makes us the villain sometimes.
Hello,
I like how you suggest that sometimes the ends justify the means. In this case, I believe the author making “Cinderella” go against every stereotype and performing a villain role could be a way of showing that men would only respect women if they too are violent, highlighting gender violence.
Fighting fire with fire would negatively impact gender equality (but then again, men never stopped at this before). Maybe the author wanted to portray that perhaps there is no other choice.
An example could be that the feminist movement in Mexico is 98% pacific. Still, the rest (2%) is the only thing the media covers. Consequently, there have been several improvements and an increased hatred and invalidation towards the movement. But if the only way of making ourselves heard is that way, cleaning painted walls will always be easier than cleaning the blood of our stolen sisters.
Hi Mandy,
I loved your post! My favourite part was your highlighting of the villainess’ agency as being the reason they are characterized as evil. It reminded me of the historical treatment of witches, and how intelligence and desire to pursue more than the societal expectations of women meant they would be persecuted as witches, and killed. I was really struck by your observation of Lotta being the person with the least agency- I hadn’t considered that, but it’s absolutely true. It just goes to show that patriarchal societal “norms” can be valued and upheld by women, too. Cleis tries to warn her stepmother of the billionaire’s abuse, but the stepmother cares more about marrying Lotta off to him than about Lotta’s personal safety, which ultimately leads to her murder. Perhaps that’s why Lotta’s death isn’t dwelled upon-because it was entirely preventable?
Hi Mandy,
I thought your point about Cleis taking the housekeeper’s place and Lotta taking Cleis’ place in the mansion was very interesting. The characters are shuffled between different roles, but the roles themselves don’t really change until the end of the story when the roles disappear entirely – Lotta and the multimillionaire end up dead, while the stepmother ends up in an asylum (pg. 5). I think the idea being implied here is that in order to get ahead, someone else has to take your place in the hierarchy. The only character that creates an entirely new role is Cleis, who strikes an unconventional balance between heroine and villainess when she runs away and gets a job as an actress playing a villainess (pg. 5).