Disney Beauty and the Beast: Alternate Ending Options

 

(In preparation for the release of my Beauty and the Beast retelling, To Be Loved, I will be re-sharing old Beauty and the Beast posts. So if this post seems familiar to you, you've probably read it before.)

Okay, I'm still on a Beauty and the Beast kick. Still on Disney's Beauty and the Beast, even.

So it's very common, in enchanted bridegrooms stories, for the Beast to release the Beauty to return to her family. This is a very important step in the story; the Beauty ceases to be a hostage, allowing for the development of a relationship that isn't, you know, deeply unhealthy.

Typically, the deal between Beauty and Beast is that she'll go home and visit her family for a set amount of time, then return to him. It could be argued that this isn't really a setting-free, since she's supposed to return, and presumably he could force the issue. But it doesn't seem the Beauty has any fear that he'll do so; she generally stays over the agreed-upon time, ultimately returning because she feels bad, not because she's afraid of repercussions.

The original text of Beauty and the Beast differs from most enchanted bridegroom stories in that the Beast tells Beauty if she doesn't come back, he's gonna die. Which, on the one hand, is one heck of a guilt trip. On the other, she knows he's not going to come collect her if she decides to just stay home. Of course, she does go back, though she's almost too late.

The Disney version differs in that Belle doesn't go home for a temporary visit because she's homesick; he releases her permanently because her father is physically sick.

Which, you know, good job, Beast! Full hostage release is a great move, as far as being a decent person goes. But I feel like, in this particular situation, we could have avoided separating Belle and the Beast at all, if we didn't have to stick to The Plot, established by hundreds of previous enchanted bridegroom stories.

Last time Belle went out into the woods alone, she almost got eaten by wolves. Is it really a good idea to send her out alone on a winter night, again?

Granted, it may also not be a good idea for a monster who recently kidnapped him to participate in the rescue of a sickly old man lost in the woods, but, like, is the Beast really going to think about that? When presented with Situation: My Girlfriend's Dad is Lost in the Woods, will he think "I should stay here, because my presence will be inherently traumatic?" Or will he think "What a great opportunity to help my girlfriend!"?

So. I propose 3 alternate scenarios:

1. We learn Maurice is lost in the woods. Belle needs to go rescue him. Beast accompanies her, for reasons of Safety from Wolves. Obviously the Beast can't go into town, so we bring Maurice back to the palace, where Belle expresses her love. Or maybe she expresses it when they find Maurice, possibly after the Beast fights off some more wolves.

2. Belle goes out alone to find Maurice. Since they're friends now, she's closer to the palace than the village when she finds him, and the palace has all this cool stuff that will probably result in better medical care, she takes Maurice back to the Beast for recuperation. The Beast, emboldened by her willingness to trust him with her father, confesses his love, and she reciprocates.

3. Look, obviously they were in love before she left and came back, they just didn't say it. As soon as he set her free, I'm pretty sure all her doubts about the relationship evaporated. So how about a confession on the way out? Like, "Bye, love you, see you when Dad's better."

Option 3 leaves us with three follow-up options:

1. Beast transforms immediately. This is unexpected, but it's a problem for later. Maurice needs us!

2. She says she loves him, then immediately books it out of there to find her dad. Misses the transformation sequence. Heads back to the palace—maybe an hour later with a sick Maurice, maybe a week later after he's recuperated—to find a completely different palace in its place. Where is her boyfriend? Where are her friends? Where is the building? What has happened? She seemed to find the whole thing a little difficult to believe when she watched the transformation happen; how much harder is it going to be if it all went down off screen?

3. She immediately books it, brings Maurice home, and has the confrontation with Gaston like in the movie. She attempts to show him the Beast. Mirror shows some random dude instead. This is probably going to result in Belle and Maurice both being institutionalized. Everyone at the palace is worried sick—she loves the Beast, she broke the spell, so why hasn't she come back? A few days, sure. She's got a sick dad to take care of. But it's been a couple weeks. The Beast doesn't have the mirror anymore; he can't check on her. What if she never found her dad? What if she never made it out of the woods? What if the wolves got her? What if she's dead? They're going to have to go into town, find out about the asylum, and launch a rescue mission.

And what about Gaston, and the rest of the people in town? Sure, Belle and Maurice were wrong about the Beast, but Belle did still have a magic mirror. And the magic mirror did show a hot guy that Belle seems into, even if she thinks he's a hideous monster for some reason. Is Gaston going to go confront this guy who stole his crush, and clearly took advantage of her shaky sanity? Is everyone going to head out to the palace just to learn more about the magic mirror? Is this whole thing going to end with an attempt to institutionalize the entire palace? Is everyone going to realize Belle was telling the truth, and some magic went down? Are all the other girls going to lose interest in Gaston, now that there's a second hot guy around? One that's actually nice, and also magical, and also not eating way more than his fair share of the town's eggs? Like, sure, the Beast is taken, but he's still proof there are better options than Gaston.

