The Educated Imagination: Cinderella Story Convention

In 1964, the literary critic Northrop Frye published a book, titled The Educated Imagination, in which summarized his ideas on the relevance of literature to life and more specifically, the conventions that come with them. Frye establishes the literary forms through the exploration of traditional and modern forms of story telling. The foundation of conventional literature has been told many times throughout history, however it is at the discretion of the author to embellish it with minor outlying details, or content change. Literature can only stem from literature itself. All literature is new, but also recognizable. We can still find these conventions in modern day literature and media. An illustration of the Cinderella story convention is
found in the award-winning movie Pretty Woman; the hero’s journey convention is found in the story of Huckleberry Finn in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
The movie Pretty Woman is a clear example of a conventional rag to riches Cinderella story. Julia Roberts stars as a prostitute who unintentionally falls into a mutual love with a classy businessman. We are first introduced to Edward, a charming man of high social and economic status, where as Vivian, a beautiful and kind prostitute, is forced to walk Hollywood boulevard at night in order to make some cash. After spending the night with Edward in his very expensive pent house suite he offers her a business proposal of staying with him for the rest of the week to escort him to social events. Vivian goes through her princess transformation when the hotel manager, Bernard, acts as Vivian’s metaphorical fairy godmother by coaching her on dinner etiquette and finds her an extravagant cocktail dress. The fact that
Edward and Vivian live in two different worlds seems to be the conflict in the movie when the six days come to an end, so he offers to buy her a condo. She is offended by the offer and says this is not the “fairy tale” that she wanted, and asserts that these complications only work out for Cinderella. Similar to Cinderella’s illusion that fades a midnight, Vivian heads back to her shady apartment, preparing to San Francisco to earn her G.E.D. in hopes of a better life. At last minute, Edward, her prince charming, arrives in a white limo and climbs up her fire escape while she is watching him out her window. This is a visual urban metaphor for knight on a white horse rescuing a princess from a tower, a childhood fantasy Vivian had told him about. Pretty Woman is a perfect example of a conventional Cinderella story since it has the attributes of a classic rag to riches fairy tale in a modern light.
Huck, from the novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, is on a hero’s quest of self-identification, and in the process, resisting the beliefs of the society he grew up in.
The hero’s journey is broken down into three parts; departure, initiation, and return. Within each of these stages, there are steps which the hero undergoes in order to change the hero from the person he is to the person he needs to be. Usually the hero is resistant to embark on the journey, refusing the call. A sign is then necessary in order for the hero to understand that he has to depart on the journey. This is portrayed in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn when Huck notices Pap’s boot print in the snow in the early pages of the novel. The belly of the whale or trial where the hero must use his unique abilities to progress is demonstrated in this novel when Huck fakes his murder and escapes Pap’s cabin. Huck then continues to cross the first threshold entering a new world, where in this book the river is the threshold to new worlds. The initiation is where most similarities between the novel and the hero’s journey are found. The road of trials that is the hero’s pursuit of an ultimate goal that matures him and reveals unrealized potential is portrayed through Huck’s journey with Jim to get him to freedom. Huck matures from identifying Jim as a slave to identifying him as a human, and most importantly, a friend. Temptation away from the path is when the hero is asked to join a dark or evil
side, which Huck encounters when he debates whether to give up Jim to the slave traders, but lies to protect Jim. Huck then goes through Apotheosis or a realization of the essence of life when he knows he must free Jim because slavery is morally incorrect despite what society tells him. The final stage of a hero’s journey is the return, Huck only fulfills one of these stages standards and this is the refusal to return. In the last pages of the book Miss Watson wants Huck to come home but for Huck the river is the only home he loves. Evidently, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a conventional story of a hero’s journey.
I have come to recognize and understand literary conventions, which in result has improved my understanding of society. By studying literature and learning its techniques we can truly expose the world we live in, and reference this to an imagined vision of a world we would like to live in. Frye asserts that in reading literature we can develop our imagination, and the first objective of the imagination is to in-vision an artificial society based on our personal wants. Our personal wants are portrayed in advertisements, which represent our vision or imaginary society, however these advertisements are illusions and we must have the ability to decipher the real meaning behind them. The only way to cope with these idealized advertisements is in the same way we cope with irony in literature. Ironic literature is literature that allows us to see over the head of a situation, saying one thing and meaning another, and this detaches us from the world we’d prefer not to be involved with. When we are first confronted with these advertisements our imagination immediately considers whether the product will fit into our vision of society. This can be the explaination as to why the Cinderella story convention has been around for ages, and is still present in literature, media and society today. Frye makes a connection to the media, “If you read the fiction in women’s magazines, you hear the Cinderella story over and over again.” (Frye 21). Frye believes that this convention lives on because this concept appeals to our fantasy personal desires.
Frye compares the conventions of life to the conventions of literature in An Educated Imagination; this is called the horizontal perspective. We see a difference because the conventions in literature do not much in any way conventions of life. However, this is not contradictory because we are very familiar with literature conventions with some relations. Modern society is so conventionalized because we are moving toward conformity and uniformity in out society. Conventions keep everything the same and often we, society, choose to keep different things from occurring. Frye states that conventions do have the same role in literature as they do real life since they compel a consistency of order and stability on the writer. However, he finds it clear that the structure of literature is what differs it from society. In conclusion these conventions have been demonstrated in our recent society in the movie Pretty Woman as an urban Cinderella story, and in the novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as a perfect example of a hero’s journey.