Enchanted Action

In Gail Carson Levine’s fairy tale Ella Enchanted , the imprudent fairy Lucinda casts a spell on Ella which causes her to ‘always be obedient’, her behaviour triggered by commands which she literally cannot resist ‘obeying’. Her orders are for reasonably discrete actions such as fetching people items of food but are clearly extendable to complex activities like going on a three-weak horseback trip across the country side. Commands to the do the latter sort of thing leave Ella sufficient space to choose to perform any small acts which aren’t in conflict with her wider instructions, until she’s further commanded otherwise (priority is always given to the earliest command that’s yet to be fulfilled). Here’s how the protagonist describes her own terrible predicament:

Anyone could control me with an order. It had to be a direct command, such as “Put on a shawl,” or “You must go to bed now” […] against an order I was powerless […] I could never hold out for long (9).

The curse envisioned by Levine (who majored in philosophy) transforms a human being into a semi-automaton whose behaviour is easily manipulated through voice-activation. While ultimately powerless, she is nonetheless able to briefly resist any command that doesn’t explicitly request for immediate action. Ella lacks the freedom to do as she wills, insofar as her will is paralysed each time she is ordered to do something...

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