Was there any point at all to this thousand word post? No. But I had fun speculating.

 

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Trauma and the Inciting Incident in BATB and TBL

 

When I'm writing retellings, I generally end up sticking pretty close to the source material. I'll make a few small changes here and there, but the majority of what I'm usually doing is either filling in the gaps, or figuring out what comes next. 

To Be Loved is a little different; I chose to deviate majorly from the inciting incident. A quick recap: Prince turned into Beast for turning down foster mom's advances, Beauty's father steals Beast's flowers, Beast compels Beauty to come live with him to save her father's life, generally Beast proposes to Beauty nightly, eventually he lets her go, and she chooses to come back.

So we've got this whole thing here, with, like, cycles of abuse, with the Beast locking Beauty away and trying to make her love him, which is alarmingly similar to what the fairy tried to do to him, and I have another post in this series about Modelling Healthy Relationships—not sure yet if it'll be posted before or after this—and I very much doubt the Beast is deliberately continuing the cycle, especially since his options are fairly limited due to the terms of the spell. And then additionally there's the thing where Beauty's father basically gave her to him (with her permission), which is something he has the authority to do, so whether this really counts as "locking her away" in the cultural context is debatable. Additionally, there are complications in the form of Meddling Fairies, which basically means that he’s not exactly consensually perpetuating the cycle, and that’s another post that’s coming up.

The point is, since the creepy fairy has been dropped from modern adaptations of the story, we've never really gotten to see a story that addresses the whole cycle of abuse thing. And that's something that I'd like to get into more at some point. But for now, I've chosen to drop that entire section of the story entirely, to make room for another thing that we don't get to see addressed: the trauma.

The Beast had a loved and trusted guardian try to force a marriage, and then turn him into a monster when it didn't work. This is the aspect of the original novel that I've been the most hung up on since I found out about it. That is a whole boatload of trauma, and I'm not sure it makes sense for the Beast—or at least for my version of the Beast—to be actively and desperately seeking out a romantic relationship in the aftermath, especially as there's no time limit for curse breaking in my story or the source material. 

So my Beast doesn't seek out a girl to come live with him, doesn't manufacture a scenario where a girl needs to come live with him, and certainly doesn't propose on a daily basis.

(Another big part of the reason I've dropped the traditional meeting and the proposals, as well as the loving but distant mother and the dream prince—two other things that are covered elsewhere in this blog series—is that I've already done them. Granted, you haven't seen them, but I've done them. Not all the books a writer writes ever see the light of day, especially when she starts writing them at fifteen. Maybe I'll rework that story someday, but it's at the very bottom of my to do list. And it's a very long list.)

 

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A Monster, A Child

 

(In preparation for the release of my Beauty and the Beast retelling, To Be Loved, I will be re-sharing old Beauty and the Beast posts. So if this post seems familiar to you, you've probably read it before.)

I know I’ve already written extensively on this subject (on a related note, stay tuned for next week), but last week I went to see Disney’s Beauty and the Beast at the Chanhassen Dinner Theatre, and, well. Here we are again.

The thing about the live action musical, first of all, is that it drives me nuts. I hate it. There’s like three new songs. The Beast is illiterate. Like, what? I know the matter of his age at transformation time is shrouded in continuity errors, but the most reasonable choice is that he was eleven.  Who doesn’t teach an eleven year old to read? Especially a royal eleven year old? This is Beauty and the Beast, people, not The Whipping Boy.

So I was, while mostly enjoying the experience immensely, stuck through the entire first half on that one little detail. Why couldn’t he read? He was eleven. He was eleven.

He was eleven.

He was eleven, in a gigantic palace, and he was the only one around to answer the door. Where were his parents? Where are his parents now? Why didn’t they teach him to read? Why didn’t they teach him to be kind to strangers?

He was eleven, and he was horribly cursed for being rude. Has this fairy never heard of stranger danger? Of course he wasn’t going to let her in. Newsflash: kids are rude. They’re also sensible, at least the ones not named Snow White. (Seriously, kid? The first two creepy old ladies you invited in when you were home alone tried to kill you, but surely the third is a nice one. I mean, come on. Really?)

When a creepy looking old lady knocks on the door, an eleven year old boy, home alone, is probably not going to want her to stick around. And who could blame him? He’s a child.

