ey yawn repeatedly, and muster up the politeness to greet their guests only with great effort. Then the Griswald family is announced, and the royals become visibly excited – "He came!" exclaims Diana. Clark (Mr. Griswald) and Ellen enter, greeting the royals as they would old friends, with hugs and kisses and hearty handshakes. Diana flirtatiously asks Clark for the first dance, but he refuses, saying "The only princess in my life is my wife. She gets the first dance," and leads his beaming wife off screen. Diana begins to run after him but knowing she has already lost him, stops in dismay.
             At first glance Ellen's fantasy seems utopian, an innocent product of the fairy tales told to little girls, complete with princes and princesses and a royal ball. However, the fairy-tale luster of her fantasy is driven by insecurities inherent in the ideological code of gender roles implicit in the text, specifically woman-as-passive-object and man-as-agent-of-action. Although this is Ellen's fantasy, she says little in it and does even less; the primary actor in her fantasy is her husband, Clark. Ellen's happiness in her fantasy depends on her being an object of desire, not an agent of action. And in order for her to feel truly desired, she must be preferred over any other rivals, in this case Princess Diana. While the outcome of Ellen's fantasy is utopian, the tension driving her fantasy is a fear that her husband will find potential European rivals more desirable. Moreover, Ellen's lack of action in her own fantasy implies that she feels powerless to affect her husband's choice; in other words, once a man has made a decision, the woman must abide by it. Just as Diana had no recourse after Clark's refusal, the unspoken fear implicit in Ellen's fantasy is that Ellen would similarly have no recourse had her husband chosen differently. So while this finality makes her victory all the sweeter in her fa...