A "tale as old as time"
The earliest versions of "Beauty and the Beast" date back to the Ancient Greeks with their story of Cupid and Psyche. We see here jealous sisters, a "monstrous" husband, and trials set for our heroine.
In this illustration from Warwick Goble, we see the Beast in one of his many forms: the boar. Villeneuve leaves it up to the imagination with the description although he is supposed to have an elephant's trunk.
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Portrayals of the Beast change over time as different animals are chosen to represent different ideas.
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In the classic Disney movie, one relation to the Beast may be the Minotaur. While a monster, we know that the Minotaur is more than simply a monster, but the son of King Minos and the cursed Pasiphae.
Villeneuve's The Story of Beauty and the Beast
1740
Leprince de Beaumont's "Beauty and the Beast"
1757
The Author:
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Leprince was a governess who published her work in what would be translated as The Young Misses' Magazine.
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Leprince de Beaumont was one of the first to dedicate fairy tale retellings to children in France. She focused her stories on morals and the education of children.
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However, newer scholarship points to varying degrees of morality in her own life. From the time of an earlier forbidden marriage to her moral story of Beauty and the Beast, much of what we know about the author is unclear.
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The Story
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Leprince de Beaumont famously takes Villeneuve's long narrative and condenses it to an approachable few pages. In it, she excludes backstory of the fairy world as well as the duality of the Beast.
This version is also notably less erotic, as predicted from the target audience.
Beauty is still the selfless heroine, yet she learns to fall only for the personality of the Beast and is not guided as far by the Beast's fairy.
Beast, on the other hand, loses his fully human form until the end of the novel. Yet, Beauty, in this version, accepts him more for his personality and out of pure love of just the Beastly side than in Villeneuve's version.
This is the version that inspires Disney's adaptations.
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Read this version in
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Zipes, Jack, translator. Beauties, Beasts and Enchantment: Classic French Fairy Tales. New American Library Books, 1989.
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A Quote From Leprince de Beaumont's "Beauty and the Beast"
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When Beast begins to say that "'...besides being ugly, I;m not intelligent at all. I know quite well that I'm just a beast.'"
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Beauty replies that "'A stupid person doesn't realize that he lacks intelligence.'"
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Beauty in many versions of the tale has the unique ability to be honest and truly know her love. Her story is the story of a love that grows rather than a love that is gifted at the end of a tale.
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Further Reading on Author and Tale:
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Biancardi, Elisa. "Jeanne-Marie Leprince (or Le Prince) de Beaumont." The Teller's Tale: Lives of the Classic Fairy Tale Writers, edited by Sophie Raynard, SUNY Press, 2012.
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Gilbert, Sophie. “The Dark Morality of Fairy-Tale Animal Brides.” The Atlantic, 31 Mar. 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/03/marrying-a-monster-the-romantic-anxieties-of-fairy-tales/521319/.
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Griswold, Jerry. The Meaning of Beauty & The Beast: a Handbook. Broadview Press, 2004.
RadFemFatale. “Beauty and the Beast: A Tale of Child Marriage.” Medium, 1 Apr. 2017, https://medium.com/@radfemfatale/beauty-and-the-beast-a-tale-of-child-marriage-bbbf5102eeea.
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Zipes, Jack, translator. Beauties, Beasts and Enchantment: Classic French Fairy Tales. New American Library Books, 1989.
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Key moments and ideas:
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- Instead of a rose and her father putting her in the arms of the Beast, it's her own hatred that causes the tale to unfold. Later on she even picks her own rose.
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- We also think deeply on how jealousy plays a role in many variations of the tale and how much it means for Beauty to leave on her own accord vs against her will, as in this retelling her home eventually becomes the home of the Beast.
Modern Retellings:
Modern retellings tend to further the goals of feminism through increased agency and initiative in Beauty.
In some cases, that eradicates the role of men in giving her away, a common reason why many older versions are considered to be warnings to reluctant brides.
In other cases, the role of beauty and moral perfection in relation to female characters is reevaluated. In the synopsis of Robin McKinley's Beauty, Beauty is characterized as "lacking" just that, but making up for it in courage.
In Sarah J. Maas' love and sex filled retelling, her Beauty (by name of Feyre) exhibits selflessness, but is characterized to have "ice in her heart" for Faeries, the same thing her Beast is. We are then taken along to explore the duality between otherness/foreignness in addition to the masking of one's physical appearance as they eventually learn to love despite both.
Published in 1978, McKinley's retelling has inspired thousands, including Sarah J. Maas.
Questions to consider:
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- How do attributes of education (or lack thereof) play into the tale?
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- What does it mean for Beauty to be sexually attracted to the Beast or the human within the Beast?
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- In what way has this tale been adapted or reverted back to Cupid and Psyche for the Beast to be more and more human?
Variations
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Like many fairy tales, there are a plethora of different paths this tale of animal bride groom can take....
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"The Pig King" from Straparola
"The Woman who Married a Snake" found in the Panchatantra
"The Frog Prince" from Brothers Grimm
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are just a few examples.
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