So now, having long since come to the conclusion that the fairy is the bad guy in the original novel, I’m beginning to have serious doubts about her in Disney, too. Fairy raises little boy, fairy wants to marry little boy, little boy says no. Bam! Little boy is a monster now. Fairy approaches little boy, late at night, in a creepy disguise. Little boy does not react with kindness and maturity. Bam! Little boy is a monster now. I’m noticing a pattern, and it has nothing to do with him, and everything to do with her. (And with his mom, because seriously, lady? You leave your child with a pervy old fairy for years so you can fight a war. You try to prevent him from marrying the girl who saved him. You don't teach him to read. You are not around when he is terrified and newly monstrous. Get your act together. Your son needs you.)

Even in the versions where they try to make the Beast look like he deserved it, we’re still seeing him punished, if not for nothing at all, then at least in a manner that is nowhere near proportionate to his crimes. And the Beast is a victim. And the Beast is a child. Again, and again, and again.

Never trust the fairies.

P.S. The second half of the play was pretty much the most incredible thing ever, and the Beast was awkward and adorable and displayed traits consistent with someone who had been neglected and abused since childhood and was still very young, and long story short I kind of wanted to marry him, and also got glared at by lots of people when I couldn’t contain my squealing.

 

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You Were a Monster

 

(In preparation for the release of my Beauty and the Beast retelling, To Be Loved, I will be re-sharing old Beauty and the Beast posts. So if this post seems familiar to you, you've probably read it before.)

You were a monster. Maybe you'd been a monster for six weeks, but probably it was a year, or ten years, or two hundred years. Maybe you'd been a monster since you were born, or since you were a small child. Is it a relief, to be human again? Or is it shocking and unsettling? Do you find yourself always cold and miserable without your fur? Are you now in possession of too many or too few limbs? Have you lost the ability to fly? Has your vision or hearing or sense of smell changed? Are you glad to be human, or do you miss your old form? Is the ending of Beauty and the Beast some messed up body horror from the perspective of the beast?

You used to be a monster. The girl said she loved you, and you know she must have meant it, or the spell wouldn't have broken. But you still wonder. Does she love you? Does she really love you? Because she doesn't look at you the same. Maybe she was used to your old shape, and now that you're different she's being a little weird about it. Or maybe she said she loved you, before, but she's much more into you now that you're a hot dude. And either way, maybe it hurts a little. Because you couldn't help transforming, in either direction. And how you look changes how people react to you. You know that. You do. But this—this is Her. And you wonder.

Would she have broken the spell, if she'd known, or would she rather have kept you the way you were? Would she have avoided saying "I love you," just to keep you in the shape she loved? Will she stay, now that you're yourself, again? Does she still like you? Is she only here because she feels bad?

You wonder. You wonder. She said she loved you, but you can tell she loves you more, now that the spell is broken. So did she really love you? Or did she find out about the spell somehow? Was she in love with ugly, enchanted you, or in love with the idea of the handsome prince she knew you'd become? It's stupid, you tell yourself. She's with you now. She loves you now. But you're not used to being a handsome prince anymore. And the part of you that still feels like a monster, that part of you aches, because she said she loved you, but she obviously loves this handsome prince so much more. The fact that the handsome prince is also you doesn't make the rejection hurt any less.

You were a monster. You've been a monster for so long. You've been alone for so long. And now you're a handsome prince, and there are people everywhere. You wear silks, and you have responsibilities, and you don't know how to do this anymore. People talk, and talk, and talk, and your ears ache. They ask you about politics, and taxes, and parties, and you don't know. You've been the monster haunting the eastern estate since you were twelve; no one taught you about these things.

You're out on the lawn, your wife at your side, speaking with some foreign dignitary, and a rabbit runs past. You run after it, on your clumsy human legs, because that's what you've done, for the last ten years. That's how you've eaten. It's a habit. Your wife catches you, before you get far, because she understands. She knew you, and loved you, before you were this. Everyone looks at you both strangely, and she makes some excuse for you—she's always making excuses for you, because you don't know how to be a man.

You just want to go home. You want to curl up in your nest in the dark. But your home is gone, and your nest is gone, and even your dark is gone, everything much too bright through your new, human eyes.

You're a monster. You used to be a boy. You used to love a woman you called Mom, though you knew she wasn't really. She had been your babysitter for a very long time, so long you didn't really need a babysitter anymore. One day she told you she loved you, and you thought, of course you do, you're my mom. And then she stuck her hand down your pants, and it was all downhill from there.

