No story is ever a singular story. Instead, a story is the culmination of multiple stories, just told from one perspective. Perspectives can always be added after the fact, with new testimony and points of view coming to light. New stories can also add new perspectives to past work, with parody used to criticize, analyze, and unravel what were previously accepted truths. Postmodernism, a literary movement starting in the 20th century, emphasizes unraveling what is considered the truth, focusing on questioning what truth actually is, and if it can exist. New stories can question whether past stories are the truth by using subversion. One such tale, Toni Morrison’s A Mercy looks at Colonial America, questioning pre-conceived notions of race, gender, and enslavement by using the perspectives of Black, Native American, white, enslaved, free, female, and male characters, often analyzing how such identities intersect. In doing so, Morrison subverts common stories of Colonial America. Similarly, the Shrek film franchise subverts traditional fairy tales, with the main character, Shrek, being a monstrous ogre instead of a handsome prince, and the princess Fiona rejecting her role as a damsel in distress. However, not all subversions are made equal. While both pieces of text subvert traditional tales, the depiction of motherhood and power in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy is multifaceted, addressing varied experiences, while the Shrek films simplify and overlook such diversity in experience, continuing common, harmful narratives.
Shrek, the first film, is not bad at subversion. In the first film, Princess Fiona’s character is refreshing in a land of traditional fairy tales filled with damsels in distress. Fiona is not defenseless, in fact she has no shortage of agency, even willing to defend herself by “swing[ing] from a tree limb and knock[ing] Robin Hood unconscious” (Shrek 45). She, at first, chooses to marry Lord Farquaad of her own volition to “cure” herself of a curse which causes her to transform into an ogre at sunset, but when her secret is revealed, she makes another decision to remain as an ogre and marry Shrek instead. Though she does not do it alone, she learns to accept and embrace her identity, with the narration describing her as “tak[ing] love’s true form” (Shrek 71). In a world where fairy tales describe princesses as in need of princes, Fiona’s story is rooted in subversion with agency. While the first film does a good job of subverting a typical fairy tale, the Shrek franchise’s use of subversion continuously falls short.
When it comes to motherhood, the Shrek franchise prioritizes male feelings. In Shrek the Third, the plot sidelines Fiona as her father dies, focusing entirely on Shrek’s anxiety as the King tells Shrek he must take the throne, putting Shrek “in a state of shock” (Shrek the Third 18). Shrek, afraid of becoming king, leaves his wife to find the next heir, Arthur. As Shrek sets sail, Fiona reveals that she is pregnant. Shrek spends the rest of the film coming to terms with his fatherhood, worrying that “it’s not my life I’m worried about ruining. It’s the kid’s” (Shrek the Third 31). The focus of the film systematically overlooks Fiona’s perspective, reducing her as a passive body for motherhood rather than an active character handling numerous feelings.
This erasure overlooks the previous film, which focuses entirely on Fiona’s tense relationship with her parents. At an opportunity ripe to explore Fiona’s transition to motherhood, and how it mixes with her mixed relationship with her own parents, her experience is treated as a subplot. In the brief scene when Fiona discusses becoming a mother with her princess friends, the film presents the audience with a false dichotomy. The other princesses express a caricatured aversion to having children, with Sleeping Beauty complaining that motherhood is where “you’re tired all the time” and Snow White describing it as where “you’ll start letting yourself go” (Shrek the Third 47). The other princesses’ aversion to having children isn’t framed as a personal preference, but as a lack of maturity and logic. Fiona is positioned as the sole reasonable princess, implicitly endorsing motherhood as the only logical and competent path for a woman. This simplistic portrayal denies the real multifaceted experience motherhood brings, leaving no space for Fiona, and by extension women, to grapple with the process of reconciling a new identity with their past.
In contrast, A Mercy fully depicts the different aspects of motherhood. One character, an enslaved girl named Sorrow, gives birth and faces both the hardship and beauty that motherhood can bring. Morrison does not hesitate in describing both sides of the experience, with Sorrow’s two pregnancies adding to her mental instability and her healing respectively, interweaving her experience with the historical conditions of slavery. Sorrow’s first child dies immediately after birth, as Sorrow did not receive adequate care due to hiding her pregnancy and a lack of resources. Lina, a Native American girl who was assisting Sorrow, claimed that the child was stillborn and took the body away from her. However, Sorrow insists that “she saw her newborn yawn,” causing her great strife that she abandoned her living child, adding to her distrust of Lina and further destabilizing her state of mind (Morrison 145). When Sorrow gives birth to her second child, she purposefully avoids Lina, instead finding Will and Scully, two white indentured servants who Sorrow had worked with on her owner’s estate, to assist her. In contrast to her first time giving birth, Sorrow’s second child changes her, with the manifestation of her mental instability and trauma, whom Sorrow calls “Twin,” disappearing. Sorrow ends her narrative by telling her child, “[m]y name is Complete,” indicating that she has finally reached fulfillment in her journey (Morrison 158). Motherhood is complicated by Sorrow’s enslavement, adding to the hardship and beauty that comes with it, allowing Morrison to demonstrate that there is no single experience motherhood brings.
