The focal point of the Beauty and the Beast story is
always love, whether it be romantic or platonic, right or wrong, requited or
not. Love, in all its forms, moves and shapes each character, both breaking
them and putting them back together. When loving relationships take a turn in
the wrong direction, the beast loses himself, his humanity, everything he once
was. Clearly, he cannot be dependent on another relationship to return him to
all his former glory, but neither can he do it alone. Humans are not solitary
creatures, and it is the exile the curse demands, as much as the betrayal that
causes it, which strips away the beast’s humanity. One cannot be a person when
one has no other people to lean on. G. K. Chesterton is right in saying the
great lesson of “Beauty and the Beast” is “that a thing must be loved before it
is lovable” (3). Love is perhaps the most powerful force on earth, and this
folktale type has demonstrated, for hundreds of years, how humans are shaped
and defined by its use and abuse. To be a person, one must have love.
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