Review Assignment: Dig a Little Deeper!

William IV, the King of the faraway kingdom of Chimerica, had two sons, Robert and Richard.  The two princes couldn't have been any more different than they already were.  Robert, the elder, was interested mainly in music.  He liked to set poems to music and sing them, accompanying himself on his lute.  Richard, the younger, was mainly interested in sports.  He liked to lift weights, put the shot and throw the discus.

When Prince Robert came of age, his father said to him, "You're first in line to the throne, and it'd be good for the Monarchy's reputation if you married a princess.  King John of Bandania wants his daughter Anastasia to marry a prince for the sake of his Monarchy's reputation; so we decided to arrange a marriage between the two of you.  It'll take place in three days."

"But we've never met!" protested Prince Robert.

"Don't worry, son," said King William.  "I've met her and she's a beautiful girl.  I'm sure you'll be happy to be married to her."

"But suppose she never loves me?" said Robert.

"What difference would that make?" scoffed King William.  "She'll do her wifely duty to you, and that ought to be enough for you."

"But..."

"No buts about it!  I'm the King and you'll do as I command."

Robert and Anastasia saw each other for the first time on the day they were supposed to be married.  As she entered King William's castle, accompanied by her parents and a whole host of courtiers, he noticed that she was indeed beautiful, but that didn't particularly impress him.  She smiled as she made her way towards Prince Richard, but when her father directed her towards Prince Robert, her smile vanished instantly.  "I like strong, manly types," she said.  "I could never be happy married to that weakling."

"But he writes and plays beautiful music," protested both kings simultaneously.

"I couldn't care less," scoffed Anastasia.

"Well then," said Prince Robert hopefully, "why don't I give up my claim to the throne and let my brother take my place and marry Anastasia?"

"Unfortunately that's not how the succession rules work," said his father.  "In order for your brother to ascend to the throne, you'd have to disappear.  Max!  Turn this ungrateful son of mine into a frog!"

Max, the court magician, pointed his wand at Prince Robert, said an incantation that was unintelligible to him, waved his wand in some equally unintelligible manner and turned poor Robert into a frog.

"Thank you, Max," said King William.  "And now the wedding will take place as planned, except for a slight change of personnel."

"Wait just a minute," said Queen Esther, William's wife.  "I want to have a word with my son."  She picked him up, carried him into a room out of earshot of the assembled crowd, put him gently down on the floor and said, "Your father doesn't know this, but I'm a witch.  I'm not powerful enough to reverse the spell that Max cast on you, but I can modify it."  She opened a drawer, pulled out a magic wand and cast another spell on her son, and then she said, "If a woman kisses you, you will turn back into your former self.  If she later rejects you or you reject her, you will turn back into a frog until another woman kisses you.  I'm sorry, but that's the best I can do."  With that, she carried him out of the castle, laid him gently on the grass and returned to preside over the marriage of Prince Richard and Princess Anastasia.

Robert hopped out of the castle grounds and through the surrounding forest until he came to a pond.  He hopped into the pond, and there he lived off the insects he could catch while he waited for a woman to come to the edge of the pond.  It wasn't long before a beautiful maiden did come to the edge of the pond and started admiring her reflection in the water while she stroked her hair.  Suddenly she dislodged a piece of jewellery she'd been wearing in her hair, and it fell into the pond and sank to the bottom.  Robert dived to the bottom of the pond, picked it up in his mouth, surfaced, swam to the shore and laid it at her feet.  "Thank you!" said the maiden.  She bent down to pick it up and, at the same time, she kissed Robert, turning him back into his former self.

"Say, I recognize you!" she said with a smile.  "You're Prince Robert, right?  How lucky I am to have found you!  I've always dreamed of marrying a prince."

"Unfortunately I'm not a prince any more," he said.  "My father the King disinherited me."

"Well then, you can turn right back into a frog for all I care," she said coldly.  And he did forthwith.