You sit alone in your castle in your monster body, and you hate and you love your mom. You're alone, and afraid, and so, so hurt, and you want your mom to comfort you, but she can't, and she won't, because she's the one who put you here, and she'll never be your mom again.

A girl comes to the castle, and you know. You know this is your chance. You know that maybe she can break the spell. And you're so afraid. Because you loved your mom, and she betrayed you. You knew her your whole life, but you never really knew her at all. How can you know you know this girl? How can you ever trust her, or anyone?

She breaks the spell. And she looks at you differently, after. Everyone looks at you differently. Everyone looks at you. You've been safe and alone for so long. And the feeling of eyes on you makes your skin crawl, makes you long for the safety of your beast body. Your mom betrayed you in two ways, and the second way is over, now, but you can never forget the first betrayal, and sometimes, sometimes someone looks at you, and you know that you're handsome, and you know that they know it, too. And you wonder if that second betrayal was an apology, really. If it was a promise that no one would ever hurt you that way again. Because you were hurt, but you were safe. And you don't feel safe anymore. You love your wife, but sometimes you wish you could hide from even her eyes, wish you could retreat back into your teeth and fur.

You were a monster. You were a monster, and now you’re not. But it’s not easy. It’s not over. Your story is just beginning.

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Why Disney's Beast Should Have Been Cursed As A Child

 

(In preparation for the release of my Beauty and the Beast retelling, To Be Loved, I will be re-sharing old Beauty and the Beast posts. So if this post seems familiar to you, you've probably read it before.)

So I saw a live performance of Disney's Beauty and the Beast the other day. I'm going to assume you've all noticed by now that I love Beauty and the Beast, in pretty much all its forms. This was the third time I'd seen it live, and the following night I watched the animated movie.

So everyone has talked about the math. About how the Beast got cursed when he was a child, how it doesn't make sense because he's an adult in the portrait, etc. One change this play made to the original was to take out all the numbers—the Beast wasn't cursed ten years ago, just a long time ago. The rose won't wilt when he turns 21, it'll just wilt when time has passed.

And the play was good! But it got me thinking. And I think this particular version of the story works better if the Beast was cursed as an 11 year old boy, even if that wasn't initially deliberate.

The important thing to understand about the history of Beauty and the Beast is that originally, his shape was meant to be scary and off-putting, but nothing else about him. He wasn't cursed for being a jerk, he was never reported to be a jerk, and curse-related behavioral changes didn't include anything that would make someone feel unsafe.

Disney's Beast is rude, angry, and prone to tantrums. His table manners are atrocious. He can't read, which I maintain is stupid, was rightfully cut out of the original movie, and should never have been added back in, but it was included in this play, so. We're working with what we've got, stupid or not.

The Beast displays behaviors that feel alarming and dangerous coming from a large monster, and would likely also feel that way coming from an adult human in a position of power. He also displays behaviors that would be fairly normal and expected from a spoiled, poorly socialized child.

He was turned into a monster when he was eleven. He was abandoned by his parents at some point, possibly well before the curse, since they certainly weren't in the palace at the time. The only people he's interacted with since he was eleven are servants, who occasionally scold him for losing his temper, toward the end, when their humanity is dependent on him behaving himself, but generally it seems like he's the ultimate authority in the palace, and they take orders from him, regardless of age. There doesn't seem to be anyone else in the palace anywhere near his age range. We've got a lot of people who were adults when cursed, and one child, Chip, who either hasn't aged while the curse has been in place, or was a baby when it first went into effect.

He's had no discipline, no education, no social life, since he was eleven. He has absolutely no emotional maturity, because he hasn't really had the opportunity to gain any. He's throwing the same kinds of tantrums he did before the curse, because he hasn't had any reason to grow out of it. It was naughty ten years ago, it's terrifying now, and he probably doesn't realize how big a difference it is.

Almost as soon as he has someone else in his life who treats him like an equal rather than a boss, and models good, adult behavior, he improves dramatically. He starts making an effort to control his temper, and to be as polite and dignified as possible for a Beast. And he remains sort of awkward in a way that seems consistent with someone experiencing a social life and friendship for the first time—an awkwardness that doesn't make as much sense for someone who was an established adult before his life imploded.

If the Beast was an adult, especially an adult with significant power and authority like a prince, his early Beast behavior is kind of a red flag, and his later Beast behavior is a rapid and confusing shift. If he was a lonely kid, it's all a lot more understandable. Disney's version of the Beast needs to start as a child; it makes his character development and relationship with Belle much more believable.

 

 

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Beauty and the Beast: Full Curse Breakdown and Additional Complications

 

So today I thought it would be fun to break down all the details of the Beast’s curse in the original novel, because it’s really just a lot.

