Sunday, October 04, 2009

Cinder-Elly

In today’s new-run of For Better or For Worse, Elly Patterson compares her moment of working at John’s clinic to the Cinderella story. The comparison works pretty well. Elly slaves at home for the evil step-mother (John), and ugly step-sisters (Liz and Michael), and the fairy godmother is Anne Nichols, willing to handle the kids for Elly. If only Elly were a princess, she could do the princess-like duties of “getting out every day, working with the public, and using her brains”. Not only that but Elly would get to dress the part of the princess with “wearing nice clothes and putting (her) hair up and looking professional”.

The skeptics among us would probably notice little things like: (a) Elly wore a uniform and not nice clothes, (b) Elly did not put her hair up, and most importantly (c) her actual duties at the office do not really match her description of them. However, it is easy to imagine Elly trying to give Connie this impression, since supposedly Connie works.

The key ingredient missing in the story is that of the prince. The story of Cinderella does not work unless there is a prince. He is the motivation for everything. There is no ball without the prince and there is no marriage to the prince if he did not have his unusual foot fetish. This comparison works with Elly’s situation also (except the foot fetish part). John brings her on and puts her in a position for which Elly would probably not qualify otherwise. If Elly were to take the job she could get without John’s help, she might not have liked working as much. The prince has given Cinder-Elly the taste of the good life, and she wants more.

Naturally, in this discussion, John is not mentioned at all. His business is simply referred to as “the clinic”. This is the situation later on too, when John buys Elly her bookstore business of Lilliput’s. John, the prince, rescues Elly from her situation, even though he is also the evil step-mother.

In the meantime, I get the biggest kick out of watching these characters "march" down the street. In the first panel, it even looks like Michael is trying to teach Lawrence to walk in step like the adults.

6 Comments:

Blogger DreadedCandiru2 said...

Naturally, in this discussion, John is not mentioned at all. His business is simply referred to as “the clinic”. This is the situation later on too, when John buys Elly her bookstore business of Lilliput’s. John, the prince, rescues Elly from her situation, even though he is also the evil step-mother.

The annoying part is that, sooner or later, Cinder-Elly got bored with palace life and went back to her beloved martyrdom. This sort of thing makes it hard to root for her.

2:57 AM  
Blogger April Patterson said...

I was going to make the same point about the hair and clothes. And using her brain? Girl, please!

3:28 AM  
Blogger howard said...

DreadedCandiru2,

The annoying part is that, sooner or later, Cinder-Elly got bored with palace life and went back to her beloved martyrdom. This sort of thing makes it hard to root for her.

It would be like the moment in the original Cinderella, where the prince wakes up one night to find Cinderella cleaning out the palace fireplace.

6:52 AM  
Blogger howard said...

aprilp_katje,

I was going to make the same point about the hair and clothes.

This part really makes no sense. We’ve seen enough “Elly at the cocktail party” strips in the last 2 years to know that she can dress up to go out and look a lot better than she did at John’s work.

And using her brain? Girl, please!

I think I can give her this point, considering it is Elly.

6:53 AM  
Blogger April Patterson said...

I think I can give her this point, considering it is Elly.

Good point--she's not exactly an intellectual powerhouse. Not that she possesses any self-awareness on that point.

7:50 AM  
Blogger howard said...

aprilp_katje,

Good point--she's not exactly an intellectual powerhouse. Not that she possesses any self-awareness on that point.

Well, she does take great pride in her moments where she outsmarts her 6-year-old when he doesn't want to go to bed. That's about as far as it get

10:07 AM  

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