Huang Mei

Transforming the Cinderella Dream is the first systematic study of the formation and transformation of the Cinderella theme in the English novel. The author's central argument is that the Cinderella plot is essentially one of female self-assertion realized through ideological and textual dialogues between desire and self-denial. On the one hand characters argue for and desire resolution inmarriage and the domestic world of "happily ever after" endings, on the other they and their creators often strive to disengage themselves from this entanglement in a feminist attempt to escape narrative closure.