With power, A Mercy depicts its varied causes and effects. To Morrison, power forms at the culmination of different identities, mainly race, gender, and legal status. Morrison depicts two types of forced servitude: enslavement and indentured servitude. Enslavement is designated to people of color, with those enslaved including Black, Native American, and mixed race characters. In contrast, all indentured servants are white. Morrison doesn’t stray away from the shared experiences between the two types of oppressed peoples, as in chapter two she describes that prior to the events of the novel, “an army of blacks, native, white, mulattoes—freedmen, slaves and indentured—had waged war against the local gentry,” demonstrating their willingness to fight their common enemy together (Morrison 11). In addition to status and race, gender plays a massive role in power structures. Rebekka, a white woman, is essentially sold to a white man in “search for a healthy, chaste wife” (Morrison 86). Rebekka is fully aware that wives are subjects of their husbands as she describes men beating their wives as “common” but only legal after nine at night and “with cause and not anger” (Morrison 111). By revealing that domestic violence was regulated, Morrison shows how violence against women was institutionalized and systematic in Colonial America.
Though they are all oppressed, Morrison shows how these different oppressed identities are pitted against each other. Willard, a white indentured servant, cannot stand that the Blacksmith, a free Black man, is paid for his work while he is not. Willard’s treatment of the Blacksmith shifts towards hostility as he “refused any request the black man made,” showing that a white person’s class or legal status, especially when it is lower than a Black person’s, exacerbates feelings of racism which can be used to pit low-status white people against Black people. Similarly, Rebekka uses the power that her whiteness grants her to oppress other women. After Rebekka loses her husband, she begins to exercise power over the enslaved women in her household, whom she previously treated well. She makes all three enslaved women and Sorrow’s newborn daughter “sleep either in the cowshed or the storeroom” regardless of the weather (Morrison 186). Rebekka bans Sorrow and her daughter from using the fireplace even in freezing weather, and when Sorrow attempts to enter the house for shelter, Rebekka “slaps her face… many times” (Morrison 186). Rebekka uses her power to abuse the enslaved women, showing the oppression she was capable of all along despite her previously positive relationships. Rebekka abandons any solidarity she may have with the enslaved women due to their similar experiences as women, allowing herself to be pitted against them based on race and legal status. Morrison shows how power results in hierarchies where multiple identities, even within a singular character, come into play.
In contrast, the Shrek films have a basic “fairy tale” monarchy, with a King and Queen. Yet, when the King dies, the Queen does not assume power even though she has the most experience as a ruler after the King. Instead, on his deathbed, the King demands that “this Kingdom needs a new king” (Shrek the Third 17). Shrek, whose only connection to royalty is marriage, is the next heir instead of the King and Queen’s only child, Fiona. Even if not explicitly stated, this reinforces patriarchy, as a man, and not a woman, must be in charge. Additionally, as DiAngelo argues in How Race Shapes the Lives of White People, the characters in the Shrek franchise are racialized because “[the audience is] subliminally aware of the actor behind the character” (167). Because the character Donkey is voiced by Eddie Murphy, a Black man, Donkey’s character is racialized as Black, and falls into stereotypes of Black men as “crude, buck-toothed, leering, and stupid” (167). In Shrek 2, Donkey takes a potion that turns him into his most beautiful self, which transforms him into a white stallion. Compared to his original Donkey form which has a small afro, the stallion version has a “silky blonde mane” (167). Similarly, when Shrek takes the potion, he is transformed into a white man, with a woman flirting with him by asking “are you from Europe?” (Shrek 2 14). With the “beautiful” forms of the characters appearing as white, and in Donkey’s case his “ugly” form being racialized as Black, Shrek 2 implies that white racial features are beautiful, while non-white features are not, playing into already existing prejudices instead of subverting them. Tones of oppression through gender and, more subtly, race are thoroughly present in the Shrek franchise, but when an opportunity arises to subvert harmful ideas surrounding patriarchy and race Shrek 2 and Shrek the Third misses it.
Toni Morrison continuously forces her readers to question what they know about Colonial America, race, gender, and legal status. With most information on Colonial America coming from rich white men, she subverts the most common and pervasive perspective just by asking who tells what story. The Shrek franchise never asks this question, instead it continues to play into storylines long established before the films were written. New points of view can always be added after one telling of a story, but new points of view do not always add new perspectives. A retelling can add information in one aspect, but keep the same information in other areas. Such is the fate of Shrek 2 and Shrek the Third. With a fifth film scheduled to be added to the franchise in 2027, there is still room and time for a truly new story to be told, but it’s up to the writers what new information is added, and it’s up to the audience to see if such new information is accepted as the new truth.
Works Cited
DiAngelo, Robin. “How Race Shapes the Lives of White People." Peter Lang AG, vol. 297, 2016, pp. 157–192. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/45157303. Accessed 17 Nov. 2025.
Shrek (Final script). Directed by Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson, performances by Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, John Lithgow, written by Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio, Joe Stillman, Roger S. H. Schulman, 2001.
Shrek 2 (Final script). Directed by Andrew Adamson, Kelly Asbury, Conrad Vernon, performances by Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, Julie Andrews, Antonio Banderas, John Cleese, Rupert Everett, Jennifer Saunders, written by Andrew Adamson, Joe Stillman, J. David Stem, David N. Weiss, 2004.
Shrek the Third (Final script). Directed by Chris Miller, performances by Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, Antonio Banderas, Justin Timberlake, Eric Idle, written by Jeffrey Price, Peter S. Seaman, Chris Miller, Aron Warner, 2007.
Morrison, Toni. “A Mercy.” Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2009.