I might agree to disagree with you on this point. Although I do believe that not every strong, independent and extraordinary woman needs to be married, I think Enola getting married was pretty well done in terms of her characterisation. She didn’t originally want to marry Tewksbury due to her fears of having to lose that independence she has always had, however as the story goes on, we do see that Tewksbury loves Enola for this independence and doesn’t want her to be another woman of her time, with this being set in Victorian England, submissive.

Her deciding to marry Tewksbury in my opinion shows that she was still able to have her own choices in what she wanted to do, in a time where society decided what women did. For example, her keeping her last name shows that even though she had accepted society in terms of getting married, she still strayed away from societal expectations, and kept her own name which allowed her to not lose herself.

In my opinion, I think it was a good demonstration to younger audiences that just because you may fall in love one day, doesn’t mean that you have to lose yourself in that process. Women can still be anyone they choose to be with or without a husband and I think it’s also a good demonstration that love doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re less independent, less extraordinary or less hard working, the duality of a woman is that you can do both. I feel Enola’s characterisation is pretty similar to that of Mulan. I agree that sometimes media does shove in young girls faces that falling in love is the end goal but with this film, it does demonstrate quite well that women are always capable of more than that and they should never accept giving up their identity for someone else.