The next woman who came to the edge of the pond was young but she wasn't particularly pretty, and she wasn't wearing any jewellery.  Instead, she was carrying some pieces of parchment, a quill and some ink.  She sat down on a stump near the pond, dipped her quill into the ink and started writing on one of the pieces of parchment.  Suddenly a gust of wind blew some of the pieces of parchment into the middle of the pond.  Robert retrieved them and laid them at her feet.  "Thank you," she said as she picked them up, but she didn't kiss him.  Instead, she produced a magic wand and cast a spell on him, turning him back into his former self.  "I was hoping that'd work.  You must have been turned into a frog by some wizard or other, right?"

"Yes," said Robert.  "I used to be Prince Robert, but I'm not a prince any longer.  My father the King disinherited me."

"I don't need a prince to support me," she answered.  "I can support myself perfectly well.  I'm a poet, and I sell my poems.  What I want is someone who can set my poems to music; songs will sell even better."

"I can do that," said Robert.  "Let's join forces."

They did just that, and within a month they had fallen in love and got married, but their troubles weren't over yet.  One of King William's servants happened to pick up a copy of one of the songs that Robert and his wife Rachel had written.  He recognized the name of the composer and informed King William that his son was human again.  William sent his magician Max to find Robert and turn him back into a frog.  Max eventually did find Robert, but before he could turn Robert into a frog, Rachel turned Max into a rabbit.  He picked up his wand in his mouth and hopped back to King William's castle.  When a servant opened the door, he hopped around the castle until he found the King.  King William had no idea who this rabbit was, but Queen Esther understood immediately what had happened.  At that point, she revealed to her husband that she was a witch and promised to turn Max back into a human (she could do that because a rabbit isn't as different from a human as a frog is) as long as William promised never to harm Robert again.  William reluctantly agreed to the deal on condition that Robert never lay claim to the throne.  Robert had never been interested in becoming king.  He was quite content with his life as a musician and Rachel's partner.  All the other characters too were content with their lot, even King William, because his Monarchy's reputation was safe.

The morals of the story should be obvious, but I'll spell them out anyway: not every man values female beauty, not every woman values male power, and young people should be free to marry those whom they love with no interference from their elders.

Review Assignment: Nothing Gonna Stop Me Now (prompt 1: the essay)

Mulan is a powerul woman: she disguises herself as a man so that she can join the army and, through hard work, increases her strength and skill to the point that she passes boot camp and is accepted as a full-fledged soldier.  Then she saves the life of the Emperor and single-handedly defeats the Shan-Yu's army that had just defeated the Emperor's army.  She captures Shan-Yu and then, for the first time, she reveals to him that she is a woman, increasing his humiliation.  The backdrop of the time that enhances her power as a female leader is that women were not even allowed to become soldiers, which is why she had to disguise herself as a man, and Mulan not only overcame her initial weakness and outperformed all the male soldiers by the time boot camp had ended but she succeeded where they had failed in the war.

Tiana isn't quite as powerful as Mulan but she doesn't have to be, because her ambition isn't to become a soldier but to own a restaurant.  Beginning as a waitress in a restaurant, she soon becomes more proficient than all the other employees.  She tries to help Naveen, who has been turned into a frog, by kissing him, but since she's not a princess, instead of turning Naveen into a human, she gets turned into a frog.  As frogs they learn to love each other and to improve their characters, and when they are married by a witch doctor, their next kiss turns them back into humans.  Tiana does get to own a restaurant and Naveen works as her assistant.  The backdrop of the time that enhances her power as a female leader is that most owners of businesses were men who employed women rather than the other way around.

These movies taken together help to inspire confidence in young girls and women not only because they show that women can achieve their ambitions if they work hard enough, but because the ambitions of the two women are very different.  Most women don't aspire to become either soldiers or restaurant owners, but if they see that a woman could become either a military leader or the owner of a business, they can generalize from these two examples and conclude that a woman can realize whatever ambition she may have through hard work despite whatever obstacles society puts in her path.