A review by kivt
Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine

2.0

I loved this book as a kid. On re-reading it, it’s kind of nasty. The evil stepsisters are coded as evil because they’re cruel to Ella and classist, sure. But they’re also very ugly, eat too much, Olive in particular wants to be loved too much, the book really drags them for being illiterate. For as feminist as the book wants to be, it never sheds some of the original story’s baggage about (Disney Princess-style) beauty equaling goodness. It just adds “intelligence equals goodness” to the mix. Why not make them equally beautiful and smart, and just let their snobbery and obvious delight in abusing the power they have over people code them as evil? That’s more than enough & more like what readers of the book’s target age range are going to come across in their lives.

The end is kinda gross too.

Spoiler

Ella is only able to break the curse because of her love of Char and her nation. She can’t break it to save her life or to save the life of a child, she breaks it over a potential, unrealized threat to the man she loves. Which is like, fine, sure, love is powerful. But we don’t see that love really develop, we’re just told the two characters fall in love. And they’re 16. The curse breaking scene isn’t super compelling. It’s explicitly nationalist and still pretty sexist and I don’t like it.