1.     Turn into hideous monster

2.     Appear as stupid as you are horrible

3.     Remain in this state until a girl comes to you of her own accord despite expecting to be eaten

4.     Said girl must be both young and beautiful

5.     Said girl must crash at your place

6.     Said girl must marry you

7.     If your mom tells anyone you’re her son, you’ll stay a monster forever

8.     If you let yourself be flattered by respect or titles, you’ll stay a monster forever (hence the “My Lord,” “No, I’m a Beast,” exchange that occurs multiple times)

9.     If you use what remains of your intellect to make good conversation, you’ll stay a monster forever

That’s…a lot of curse.

And in addition to all of these conditions restricting his ability to break the curse, he is also shooting himself in the foot with the Dream Prince.

There’s a whole separate post about the Dream Prince somewhere on my upload schedule, but a quick summary if you haven’t seen that: he’s appearing in Beauty’s dreams as his human self, and she’s in love with the dream-him. The text does confirm that it is really him having these conversations with her in her dreams, and he doesn’t seem to have any restrictions on how he behaves there aside from not telling her who he is, so the mess he’s making here is entirely on him.

He's competing with himself for her affections, and the version of himself that he needs to win that competition is the less appealing one. But that’s not all.

Because the prince version of him also stabs the beast version in one of the dreams, and Beauty steps in to protect him. He calls the Beast an obstacle to his happiness, and tells Beauty she must not really love him since she would defend the Beast.

In another dream, he asks her which of them she would help, if he and the Beast were trying to kill each other. She says she would kill herself before hurting either of them.

So the prince is deliberately setting the two parts of himself up as antagonists, and seems to hate his Beast self, which, like, maybe it’s a self esteem thing? But it’s causing a lot of frustration and confusion for Beauty, and if she didn’t have the dream prince around she would probably have agreed to marry the Beast sooner.

Between the insane curse and the idiotic dream prince, it really is amazing the spell ever got broken.

 

 

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La Belle et la Bete

 

(In preparation for the release of my Beauty and the Beast retelling, To Be Loved, I will be re-sharing old Beauty and the Beast posts. So if this post seems familiar to you, you've probably read it before.)

My obsession with Beauty and the Beast, in all its forms, is a serious matter. But my favorite version, perhaps, remains the original—the French novel La Belle et la Bête, written by Madame Villeneuve in the sixteenth century.

I dedicated months of my life to finding a complete English translation of this book, and when I finally did, it was certainly worth it. No magic mirror exists in this version. The Beast has scales and a trunk. A good chunk of the story is background information and tangents about a fairy civil war, and I learned more about the family histories of both Beast and Beauty than I could ever have wanted to know. It turns out they’re cousins and Beauty was adopted. Her real parents are a king and queen, so technically she belongs at the same social status as the Beast, and it’s all right for them marry.

The curse on the Beast is not only physical: it affects him mentally and emotionally as well. Beauty finds him a dull dinner companion because he knows only a few words, and repeats them constantly. He is sweet, but stupid, not quite human in mind or in body.

This aspect of the story fascinates me. It draws me back to this version, again and again. Beauty fell in love with the Beast. The Prince is different in far more than appearance. Intellect is a huge part of identity. The Beast doesn’t possess it, and the Prince does. If Beauty fell in love with a sweet, simple Beast, utterly devoted to her, how can she expect to live happily ever after with a handsome, cultured Prince who needed to know her family history before committing?

In the process of saving the one she loves, Beauty loses him—more than loses him. She destroys him, eradicates him completely, with no idea what she’s doing until it’s done.

There is no indication within the story that the Prince and Beauty will do anything but live out a traditional fairy tale ending, but I find it difficult to believe. I fell in love with the Beast as Beauty did. I hold no love for the Prince.

But love is complicated. I like to believe that Beauty can fall in love all over again with the Prince, even though it will never be anything like what she had with the Beast. Love is a process. Love can transform you, but it doesn’t always leave you prepared to deal with the side effects. The change from Beast to Prince is always portrayed as a positive one, but it’s scary. Beauty isn’t making the Beast into a better person—he was, in all the older versions, a good person to start with, cursed by a wicked fairy, not one who meant to improve him. Breaking the spell doesn’t make him better. It only makes him different. It makes him into something more like what he’s supposed to be, perhaps, but Beauty did not fall in love with the man he was supposed to be. That man is a stranger to her.

The people you love are always going to change. So are you. You keep on loving each other despite it. It’s hard—it terrifies me, just thinking of trying to hold on to my love for a Beast when he unexpectedly becomes a Prince. I like knowing exactly what I’m roping myself into.

