The Beauty and the Beast, as we all know, is the story of a beautiful woman who learns to love an ugly beast, only to discover that he, too, was beautiful all along. Or wait... is it?
Previously, my knowledge of the original story of The Beauty and the Beast came from the fairy-tale series of Illustrated Classics, which were usually pretty accurate, though they sometimes softened the edges of the adapted tales. The Beauty and the Beast edition was, in the Swedish translation I read as a child, called Lena and the Lion. As the Beast was depicted as a lion, and I was a cat-loving kid not too fussed about inter-species relationships, I was dissatisfied with him turning into a prince in the end - wasn't a dashing lion a much better bet than just another run-of-the-mill fairy-tale prince? Some of that childish disappointment with the prince ending, I admit, still lingers. I can see the rationale of the Beast turning into a man - but did it have to be a prince?
From the Illustrated Classic, I learned of some elements of the classic story which didn't make it to the animated Disney film, such as Beauty actually being the daughter of a ruined merchant, the merchant getting into trouble because he picked a rose from the Beast's garden, Beauty's jealous sisters etc. But the story still seemed very much like a romance. Lena, ultimately, loved her lion.
As I set out to finally read the original The Beauty and the Beast, written by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve in 1740, I was therefore shocked to discover how unromantic the central relationship was. The condition for the Beast's curse to be broken is not that a girl should love him (and he her in return) as in the Disney film, but that she should agree to marry him. As Mr Gradgrind would tell you, those are two very different things. Beauty (which is actually a nickname, not a proper name - you can see why adaptations have simplified matters and called her Belle=beauty in the original French) never falls in love with the Beast in the original version. In fact, she loves the prince he will become, who visits her in her dreams, all along, and doesn't twig that her dream lover and the Beast are one and the same. She finally agrees to marry the Beast because she pities him, feels under an obligation to him and appreciates his good nature. When she asks her dream prince whether this is the right step to take and he enthusiastically encourages her, she is most seriously peeved.
Another change compared to modern adaptations of the tale, which maybe bothers me more than many others, is that part of the Beast's curse is to appear not only ugly but stupid. In the course of their acquaintance, he only puts the same questions to Beauty each evening (how her day has been etc.), never showing any wit or superior understanding. It's not a question, then, of Beauty being beguiled by his personality. Like, one suspects, many other girls of her day, Beauty is faced with the prospect of marrying a suitor she doesn't care for because he is kind, and he is rich.
The Villeneuve version of The Beauty and the Beast is a good read in many ways. There are pretty details about the Enchanted Castle (where Beauty and Beast are served by genii in disguise - the cursed servants appear to be a Disney invention), and it's intriguing to see how the prince's gambit of visiting Beauty in her dreams threatens to work against himself as he becomes his own rival. The later part of the story should be of interest to fantasy aficionados, as it contains a great deal of intricate fairy lore. Far from being cursed because he needed to be taught a lesson, the hapless prince got into trouble because he turned down a vindictive fairy who wanted to marry him. A good fairy then tries to help him as best she can, though she can't break the curse directly. The good fairy/bad fairy set-up makes sense of the role of the Enchantress in the Disney films, who always seemed somewhat of a split personality. Anyway, there's a lot of back story involving these fairies and others and rules they have to follow, not all of which come into play in the story. What we see, in a word, is some "world building". Beauty turns out to be the daughter of a king and yet another fairy, and it's all very complicated. Though all this isn't really necessary for the central plot, the fairy shenanigans in themselves are interesting enough.
Nevertheless, the Beauty/Beast relationship being so very different from what I was used to gave me a nasty jolt. How could Lena and the Lion get its source material so very wrong? The answer is that it didn't, but that the source material was not really Villeneuve's tale but a simplified adaption of it written by another 18th-century lady, Jeanne Marie Le Prince de Beaumont. This is much closer to the story most of us are familiar with. Beauty does care for the Beast in the end, and there is no muddying of the waters with dream visions. The bad fairy and good fairy appear, but their motives aren't gone into, and the whole back story of Beauty being a princess with fairy blood is dropped. Nevertheless, shadows of the problems with the original (problems to me, at least) remain. The Beast is allowed to show plain common sense, but his wit is still hampered by the curse. The moral is that neither beauty nor wit makes for a happy marriage, but a good heart. That's all very well, but how happy would Beauty and Beast's marriage have been in the long run if he hadn't turned back into a prince?
I'll have to admit it: for my money, the animated Disney film - and the story it tells, which has then inspired other adaptations - is better than its source material. Though I'm still not a fan of the live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast, I can better understand now why it leaned so heavily on the animated version instead of taking a fresh look at the original tales. The re-focusing of the Beauty/Beast relationship from marriage of convenience to love match brings its own problems, but they are much more fun to explore. Modern Beasts (in the Disney films and in Once Upon A Time) are allowed to be interesting and far from foolish, but this development has its own price: the more personality the Beast has, the less inclined he is to mollycoddle Belle or to fall in love with her at first sight just because she's beautiful. We seem to have come full circle, from the dumb sweetie Beast of the original to Beasts who are intelligent but not noticeably sweet-natured (though there is ultimately Good In Them). Both parties have to adapt for the romance to work.
Villeneuve and Beaumont may point out that while you can question the wisdom of telling girls they will be happy with someone they consider ugly and stupid as long as he has a good heart, it is a no less dangerous message to claim that you can transform a beastly man with the strength of your love. I think they'd be particularly horrified, presupposing that they somehow gained non-18th-century knowledge of the Brothers Grimm tales, by the Once Upon A Time crossover. But to me, a spot of Grimm is exactly what this fairy tale needs.
