The BEAUTY & THE BEAST (A NaNoWriMo Entry For 2008)

Beauty and the Beast, Story Origins 

Beauty and the Beast Story

The story of Beauty and the Beast has been around for centuries in both written and oral form, and more recently in film and video. Many experts trace similarities back to the stories of Cupid and Psyche, Oedipus and Apuleius' The Golden Ass of the second century A.D.

The tale of Beauty and the Beast was first collected in Gianfranceso Straparola's Le piacevolo notti (The Nights of Straparola) 1550-53. The earliest French version is an ancient Basque tale where the father was a king and the beast a serpent. Charles Perrault popularized the fairy tale with his collection Contes de ma mere l'oye (Tales of Mother Goose) in 1697. The 17th century Pentamerone is also said to include similar tales.

The first truly similar tale to the one we know today was published in 1740 by Madame Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Gallon de Villeneuve as part of a collection of stories La jeune amériquaine, et les contes marins (told by an old woman during a long sea voyage). Mme. de Villeneuve wrote fairy tale romances drawn from earlier literature and folk tales for the entertainment of her salon friends.

Almost half of the Villeneuve story revolves around warring fairies and the lengthy history of the parentage of both Beauty and the Prince. Beauty is one of 12 children, her stepfather is a merchant, her real father being the King of the Happy Isles. The Queen of the Happy Isles is both Beauty's mother and the Dream Fairy Sister. Villeneuve also made various digs at the many enforced marriages that women had to submit to, and her Beauty ponders that many women are made to marry men far more beastly than her Beast. The story was 362 pages long.

French aristocrat Madame Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont (1711 - 1780) emigrated to England in 1745 where she established herself as a tutor and writer of books on education and morals. She took Mme. de Villeneuve's tale and shortened it, publishing it in 1756 as part of a collection entitled Magasin des enfants. Although taking all the key elements from the Mme. de Villeneuve story, Mme. de Beaumont omits some dream sequences and the fact that in the original the transformation to handsome prince takes place after the wedding night. Intended as a lesson for her students, some of the subversive edges were polished off the story. It is pretty well the version we consider traditional today. Mme. Le Prince de Beaumont's story was translated into English as The Young Misses Magazine, Containing Dialogues between a Governess and Several Young Ladies of Quality, Her Scholars (1757).

The French tradition of the time was to unfold stories in a more everyday situation, with a tendency to substitute dramatic development founded on human emotions in place of actions based on magic forces. They eliminated whatever was bloody or cruel and relied on a story with direct action and without accessory actions, a style sober and unadorned. French storytellers subjected traditional stories to their own classical, logical, even rational taste. Perrault began this trend away from the traditional folk manner, and the ladies who followed him - Mlle. Lhéritier, Mme. d'Aulnoy and Mme. Le Prince de Beaumont - went even further. The lowliest of people in their tales are gentlemen, shepherds are princes in disguise, and the stories are peopled by the upper levels of the court. These influences over the story explain some of the differences we find between today's Beauty and the Beast rooted in these French tales and more traditional versions.

Since its initial publishing the story has been revised many times. In 1756 the Comptesse de Genlis produced a play on the theme; in 1786 Mme. de Villeneuve reprinted her story as part of Le Cabinet des Fées et autres contes merveilleux.

The nineteenth century saw a proliferation of retellings in France, England and America. 68 different printed editions are listed in the Index to Fairy Tales. Notable versions include the 1811 poem by Charles Lamb, an 1841 'grand, romantic, operatic, melodramatic fairy extravaganza in 2 acts' by J.R. Planchée which premiered April 12, 1811 at the Covent Garden Theatre with Mme. Vestris as Beauty, Walter Crane's picture book in 1875, and Eleanor Vere Boyle's illustrated novella of 1875.

Moving into this century we have been treated to the landmark film of Jean Cocteau (La Belle at la Bete), Walt Disney Studio's cartoon adaptation and a science fiction Beauty by Tanith Lee. A fuller listing follows later.

The story of Beauty and the Beast appears in many other cultures in different forms. Aarne-Thompson lists 179 tales from different countries with a similar theme to Beauty and the Beast. There are usually three daughters, the youngest being the most kind and pure, her sisters displaying some of the undesirable traits of humankind. Beauty often has no name but is referred to as the youngest daughter. (For purposes of identification I shall use "Beauty" when referring to the heroine of the story.) There never seems to be a mother, thus omitting the possible conflicts a mother would have allowing her daughter to leave to live with a monster and allowing a closer relationship with the father who is, in most cases, wealthy. Although the Beast takes on many guises (serpent, wolf, even pig) he is never appealing in appearance but is rich and powerful. Hidden powers seem to guide the humans. At one point the Beauty is separated from her Beast and at that time some ill befalls him. Beauty's remorse, sometimes as simple as shedding a tear and sometimes as onerous a penance as going to the end of the earth, saves the Beast and his transformation to handsome man is achieved.

Much psychological hay has been made of the story of Beauty and the Beast; the men are all passive, the older women are less sympathetic, the youngest one pure and virginal and even the desired rose has come in for its share of analysis. To the Greeks and Romans the rose was a symbol of pleasure associated with extravagance and luxuriousness. It is considered the flower of romance that 'blushes with the warmth of worldly delights.' Is the father dying in a literal sense or is he dying for the love of his Beauty who is now devoted to the Beast?