This book makes me see the story in different ways, and it makes me think of different aspects of love that never occurred to me before. I don’t know if Beauty and the Beast can live happily ever after once the Beast is no longer a Beast. But I hope that they can.

 

 

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Beauty and the Beast: The Taking of the Rose

 

So I've been thinking about why the Beast reacted so strongly to The Taking of the Rose. Like, sure, it's rude to steal from your host, especially when you were an unexpected, uninvited guest treated with great hospitality. But most people wouldn't consider picking a flower stealing.

But on the other hand, this is a fairy tale. And it's not as if there's not a precedent for Dire Consequences of Picking Plants.

(BTW, in a rare win for Disney, they managed to produce one of the few BATB stories that actually explained the Beast being overprotective of his rose. And then never actually had the dad get anywhere near the rose, so.)

Before getting into a whole thing with precedents and history and symbolism, I decided to Check the Source Material.

(At this point you may be wondering: Jenny, how come you keep finding new details you didn't remember in the source material? Are you just not paying attention? The answer is that this story is, like most French stories of this era, dense and a little Roccoco. While I enjoy the plot immensely, the prose is challenging. So I don't reread it in its entirety terribly often, and when I do, I skim a little. There's these big long backstories for minor characters, there's a fairy war, Beauty's mom was secretly a fairy and she was swapped at birth: it's a lot. So, yes, I'm not paying as much attention as I could be. If I'm reading for fun I'm skimming, and if I'm reading with purpose I'm reading the relevant chunk of the text only.)

Two important things from The Source Material:

Firstly, the father doesn’t just take the rose. The rose is not just a gift for Beauty, it’s the symbol of his overreach. After being welcomed into this enchanted palace with no clear owner, he “began to fancy…that some good spirit had made this mansion a present to him.” He has decided that this is his palace now, he’s started making plans for what to do with the treasures he’s seen, for moving his family in, and while the rose is the only thing he actually takes, he picks it while planning to take everything else in sight. Also, the Beast stops him after one, but he was about to pick “enough to make half-a-dozen bouquets.” Which is a lot of roses to be picking from someone else’s bush.

Secondly. This actually has nothing to do with the Beast. It’s actually all about fairies.

There are two fairies in this story: the wicked fairy who cursed the Beast, and a good fairy who has been checking up on him since.

One day the good fairy comes to him, and says basically, “Hey, this guy is on his way here right now, and he has a really nice daughter, and he’s probably going to try to pick a rose for her. When he does, you need to absolutely freak out, threaten to kill him, and demand his daughter’s life in exchange for his.”

She thinks this is the best way to get a potential wife to the Beast. And the reason she thinks this is because of a clause of the curse, which states that he will “remain in this state until a young and beautiful girl shall, of her own accord, come to seek thee, though fully persuaded thou wilt devour her.”

So it is literally a requirement of the curse that the girl who eventually agrees to marry him must initially expect him to eat her.

The Beast has to threaten her. He has to frighten her. If he doesn’t, he’ll never have a chance at regaining his humanity.

So it’s not about the rose. It was never about the rose. The only reason roses appear in the story is that Beauty happened to express an interest. The Beast overreacts to the rose because he has to overreact to something in order to frighten her and fulfill the terms of the curse.

 

 

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Join Our Enchanted Bridegroom Aftermath Program Today!

 

(In preparation for the release of my Beauty and the Beast retelling, To Be Loved, I will be re-sharing old Beauty and the Beast posts. So if this post seems familiar to you, you've probably read it before.)

Have you recently confessed your undying love to a monstrous figure of some sort? Did he then transform into an attractive human man? Is he severely traumatized? We’re here to help!

Many women, in the immediate aftermath of a curse-breaking, expect to live a romantic life of luxury and ease with their dashing Prince Charming. But your Prince Charming has PTSD. Yes, I’m talking to you. Because they all have PTSD. Coming out of an animal transformation is no joke.

Here are just a few of the issues to be on the lookout for as he adjusts:

• Disassociation

• Dysphoria

• General confusion about identity

• Sensory overload

• Other processing difficulties

• Large gaps in education

• Large gaps in social development

• Large gaps in physical development

• Codependency

• Trust issues

• Fear of intimacy due to previous trauma

• Depression

• Heightened anxiety

• Attachment difficulties

• Trouble setting boundaries

• Trouble understanding boundaries

• Trouble understanding age appropriate behavior

• Trouble understanding species appropriate behavior

• Difficulties with nutritional intake

• Agoraphobia

• Insomnia

• Anger issues

We understand that all of this can be a lot, and it wasn’t what you were expecting. But remember, your Prince is suffering a lot more than you are, and he desperately needs your support.

