Ever After Analysis

Throughout the many renditions of “Cinderella”, there is a clear line between the Stepmother, Stepsisters, and Cinderella. Yet in Andy Tennant’s Ever After: A Cinderella Story the director takes that division another step further and separates the Stepsisters and Stepmother from each other. Tennant pits the Stepmother and one of her daughters against the Cinderella. The curveball, the second stepsister, is cast out to the side, a somewhat neutral party who favors Danielle but still longs for her mother’s love. Could one consider the varying levels of the loss of parental love each girl experienced and tie that to her behavior? Although Ever After has the appearance of simply another story about Cinderella, it is really providing the viewer with an incommensurable view into the behaviors of three girls who have had varying degrees of parent love rived from them and is a comparison between the loss of father and mother love which is discussed in Jacqueline Schectman’s ““Cinderella” and the Loss of Father Love”.
When the Father gives love to the Baroness, she accepts it, while Danielle looks at the couple with a look akin to jealously. Yet when the Father gives Danielle love, the Baroness first ‘thumbs’ her nose, and also looks down at the love. But at his death, both woman and child are seen crying over him, begging him not to leave. Both turn for physical affirmation of the now dead love, Danielle pulls the father’s hand toward her face trying to get him to caress it as he had done moments before. The Baroness turns to another man, clinging to him whilst sobbing over her dead husband, also looking for physical contact. But when Danielle grows up, rather than turning toward each other in their shared loss, the Baroness shoves Danielle away with insults, and creates the two sides that will split Marguerite and Jacqueline and the