Ella Enchanted

A New York native, Gail Carson Levine was born September 17, 1947. She began writing in elementary school, and in high school her poems were published in two anthologies of teenage poetry. Her creative family included her father, David, who owned a commercial art studio and her mother, Sylvia, a teacher who wrote plays in rhyme for her students. Levine herself aspired to follow her sister, Rani, now a professor of fine arts, into painting.

In 1967 she married David Levine, a software developer, and then graduated from City College of the City University of New York with a B.A. in 1969. Together they created a children's musical, Spacenapped, which was produced in Brooklyn. After this first adult writing project, Levine created several children's picture books. But in a class on writing and illustrating, she discovered her real interest centered more in the words than the pictures.

Ella Enchanted began as an assignment in another writing class. Unable to think of a story line, she borrowed the plot from Cinderella, but added the curse of obedience and a rebellious heroine to make it more interesting. While working for the New York State Department of Labor, Levine wrote her stories on the Metro North, commuting from her home in Brewster, New York, to her job as welfare administrator.

Since issuing Ella Enchanted, a work that was named a 1998 Newbery Honor book, Levine has created a series of varied fairy tales and is revising an early first novel about her father's experiences in a Harlem orphanage.

She and her husband live in a 200-year old farmhouse with their Airedale, Jake.

Levine follows glass slippers through her first children's novel, Ella Enchanted. Complications in this modern retelling of the familiar Cinderella story arise because a fairy creates the heroine's dilemma, her godmother refuses to help, and with no knight on a white horse galloping up to save her, Ella has to solve her own problem.

Lucinda, the fairy, has bestowed the gift of obedience on Ella. She must obey any specific command directed at her—even if it is to cut off her head or jump into the frying pan. Rather than sit helplessly by the fireplace ruing her fate, Ella squirms rebelliously in the curse's grip. She uses her words and wit to retaliate against her thoughtless or unkind taskmasters. Finally she sets out to find Lucinda to ask release from the curse.

Ella weaves her way through unsympathetic parents, the wicked stepmother, Dame Olga, and her callous father, Sir Peter of Frell. She outwits Hattie, her venomous stepsister, and captures ogres. Along the way she enchants Prince Charmont with her sense of humor and resourcefulness.

She distances herself and her affliction from Charmont's growing affection until three masked balls are held in his honor. She uses borrowed dresses, a pumpkin coach, and rodent coachmen to be near him. Unmasked by Hattie, Ella flees. But the Prince finds her and orders her to reveal her true feelings. Fearful her obedience could endanger both the man of her dreams and her country, she deliberately defies his command. In sacrificing her feelings for the larger good, she frees herself of the curse's hold.

In this variation on the Cinderella story, Ella, her family, and servants live in Kyrria, a fanciful kingdom bordered by Ayortha and Bast. It is a land of castles and fairies and magical forests. Ruled by King Jerrold, Queen Daria, and Crown Prince Charmont, the country is peacefully inhabited by Kyrrians, gnomes, elves, and gentle giants. Talking birds, hydra, centaurs, and baby dragons are displayed in the royal menagerie. Villainous ogres who "know your secrets by just looking… and use their knowledge against you" are enemies to all.

More than a fairy tale, yet less than a morality play, Ella Enchanted weaves Cinderella's familiar plot with important themes for young readers.

Though powerless to defy the fairy's curse of absolute obedience, Ella is a medieval miss who does not easily accept her servitude. Spirited, independent, and honest, she battles back with a tart tone and mischievous actions to the unpleasant characters around her. Written for nine- to twelve-year-olds, Ella is a believable modern heroine who could shed her castle clothing, skip over the moat, and slip into the crowds at the mall.

Young female readers should pay attention to what the Prince finds beguiling in Ella. Describing a mature relationship, Levine emphasizes that Ella's appeal lies beyond her pretty face. The Prince is attracted to her unpretentious, natural treatment of him. Her sense of humor and fun-loving personality draw him to her. Slowly, over two years, her determination and self-reliance deepens their easy friendship into romance, inspiring his declaration of love. Young readers can see the foundation of enduring relationships and how they develop even in a fairy tale.

Ella ultimately frees herself of her curse by personal sacrifice and by a motive larger than herself, another theme readers might well take to heart. When Ella makes the hard choice and denies her love in order to protect her future king and her country, she breaks the curse's hold over her.

Levine's main character has no choice but to determine her own destiny. Mandy, her fairy godmother, refuses to provide supernatural solutions for her young charge. The many-chinned, frizzy-haired fairy will repair broken dinner plates and concoct a curing soup, but will not risk the catastrophic consequences of performing big magic.

Ella finds no comfort from her father either. Unlike Cinderella's beloved patron, Sir Peter demonstrates little love for his daughter. Ella, ever sharp-eyed, sees his heart is as cold as the cash he wishes to acquire. He has no sympathy for her grief when her mother dies, no comfort for her loneliness, and no understanding for what she endures at the hands of her stepmother. To him, Ella is only another commodity.