We are proud to offer several options to support you in supporting him, from talk therapy to basic education modules on a wide range of topics, including but not limited to:

• How to walk

• How to read

• How to write

• How to use a fork

• Basic arithmetic

• Basic etiquette

We will gladly work with you to address any gaps in knowledge or skills lost to prolonged change in form. We also offer customized history and science lessons based on your Prince’s education level at time of curse, and the duration of his curse. Did he spend ninth grade social studies and health class living in a cave? We can help. Did he spend two hundred years isolated in an enchanted palace, missing numerous wars and major scientific advancements? We can help with that, too.

Call 1-800-XXX-XXXX today to speak with a representative about your Prince’s custom-tailored adjustment plan.

 

 

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Rambling about BATB and TBL

My favorite story to write is always the story I'm currently writing. But my favorite story to read and to watch and to think about is always Beauty and the Beast, which means that this particular story I’ve written will always be a little special.

When I was a toddler I used to watch the Disney movie every day. So I've been obsessed with Beauty and the Beast for about thirty years now. 

At some point in high school I found out that the original novel existed, and after several months of searching was technically able to find it. A PDF scan of the original book in French, printed over 200 years ago. Which meant that not only was it in a language I didn't know, but it was in a slightly older version of a language I didn't know, with a font type that was almost completely unreadable. I spent several months trying and failing to translate.

A couple years later I finally managed to track down an English translation. And it was absolutely worth the wait.

I wrote my first novel length retelling of Beauty and the Beast in high school. It had some elements I remain very proud of. It incorporated a lot of the forgotten elements of the original novel, like the fairy backstories, cultures, and war. It drew a lot on Swiss and French folklore from the Alps, since that was my setting. I had some interesting things going on, and some things I think I handled well. But ultimately it was 60,000 words I wrote over the course of 30 days as a 17 year old, and the majority of it does not seem salvageable. Maybe someday I'll try.

In college I wrote a novella retelling, which I remain pretty happy with, and which you may have encountered if you know my pen name. I also wrote Windows, which may not count as a retelling since it doesn't involve a curse, the breaking of a curse, a romance, or a love interest leaving and coming back, but it's certainly heavily inspired by Beauty and the Beast.

I've planned or started probably half a dozen other BATB retellings, and that's not counting other enchanted bridegroom stories—Lindworm, my planned retelling of East of the Sun West of the Moon, my planned retelling of Snow White and Rose Red, various short stories, etc.

Somehow, no matter where I go, I always land back at Beauty and the Beast.

To Be Loved is exactly the Beauty and the Beast story I wanted to tell, right now. But so were all the others, and I'm sure in the future there'll be more. I always find more things to say, and new ways to say them, when it comes to Beauty and the Beast. I look forward to finding out how the story is going to come out of me the next time. But for now, I'm exceedingly happy with To Be Loved.

I don't want to give a bunch of spoilers (though if you were on Patreon last year you know the majority of the story. But I have added and changed and rearranges several things, too), but I do want to talk a lot about this book that I'm super excited about. So I will try to be careful in my enthusiastic rambling?

I abandoned the complex fairy and family backstories, because they don't have much to do with the main plot and I didn't want to pull my focus from the main plot for a complicated tangent, and because I've already done the complex backstories in my high school novel. I abandoned the complicated relationship with the queen because I wanted to instead have a complicated relationship with a sibling, and because I've already done the queen in my pen name novella.

I abandoned the dream prince because it's complicated and confusing and Mira isn't the sort of person who would fall in love with a dream, or the sort of person who would dream of handsome men loving her, or the sort of person who would even be comfortable with a handsome man loving her. And also because Bram isn't the sort of person who would try to reach out to Mira in a dream to reveal his true self, because he doesn't really think of the handsome prince as his true self.

I abandoned the rose because, as we either have discussed recently or will discuss shortly (I've lost track of where I am on my schedule), the rose is all about getting a young woman on the premises who can break the spell. And—this is the most fundamental part of To Be Loved—Bram doesn't really want the spell to break.

Bram is traumatized and terrified, and the spell may be a curse, but it's also a safety net. As long as he's a monster, not one is going to want him (don't tell Bram about the internet), which means no one is going to try to force themselves on him. And if they do, a Beast can fight back much better than a prince.

To Be Loved is about half basic Beauty and the Beast, and half aftermath, because I love the aftermath of a transformation spell. It's about identity and recovery, and it's just exactly the story I wanted to tell, which feels so good after so many tries at Beauty and the Beast. And I'm so excited for you to read it.

