Who’s the Bet­ter Hero­ine: Cin­derella or Mu­lan?

As a child grow­ing up, Cin­derella was my fa­vorite Dis­ney Princess. I thought she was so kind and beau­ti­ful. My ad­mi­ra­tion for her did­n’t dis­ap­pear as I col­lected Cin­derella dolls and slip­pers. It’s not un­til I reached third grade did I read a pic­ture book in­sult­ing Cin­derella. It de­picted two types of Cin­derel­la’s: one who was la­belled “pas­sive” while the other “as­sertive.” The as­sertive Cin­derella would work hard, not weep, and get her­self out of her cruel step­fam­ily. The pas­sive Cin­derella was the op­po­site, re­ly­ing on oth­ers to get help and would be very emo­tional too. In the end she lived a mis­er­able life be­cause her Prince had no per­son­al­ity com­pared to the as­sertive Cin­derella. 

Later, I re­mem­ber telling my dad how Dis­ney Cin­derella was use­less. Sur­prised by my state­ment he asked why.

“Be­cause Cin­derella does­n’t do any­thing to get out of her sit­u­a­tion.” I con­fi­dently re­marked.

He looked at me and then replied, “But her kind­ness gets her out of the sit­u­a­tion does­n’t it?” 

I would pause and nod my head, “Yeaah.”

Ex­cept I did­n’t care. From then on, I dis­liked Cin­derella. I started to be­lieve that strong women had to be as­sertive. Thus, if any­one asked who was more of a hero­ine: Mu­lan or Cin­derella, the ob­vi­ous an­swer would be Mu­lan. Yet, over­time I re­al­ized a hero­ine does­n’t need to have “mas­cu­line” traits to be ad­mired. Of course there’s noth­ing wrong with a woman hav­ing mas­cu­line traits. But to de­grade an­other wom­an’s “hero­ine-ness” be­cause they are more “fem­i­nine” speaks vol­umes of our so­ci­ety’s dis­like to­wards women in gen­eral.

Also, It’s hard to com­pare Mu­lan and Cin­derella with­out un­der­stand­ing their con­texts. Cin­derella lives in an abu­sive home, and the only way to cope with her feel­ings is to ‘dream.’ Or the way I see it is Es­capism. Any­one else in her po­si­tion would have lost it. It’s also highly un­re­al­is­tic for Cin­derella to leave her house. 

Mu­lan lives in a strict pa­tri­ar­chal so­ci­ety where her sta­tus is de­ter­mined by mar­riage. Her tomboy­ish traits are dis­liked. In­ter­est­ingly though, both char­ac­ters re­ject the ex­pec­ta­tions that fall upon them. For ex­am­ple, Cin­derella chooses to re­main pos­i­tive and hope­ful de­spite the neg­a­tiv­ity her step­sis­ters and step­mother throw at her. Mu­lan goes to war to pro­tect her fa­ther de­spite know­ing so­ci­ety will re­ject her morals. They pave their own path and that’s what makes each of them pow­er­ful.

Ad­di­tion­ally, Cin­derel­la’s dream does­n’t re­volve around a man, nor was she saved by one as every­one claims against her. Yes, the Prince pro­posed to her, but as she went to the ball, it was her dream to es­cape from the re­al­ity she was liv­ing be­fore. The Prince just hap­pened to be there and the two met. Sim­i­larly with Mu­lan, there just hap­pened to be Shang that Mu­lan be­came in­ter­ested in. Surely, through­out the me­dia, the woman is al­most al­ways the love in­ter­est for the man. And that would be the only wom­an’s per­son­al­ity. Cin­derella and Mu­lan though? They’ve dis­played a whole ar­ray of per­son­al­i­ties be­fore meet­ing their ideal man. 

How­ever, it’s Cin­derella who’s con­stantly be­lit­tled for end­ing up with a Prince. Why? Be­cause she did­n’t “save” her­self. Ex­cept, Cin­derella does save her­self with­out the Prince. Near the end of the movie when her step­mother locked her up, her mice friends tried to bring her the key. The evil cat traps the key, but in­stead of los­ing hope, Cin­derella calls her dog to help. It’s doubt­ful the an­i­mals would have obeyed her if it weren’t for her kind­ness. With the key, Cin­derella runs down away from her locked room and dis­obeys her step­mother. This even­tu­ally shows how Cin­derella stands up against her step­mother. 

Not with a sword, not with words, but with her ac­tions. Per­haps it’s not done in a force­ful man­ner, but that does­n’t mat­ter be­cause her trust with the an­i­mals il­lus­trates the trust she has within her­self. And it’s just as sim­i­lar to Mu­lan’s trust with her com­rades and her­self against the en­e­mies. They both por­tray self-con­fi­dence but they’re just dis­played in dif­fer­ent ways be­cause of their per­son­al­i­ties. And that’s what makes them unique. We should be care­ful with what be­hav­iors we’re try­ing to crit­i­cize be­cause in the end, we may anony­mously be jus­ti­fy­ing neg­a­tive so­ci­etal per­cep­tions. All of which start by hat­ing our dif­fer­ences in­stead of ac­cept­ing them.

Ar­ti­cle In­spired by this source