This happens every time:
SOMEONE: *talks about how much they like Beauty and the Beast*
ME: Oh, me too!
And then two seconds later I find out they mean the Disney version which is basically just The History of Griselda in the trappings of Beauty and the Beast.
It’s practically impossible to find someone who means the original story by Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve.
by Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve
I thought I’d do another post on things I actually like.
Once I read on wikipedia that The Story of the Beauty and the Beast was commentary on arranged marriages. My exact thoughts upon reading this bit of information was if the editor had read the book themself.
You see, unlike in the bastardized Disney version of this tale, the Beast is actually kind and intelligent and sweet. He’s cursed into his hideous shape by his virtual foster mother with pseudo-incestuous tendencies. When the Beast was — about fourteen? fifteen? — she had the genius idea to marry him, in spite of having practically raised him and being hundreds of years older than him. Obviously the Beast and his mother declined.
So, lady pedophile cursed the Beast.
There’s no imprisonment of the father in this original tale. Beauty’s father is a merchant instead of a dim-witted, hazardous “inventor”. He does get lost and ends up in the Beast’s palace, but the Beast just offers him a place to spend the night and food. It isn’t until the morning when the father tries to pick up a rose for Beauty in the garden that the Beast gets “angry” and strikes up a deal with him to bring his daughter. The catch is that the father mustn’t mince his words in describing how hideous and vile the Beast is and Beauty still has to come willingly because consent was a big thing in classical fairy tales. All of this is part of the curse and the plot to undo the curse, and not just the Beast acting like an aggressive jerk.
He has to act dull-witted because he can’t charm a woman with his looks or wits, as per the curse. However, he is allowed to appear in Beauty’s dreams as he is in reality but he isn’t allowed to tell her it’s him she dreams of. As such there is a bit of a “love triangle” between the Prince in her dreams, the Beast and Beauty.
And see, I liked this. I thought this was really sweet.
Here’s how I see the lesson in this tale: instead of waiting for the prince of your dreams to appear, marry the man who provides for you and is kind to you and there for you, and he might just turn into the prince of your dreams. ♡
Unlike in the bastardized Disney version of this tale which was more like The History of Griselda in the trappings of The Beauty and the Beast.
When I was slogging through the introduction of Charles Perrault’s The Complete Fairy Tales, I was very much worried that I’d hate the tales within in. The introduction was forty-six pages long and the translator felt the need to explain every single tale which more or less amounted to: “blah blah blah, Freud, blah blah blah, sexual symbolism.”
This is just a personal bias but I think people who view everything as sexual are crass and not very intelligent.
Nevertheless, the beginning of The History of Griselda almost had me in tears with laughter. Not really because the tale itself was that funny but because of the sheer historic recurrence of it. I would have loved to quote it, but the quotes would have been too long and the poetic format would’ve made them longer.
The History of Griselda tells of a nameless Prince who is basically a 17th-century version of MGTOW. However, he falls in love with the titular character, Griselda, who is beautiful both soul and body. (Because beauty in fairy tales is more about conduct than looks.)
The Prince, though, has trust issues with women because all women are lying, deceitful hussies, basically, and after the birth of their first child he starts projecting these trust issues onto Griselda for no particular reason. So he decides to test her virtue and loyalty. For fifteen years.
I get what the tale is about; it’s basically an exaltation of (supposed) female virtue and how this virtue would change even the most cruel husband. The author even says it himself in the dedication to “Mademoiselle”:
For as we have consistently been shown
Patience is what their husbands need.
I get it, I just disagree with the method used to show how virtuous Griselda is. You see, at a certain point the Prince sends their daughter away to a cloister because of a deluded and imagined slight, tells Griselda she’s dead, and then fifteen years later pretends he’s going to marry said daughter to still! test his wife, and both his daughter and the daughter’s husband-to-be’s love for each other.
Let me say this: if my dad did something like this, I most certainly would not joyously throw myself at his feet and embrace him upon disclosure.
As virtuous and good the Prince is as a prince, as a husband and father he’s a complete ridiculous twat.
In conclusion: I liked the message in The Story of the Beauty and the Beast better. The one in The History of Griselda is too one-sided and unbalanced. Because what’s his lesson? Not All Women Are Like That. And what’s her lesson? If you’re patient you’ll turn that abusive git around.
“It is much better to have an amiable husband than one whose only recommendation is a handsome person. How many girls are compelled to marry rich brutes, much more brutish than the Beast, who is only one in form, and not in his feelings or his actions?”
— The Story of the Beauty and the Beast
I bought The Complete Fairy Tales by Charles Perrault, and as with all tales of yore it has an in-tro-duc-tion. I was reading it, and I was reading it, and I was reading it, and then I wanted to scream out of sheer frustration because the translator-editor just had to explain every single tale in it.
It was all: “blah blah blah, Freud, blah blah blah, sexual symbolism, blah blah blah”.
I honestly despise introductions like these. It’s as if the translator-editor is saying: “this is how you’re supposed to interpret these stories, you uneducated pleb”. That, or it’s nothing but an incestuous circle jerk with their scholar buddies. Historians do this too; they don’t quote original sources, they quote each other.
It’s like, I can read well enough on my own, thank you. I would kindly appreciate if you let me make up my own mind instead of telling me what the tale is — allegedly — about before I’ve even read the damn thing.
Hiraeth 