Author Hope Tarr on the Cinderella Effect
Hope Tarr's latest release, Operation Cinderella (Entangled Publishing), came out this week and is the first in her Suddenly Cinderella series of modern-day fairy-tale-themed romances. Hope is also co-founder of Lady Jane's Salon in New York City, a monthly romance-reading series that has featured such authors as Eloisa James, Karen Rose, Sabrina Jeffries, Marjorie M. Liu and Suzanne Brockmann. Here, Hope provides her take on why fairy tales are so popular these days.
Hope: Growing up, I ate, breathed, and dreamed fairy tales. Cinderella and Prince Charming, Snow White and Prince Charming, Sleeping Beauty and Pr--
Well, you get the picture.
Reading and later writing romance novels was a natural extension of my fairy tale … fetish. As in fairy tales, romance fiction assures us a satisfyingly Happily Ever After ending. Once considered the purview of young adult and children's literature, in recent years fairy tales have found their way between the covers of adult fiction in a big way.
For sure fairy tales and their associated tropes never went out of fashion. Still, we are witnessing a staggering resurgence in their popularity, not only in novels but also in films such as Snow White and the Huntsman and TV series such as Grimm and my personal favorite, Once Upon a Time. (Leave it to a Scot, in this case talented actor Robert Carlyle, to make even the villainous Rumpelstiltskin sexy!). At a recent East Coast book festival in which I took part, fairytale-themed romance fiction was allotted its own panel, and that panel was one of the liveliest and best attended of the program.
There are likely many contributors to the arts and entertainment appeal of all things enchanted, notably the gritty reality of a global economic recession. I've come up with the following five features of fairy tales to help examine their present prevalence in romances.
1. Fairytale heroines are strong.
Ultimately a fairy-tale heroine takes charge of her life. Be she princess or pauper, every fairy-tale heroine faces an epic struggle. Magic may be made available as a helpful tool, but it never provides the complete solution. The supersecret weapon is always a steely albeit sometimes hidden inner strength. Usually it takes having her life turned upside down for her to dig deep and unbury her true self, but unbury it she does. On the outside, a fairy-tale heroine may be a prim and proper princess like Cinderella or a bold, gender-bending warrior like Mulan, but by the time her Happily Ever After rolls around, she stands firmly on her own two (possibly glass-slipper-shod) feet.
2. Fairy-tale heroines are relatable.
No matter how improbably petite and pretty a fairy-tale heroine may be, she invariably packs true grit beneath the tiara, crinoline and lace. She is the woman we would like to be or at least have as our bestie. Like us, she is not perfect, but her flaws are forgivable.
3. Fairy-tale heroines aren't afraid to change.
As fabulous as these heroines are, they usually start out with a near-fatal flaw, which they must overcome before they can triumph — or, in some cases, survive. Overcoming that internal obstacle is the key to overcoming whatever external force threatens or oppresses them, be it a fire-breathing dragon, poisoned produce or a seriously mean step-family.
4. Fairy-tale heroines take action.
Like many fairy-tale femmes, Cinderella starts out entirely too mild and meek for her own good. At the start of her tale, she is more of a heroine-in-training than a true heroine. When her "Cinderella Moment" arrives in the form of a magic wand-waving fairy godmother, she has a choice. She can continue to cower at her home hearth or she can seize the dream, the opportunity, to have the life she's always wanted. Happily, she chooses the latter, leaving behind all that's safe and familiar (albeit stagnant and ashy) to venture out into the scary, glittering larger world the ball represents.
5. Fairy tales affirm our culture's core values.
Good over evil, right over wrong, and love over hate, in fairy tales the good guys — and girls — may suffer mightily — they do suffer — but in the end, the white hats always win. Always. What's not to love about that?
To find out more about Hope and her books, you can visit her website, HopeTarr.com. You can also check out an excerpt of Operation Cinderella.