Not the Main Character We Expected?

Apr 11, 2018

Melinda Lo’s whole idea behind Ash was a new and improved Cinderella story, one that she would want to read. This is mainly done through the main character, Ash. She is portrayed to be a strong, independent female character that doesn’t take the easy way out and end up with the prince at the end of the story. While I agree that the story is unique in its use of magic and ending romance, I don’t think that Ash is the strong character that Lo was aiming for.

First, she is a very sad, reckless character. It makes sense that she is upset about her mother’s death, but so much of the story is her wandering through the woods to cry on her mother’s grave. In her doing this, she is extremely reckless due to the presence of devious fairies in the woods. Even though a fairy (Sidhean) repeatedly tells her to stop taking the path through the forest to the grave, she does it anyway. By doing this, she shows a complete disregard for her well-being, which isn’t really being strong. Another part of her character that we see is how unsure she is of herself. We see this when she goes to stay with Lady Isobel’s sister and meets Gwen. She seems shocked that anyone would want to be her friend. I know that her personality in the story makes sense due to the loss of her parents and how terribly she is treated by Lady Isobel, I just think that the presence of these personality traits make Ash pretty similar to Cinderella in the original story.

Another huge aspect of the story is that Ash ends up in love with the king’s huntress Kaisa instead of the prince. Ash ending up with Kaisa at the end is dependent on her attendance of two royal balls. She is only able to attend these by making a deal with Sidhean. He does her two huge, elaborate favors while she agrees to be with him (which she easily gets out of), so she really doesn’t do anything herself. If she had to have some big fight or go on some challenging quest in order to get out of her agreement with him, I wouldn’t question this part of the story as much. However, she really doesn’t have to do anything or give anything up before he lets her out of the deal. It just seems like Ash doesn’t have to make an effort. While I do think that Ash the book is definitely differs in some ways to the Cinderella story, I think Ash the character is pretty similar to Cinderella, making her not the strong female character I was expecting. Did anyone else see this similarity?

8 responses to “Not the Main Character We Expected?”

kedam07

April 11, 2018 at 7:12 pm

I assumed that Melinda Lo’s whole idea behind Ash was just that it’s just like Cinderella with a twist. I didn’t think she was trying to create a strong female character, but that maybe because I don’t particularly remember her interview.

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1. storylesher
  
  April 15, 2018 at 9:52 pm
  
  You definitely may be right. I guess it was maybe just my expectation that in this story, our main character would be different!
  
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hwseo1004

April 14, 2018 at 6:43 am

I do think what Ash had to do in order to escape her deal with Sidhean is not exactly clear. When I first read the book, I thought she had to have sex with him. Now I’m just doubtful what she did. Did she somehow have to leave a part of her soul with him? Also, Ash is definitely not that strong a character, in that she borrowed Sidhean’s magic to do what she wanted. However, I think she did make a difference because she chose who she wanted to be with, and took the course of action to rightfully be with that person.

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1. storylesher
  
  April 15, 2018 at 9:53 pm
  
  Yeah I’m also not sure what happened between them, but it mentioned that she didn’t remember and she didn’t comment on feeling any differently so I assumed she didn’t lose much!
  
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foulonni

April 16, 2018 at 12:09 am

I definitely agree that Ash isn’t necessarily the totally independent female lead that we may have hoped for from Lo, but I still found Ash’s character to be unique in the sense that she has the complexities that male leads are usually only written with. I like that you gave the example of her “reckless” treks through the woods despite the constant fairy threat. I found Ash’s desire to be taken away as servant to the fairies both rash and baffling, but I also really liked this confusion. With female leads in fairy tales, especially older ones, the female lead doesn’t actively seek danger, and instead relies on male guidance to avoid peril. Ash was cool because the first half of the book was her basically daring the universe to punish her for walking out in the woods alone at night (another thing that women in traditional fairy tales do not do). Now, I will say that I was disappointed that she required Sidheads magic to meet the huntress both times, but I did find it very innovative that Lo used this moment to create Ash’s love triangle which wrapped another layer of complexity in Ash’s life that I feel we don’t see with many female leads in fairy tales. The other thing that I realized while I was reading was how Kaisa fits the bill as a strong female character, even if Ash isn’t necessarily all that independent. I guess also agree with one of the comments above that maybe Lo wasn’t trying to make Ash the strong female lead we wanted, but she still provided us with a character that functioned outside of traditional roles and was independent all her own.

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hkg

April 16, 2018 at 4:18 am

I agree with kedam07 in that I don’t remember Lo explicitly stating that she wanted to create a particularly strong, female character. That being said, I think in analyzing Ash’s character we must take her past into consideration. I would say that she is exceptionally strong given the environment that she grew up in. I think Lo’s character is relatively accurate for her heartbreaking backstory and upbringing. We cannot expect an incredibly strong character to come from an unstable/unsupportive/abusive homelife.

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1. storylesher
  
  April 17, 2018 at 3:58 am
  
  Yes I completely agree that her background must be taken into account! I guess I was more thinking that based on the books we have been reading, I expected Ash to be a different type of character than she was. I was just surprised at the similarities between her character and Cinderella herself.
  
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poamek

May 14, 2018 at 7:51 pm

I would kind of echo what others are saying– even though maybe we would want to read the retelling of the Cinderella story with a strong female lead that’s not necessarily the story Lo was trying to tell. But I would agree that I think the story is better queered if the story is not only queer but also queered in the idea of power dynamics and characters attributes. I think in both the original Cinderella story and Ash the protagonist is a bit selfish, indulgent, and flighty– and maybe there’s something in there that makes it hard to take that association away. It’s interesting to examine the risk Lo runs in writing a retelling, would we be talking about this more or less if the story was unattached to its origins?

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