Prince Charmont neatly fits the picture as handsome hero. Heir apparent, he is brave, courtly, and eager to live up to his parents' expectations. Levine makes him potentially a wise ruler because he sees beyond others' empty-headed smiles and curtsies to the real beauty of the spirit in Ella.

Levine relies on the traditional fairy characters for the villains. Dame Olga, Olive, and Hattie could not be more vile as stepmother and step sisters. They, too, are hampered by their own forms of bondage: Olga is chained by social position and money; Olive is bound by her rudeness, and Hattie is imprisoned by envy of Ella. They mercilessly torment Ella with demands, requiring her to relinquish her mother's heirloom necklace or to wash the floors until her hands and knees are bloody.

Levine's version of Cinderella creates a castle and a chimney for Ella to sweep. But Levine broadens the setting by taking Ella outside her castle to a faraway boarding school, to the elves' Forest, and to a giant's wedding in Uaaxee. While Ella runs into insidious ogres out in this bigger world, more traditional danger lurks in her own home. Her stepmother, Dame Olga, is a clone of Cinderella's wicked stepmother. Stepsister Hattie likewise follows Perrault's pattern in tormenting Ella. Befuddled Olive is more clumsy in her cruelty. The papa in the original Cinderella survives as a minor character, but is cowed by his second wife. Ella's father, too, is a shadowy presence. He is callous and cold-hearted to Ella's plight and absents himself from his family with long business trips. Sir Peter, unlike his prototype, marries for money; just as Dame Olga does.

Evil is clearly characterized in Ella Enchanted by Dame Olga, but goodness is a more murky issue. Mandy, Ella's fairy godmother should be a force for good. But unlike Cinderella's traditional fairy godmother, who appears with the answers to her godchild's difficulties, Mandy refuses to rescue Ella with her magic wand. She fears even a small alteration of natural events could have disastrous consequences. Lucinda, the other supernatural character, should be a dark force. But her curses stemmed from good intentions, not from anything sinister. Though she should be Ella's enemy because of the curse, it is her magic, not Mandy's, that creates Ella's pumpkin, its attendants, her crown, and jewels. Likewise, Prince Charmont's character is more shaded than Cinderella's charming Prince. Charmont is a dutiful, obedient prince and will be a good ruler like Cinderella's hero. But Ella's intended is capable of bad temper, taking revenge, and abusing his authority as Heir Apparent—all of which he nobly confesses.

Levine has used a rich and many-layered language in creating the enchanted world of Kyrria. In keeping with its fairy tale content, Levine describes its populace with a technical attention to both the story's fanciful environment and human behavior at work. For example, while describing Orgese as a persuasive language in its oiliness and sweetness, Levine writes the conversations between the ogres, SEEf and NiSSH, with liberal doses of sibilant "ss" and "fs." Some distance from the ogres' dreaded Fen, language at the farm of the giantess, Uaaxee, is based on long, hollow vowels as if to echo the thumping and jarring of their larger-than-life movements. Elves speak with many consonants jammed together and Ayortha speech includes smacking the lips after the letter "m" and pronouncing "l's" as "y's."

Levine's description of Mistress Edith's boarding school could send readers fleeing to the next chapter. Who would want to tarry in, even in reading, about a place where chamber pots looks like cabbages, purple curtains are undulating streamers, and nightgowns have so many bows and frills, their occupants cannot lie down flat? When Ella runs away from boarding school, she "slips through an eye of a needle" into a world that Levine describes with language vivid with similes and metaphors. Newly embarked on her quest, Ella watches "the day grow between the leaves" and observes a phoenix trailing smoke in the distance. Stepping into the magic of the elvan Forest, Ella meets the mossy-haired, green-skinned inhabitants who scan the soul and are perplexed that Ella would rather read than sleep under "an eyelash of a moon."

Narrated in first person, Ella's observations of human nature are perceptive beyond her years. Her pronouncements about behavior are small lessons even an adult reader can appreciate. For example, she assesses the subtle beauty of Agulen's pottery as something not just made, but "born." She explains that sometimes saying farewell is evil and believes "that you can never go back to a moment when you are happy."

Through Ella, Levine examines the nature of real love. Ella is so keenly attuned to her Prince that she sees the hairs on the back of his neck. She admits the familiarity of soul mates can be sensed just by the touching of hands. The vocabulary used in this work may be higher than the age brackets for the book indicate. Each chapter is sprinkled with a half-dozen complex words. Thankfully, Levine supplies strong context clues to explain words like "odious" and "felicitous", "supplicant," and "topiary."

There is no overt physical violence for readers to actually see in this tale. Though the ogres are feared enemies of all the kingdom's inhabitants, they do their deeds off the page. They talk about, more than act on, on their plan to dissect Ella for lunch.

