Who sees her as the bad guy? They’re two of the first terms you learn in the study of literature: protagonist and antagonist. The protagonist is the hero, the schnook at the center of the story, the innocent in the middle of a hurricane. It’s easy to sympathize with heroes. Everything seems to happen to them and they’re created to be someone you like. So it should be easy to guess who the antagonist is. That’s the “udder guy”, the heavy, the louse who antagonizes the hero. Actually, an antagonist is simply whatever force that opposes the hero but some opponents go out of their way to make the good guy’s life miserable. At any rate, it’s easy to see the tale from the hero’s point of view but when I was struggling with a story years ago I got some good advice from my husband. “Never forget” he said, looking over the rims of his glasses, “No one sees themselves as the villain.” Bertha Mason before she went to England..Doesn’t look crazy, does she? “No one sees themselves as the villain.” That observation holds incredible insight and it’s the mechanism that unlocked a horde of parallel novels based…
Revisionist tales can be slippery. We love them because they tell the tale we already know from a perspective that gives the story new meaning. Sometimes a revisionist history promotes a fairer review of the past, like The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty. Wide Sargasso Sea, is revisionist version of Jane Eyre but the new story is brilliant enough to stand on its own. Most of these tales aren’t that good. However, Gregory Maguire’s Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister brings something new to the table. It isn’t just a send-up of Cinderella – it’s a meditation on the difference between perception and the truth. Cinderella is one of the stories that teams beauty with goodness. The poor, pretty orphan is mistreated by those who should love her, which makes her royal rescue all the more grand. But Maguire’s Clara is a hostage to her own good looks who chooses kitchen life from spite and agoraphobia. Her mother preached that a lovely face was in danger if exposed to the outdoor world. Her father attracted customers with her seldom seen beauty, associating her face with his wares in a painting. The combination has turned this Clara (this book’s Cinderella)…