As stories swap back and forth, new elements are introduced and exchanged. Folklorists have developed a system for categorizing stories, (e.g. the number 425A has been assigned to tale of the type "The Monster or Animal as Bridegroom"). Whatever the varying versions or systematic cataloging, the basic values that the stories convey are similar. The story and its questions regarding human values run deeper than the simple facts and details of the tale and remain timeless. We all have the potential to be beautiful or beastly; how do we overcome our 'monsters'?

Beauty and the Beast, Variations on the theme.

Some years before his death, the Russian writer Sergei Aksakov (1791 - 1859) included The Scarlet Flower in his Tales of Pelagea the Housekeeper. Beauty is nameless and the Beast is described thus: "His arms were crooked, his hands were the claws of a wild beast, his legs were those of a horse, he had two large humps like those of a camel in front and behind, and he was covered with hair from head to foot. A boar's fangs protruded from his mouth, his nose was hooked like the beak of the golden eagle, and his eyes were those of an owl."

Beauty's time at the castle is luxurious and comfortable, and the Beast is always a gentleman to her. She returns only to visit her sick father but the sisters impede "Beauty's" return to her Beast by setting the clocks back. Her words "Arise my dearest friend. I love you as I would my betrothed!" are enough to raise the Beast from the dead and transform him into a prince of ample wealth. As a child, he had been stolen by a sorceress who sought revenge on his father by transforming him into a Beast.

Many of the Russian ballets are based on this version of the story.

Also from Russia, The Enchanted Tsarevitch which was included in a collection of folk tales by Aleksander Nikolaevich Afanas'ev between 1855 and 1864. The father does not fall upon hard times but in recompense for picking the exotic flower he agrees to send the Beast the first thing he sees on arriving home, which turns out to be his youngest daughter. The Beast is a three headed, winged snake for whom Beauty eventually feels compassion. Her visit home is extended by her greedy sisters so that on her return the snake is almost dead. Upon kissing him he turns into a "good youth." There are many other Russian folk tales of enchanted men saved by women and of women freed by men such as The Snake Princess and Maria Morevna.

A snake is also the Beast in the Chinese The Fairy Serpent where the father unwittingly steals a few flowers for his daughters. The father is only released when he promises that one of his three daughters will return to marry the serpent. The youngest daughter is the one who eventually is selfless enough to go to the serpent and eventually grows to like him despite his appearance. Leaving for a few hours she returns to find the serpent dying of thirst; plunging him into water to save his life she is amazed at his transformation into a strong and handsome young man. Men also appear in Chinese folklore enchanted as frogs and young women as plants.

In the Turkish The Princess and the Pig, the father is a padishah (king) who manages to find the worldly goods for the elder sisters but fails to find a gift for his youngest daughter, in this case fruit. However, he meets the Beast, a pig, when his carriage is stuck in mud. The pig is the only one able to set him loose, but only after extracting the promise that he be given the padishah's youngest daughter as his bride. Despite trying to trick the pig into accepting another, he eventually takes away the youngest daughter, who in her goodness accepts the lowly circumstances she is forced into. During her sleep her surroundings are transformed into incredible luxury and the pig into a handsome young man.

A Bunch of Laurel Blooms for a Present, from Appalachia, finds the father the debtor of a witch from whom he has taken some laurel blooms for his youngest daughter. It is he who must stay with the witch, but when the youngest daughter hears this she rushes off to take his place. The witch installs her in a house with a large ugly toad-frog whom she learns to love. One night she awakes to see a handsome young man lying next to her with an old warty toad skin hanging on the bed post. This she takes downstairs and burns in the fire. The next morning the young man is still with her and he thanks her for saving him from the witch's spell. They live happily ever after and the other sisters are jealous. There are similar versions of this story such as the Irish The Three Daughters of King O'Hara where our heroine is punished for impatience in destroying her Beast's disguise and has to endure a long search to find him again.

The father in The Small Tooth Dog from England is a merchant who is attacked by thieves and whose life is saved by a dog. In return the dog asks for the merchant's only daughter. The daughter goes with the dog readily enough, but cannot bring herself to be happy with him. In return for being allowed to visit her home, she eventually is able to call the dog "Sweet-as-a-honeycomb." This statement in front of her father is enough to transform the dog into the most handsome of young men.

This nineteenth century folk tale was collected and published in 1895.

The Beauty in the Indonesian The Lizard Husband has six other sisters who in turn are rude and abusive to the mother of a lizard who requests that they consider her son for marriage. It is the youngest, Kapapitoe, who does take the lizard as a husband, but the other sisters heap abuse upon them both. Eventually the lizard and his wife work together to build their own farm and during the process the lizard transforms himself into a handsome man when bathing in the river. It takes his wife some time to accept this change and the sisters, in jealousy, try to steal him away from her. During the night a castle arises in which Kapapitoe and her husband live happily ever after protected from the sisters.

From Japan comes The Monkey Son-in Law. The father is indebted to the monkey for giving him water for his crops. In return one of his three daughters must go and live with the monkey. The youngest is the one who eventually complies. After a year she tricks the monkey into falling into the river to be carried away. She returns home to a thankful father but two rude sisters who are transformed into rats for their disloyalty to their father.

There are other examples that end tragically where the Beauty forsakes her Beast, e.g. the Lithuanian Egle, Queen of Snakes and the French The Ram.