Besides the fairy's curse, Ella's problems stem from the adults around her, the very people who should be helping her conquer her problems. Her mother, hoping to protect Ella from danger, commands her never to speak of the curse to another. This effectively cuts off assistance from anyone else. After her mother dies, her father has no sympathy for Ella's grief. Indeed he has no emotional ties to her at all. His treatment of her borders on emotional neglect. Ella's fairy godmother is no help to her either. Mandy refuses, even during Ella's frantic flight after the unmasking at the ball, to help her escape. The infamous stepmother, Dame Olga, certainly lives up to her stereotype, piling on cruel words and orders to hurt Ella.

By both circumstance and by temperament, Ella must operate like young women of the next century will be expected to operate. She solves her own problems, using her own resources. And she has several from which to draw. She is a character with courage, determination, wit, and astuteness. Her intelligence and independence direct her destiny and the solution to her dilemma.

1. Ella is a retelling of the classic fairy tale. Compare and contrast the portrayal of Ella, her fairy godmothers, the Prince, and her father to the original story.
2. Discuss which you would choose if you had to live with one of Ella's parents, Sir Peter and Dame Olga.
3. Ella, Hattie and Olive were sent off to Mistress Edith's school to become "finished." What skills were they expected to acquire? What do parents and society expect "finished" or educated children to accomplish today?
4. Although Ella is controlled by the gift of obedience, she is not the only character being manipulated. What motivates Dame Olga, Hattie, Sir Peter, and the fairy godmothers? What are the things which control teenagers today?
5. Lucinda bestows three gifts to mortals: obedience to Ella, eternal love to Sir Peter and Dame Olga, and constant companionship to the giants. Discuss why the recipients found these to be curses instead of gifts.
6. Discuss ways Ella was able to resist the curse of obedience without disobeying it outright. How do people today resist the control of government or policy without violently disobeying it?
7. The ogres are the most feared creatures in the kingdom. Why was their ability to know secrets just by looking at a character, rather than their size and cruelty, the ultimate form of control?
8. Ella Enchanted is a romance. We know Ella and the Prince are made for each other. What qualities attract Ella to Charmont and the Prince to her?
9. In what ways was Ella's behavior more like a teenager's today than a girl from a time of knights, princes and kingdoms?

1. Getting married was an important event in Ella Enchanted. Each part of the kingdom had different customs. Prepare a report on marriage in other countries either past or present, including ages, wedding ceremony customs, and dress.
2. Dancing was an important social grace in the story. Prepare a report on different kinds of dancing during the medieval period, such as the gavotte and sarabande.
3. The plot of Cinderella has been retold many times in many mediums—in books, movies, and cartoons. View or reread the fairy tale, the movie Ever After, and Walt Disney's cartoon. How does each medium affect the way the story is told? Has society affected the way these mediums portray the characters?
4. People seem to be always eating in Ella Enchanted—at funerals, balls, and at meal times. Prepare a report on the diet of medieval people.
5. What kind of education could children in medieval times expect? Research the kind of training and skills that both male and female children would experience in all social strata of life in the Middle Ages.
6. By using the descriptions of Kyrria and surrounding countryside, prepare a map of the kingdom, illustrating it with creatures and characters who lived there.
7. Rewrite the story as if Olive or Hattie had been the main character instead of Ella. In what ways would the story change?
8. Kyrria is a kingdom inhabited by many different creatures. Using Levine's descriptions, draw pictures of the ogres, the giants, the gnomes, the fairies, and the elves.

Ella Enchanted is a retelling of the classic fairy tale. Since its 1997 publication, Levine has produced three more variations of other well-known stories: The Princess Test, The Fairy's Mistake, and Princess Sonora and the Eong Sleep. Their lighthearted tone follows William Brooke's fractured fairy tales.

The Princess Test follows Hans Christian Andersen's "Princess and the Pea," adding a disgruntled housekeeper who would do the heroine in and a blacksmith's daughter who is born with uncommon qualities. Though not one drop of royal blood flows through her veins, Lorelei possesses not only the traditional qualifications to rule, including the bruises caused by sleeping on a pea but the more modern requirement of a compassionate heart. The Fairy's Mistake retells Perrault's tale, "Toads and Diamonds." Twin sisters, Myrtle and Rosella, are bewitched by Ethelinda. Snakes and insects slither from Myrtle's mouth when she speaks; jewels tumble from Rosella's mouth. Rosella, betrothed to greedy Prince Harold casts a decidedly non-fairy-tale eye on feudal society and uses her curse to better the lives of her subjects instead of heaping more luxuries on the royal family.

Author: Gail Carson Levine

Major Books for Young Adults

Ella Enchanted, 1997
Princess Sonora and the Long Sleep, 1999
The Princess Test, 1999
The Fairy's Mistake, 1999