Bridgerton Season 4 is twisting classic fairytale tropes for a modern audience, here's how

Bridgerton Season 4 has given a fresh twist to the regency juggernaut with the touch of a classic fairytale premise, and as cliched as it sounds, the show manages to rephrase the tropes for a more modern, contemporary audience through a few twists.

Following Benedict Bridgerton and Sophie Baek, the story follows the young Bridgerton as he is uninterested in the prospect of marriage but is charmed by a mysterious woman he meets at his mother's ball. It is later revealed that she is a maid who works at Lady Penwood's house, and as Bridgerton seeks her out going around the town, Sophie is fired from her job.

Despite the common narrative points, the show does aim at some differences from the trope it tries to portray so well. Here's how Bridgerton Season 4 is twisting classic fairytale tropes for a more modern audience.

How Bridgerton Season 4 incorporates classic fairytale tropes in a different way

The season draws heavily from the Cinderella framework while adapting Julia Quinn’s novel for a modern audience that is far more interested in power, class, and consent than glass slippers. The masquerade ball becomes the emotional anchor of the season as Benedict’s connection with Sophie mirrors the “love at first sight” fantasy, and in later episodes, it tries to bring in the whole "damsel in distress" trope.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, showrunner Jess Brownell spoke about how they tried to incorporate all these tropes, as she stated,

One of my favorite parts of writing in the romance genre is trying to find ways to honor the tropes while modernizing them and, at times, flipping them on their head. The Cinderella story was all about how we take a classic damsel in distress setup and play with the romance inherent in the trope, while giving more independence and agency to the female character. It was about finding ways for Sophie to be a really strong lead and for Benedict to have to work to earn her.

But unlike traditional fairytales, there is no magical intervention here. No fairy godmother swoops in to change Sophie’s circumstances. Instead, her transformation is temporary, fragile, and paid for with risk.

The show also gives Sophie more agency. She's a strong female lead, not looking for romance and is strong-willed about her circumstances and respectful of her place in society. Her refusal of Benedict's proposal to be his mistress highlights her perspective and unlike fairytale tropes, the show gives her backstory more weight and more space to fill in.

Brownell also spoke about how the writers made sure to pay their respects and give justice to the Cinderella story by making sure they didn't copy it word by word, as she added,

We did talk about that in the [writers] room, and we rewatched the Disney movie. We watched Ever After, and we were finding ways to make sure that we were differentiating so that it didn’t feel like we were ripping off what had already been done.

The result is a story that is soft but strong, follows a trope but also creates its own, and gives its own spin to an iconic story that has survived many decades, while also making sure to keep the audience guessing about what turn the relationship will now take.

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Bridgerton Season 4 is streaming on Netflix.

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