 

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Sexual Abuse in the Folk Tradition: Beauty and the Beast

 

(In preparation for the release of my Beauty and the Beast retelling, To Be Loved, I will be re-sharing old Beauty and the Beast posts. So if this post seems familiar to you, you've probably read it before.)

We all talk a lot about Beauty and the Beast—especially me. Of all the fairy tales I’m obsessed with, this has always been my favorite. And right now, I think the Beast is an excellent way to continue this discussion on rape.

What do you know about him, you who grew up on Disney?

The Beast was a jerk, right? He was mean to some fairy, so she turned him into a monster as a well-deserved punishment.

My favorite version of this story is La Belle et le Bete, a novella by a Madame Villeneuve. It’s the version of this story type that our current version is most directly descended from. And it doesn’t focus a lot on this aspect of things, but here is what I have always taken away from this story: The Beast is the victim.

He’s young. Young enough that he can’t be left home alone when his mother the queen goes off to war. So they leave him with a fairy woman.

The fairy falls in love. The Beast—future Beast—doesn’t feel the same way. That—not wanting a romantic relationship with his guardian—that is what he’s being punished for.

So we’ve got a young man, sexually harassed, at the very least, by a woman he trusted to take care of him. He gets tossed into some new body, monstrous and unfamiliar. But wait!

There’s more. Part of the spell is that he must seem as stupid as he is hideous. You’ve got this child, abused, tortured, transformed, and not even able to properly express himself—able to think just as he normally does, but unable to express those thoughts, unable to communicate effectively, unable to even let the Beauty get to know him as he really is.

I’ve read a lot of weird, intense, depressing fairy tales, but I’ve never encountered a character I felt more sympathy for than the Beast.

Now, let’s talk about what we’ve done to this story over the years, and what it says about us as a society.

This awful thing that happened to the Beast was his own fault, naturally. A very young man is sexually abused, essentially, by an older woman who is supposed to be taking care of him, and we change this into the story of an unpleasant young man being justly punished by a good woman. And then—then we do the exact same thing Beauty spent the entire story learning not to do. We immediately assume that ugliness of body must signify ugliness of spirit, and we adjust the story accordingly.

This is meant to be a story about a girl learning to see past appearances—about Beauty becoming a better person. Instead it’s become the exact opposite—Beauty helping the Beast to become better. It’s a redemption story now. The Beast never needed to be redeemed. He needed to be rescued.
I love Beauty and the Beast, in all its versions. I’m not saying that there’s something wrong with the version we tell now. It’s a good story, if a different one. What I am saying is that the way the story has changed over the years can be connected in interesting ways to how we handle the issues it contains in real life.

How many times have you heard the words “Men can’t be raped?” We have this bizarre inability to accept the idea of the guy as the victim in any situation. And in the meantime, we’ve got all these people suffering the way the poor Beast does.

Imagine how traumatized he must have been. Imagine going through that, and having everyone siding with the evil fairy, everyone saying you deserved it, everyone assuming that because you’re big and ugly, you couldn’t possibly have been a victim here, and in fact, you were probably the perpetrator.

Let’s think less about magic flowers, and more about the incredible abuses of power at play here. The Beast is magnificent. And so many people are going through the real-life equivalent of his problems. We need more Beauties to see the worth in the people we push off to the side. No one real should ever have to suffer like the Beast.

 

 

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To Be Loved: Chapter 1

 

In the dappled light of the forest, nestled between the roots of her favorite tree, Mira wept.

She had not, these last few days. She had not allowed herself to, not sure how she could explain it to her family, who would surely see. But now her work was done for a moment, and she was alone, in her private hollow in the woods, where no one would search for a quarter hour or more.

A twig snapped.

Mira looked up. Standing before her was a great beast, seven feet tall at least, perhaps ten if one counted the antlers. He had glossy dark fur, and a snout that looked somehow like both a bear’s and a deer’s. Horrifying and majestic, like a forest god of old.

“Hello,” he said.

She stared at him for a moment before recovering her manners; she had not expected him to speak. “Oh! Hello.”

“You’re upset,” he said.

“Um. Yes.” She did not want to explain the situation to a monster in the woods. And given the typical result of encountering monsters in the woods, her current problems were likely over.

Though not, admittedly, in the way she’d have chosen.

“Before—before you eat me, or take me away to serve you forever in fairyland, or whatever it is you’re planning to do, could we—could we have some witnesses, please? I don’t mind what you do to me, as long as someone sees it.”

If she was taken by fairies, or something convincingly like them, the crown would make restitutions to her parents. And fairies could do horrible, horrible things, but at least it wouldn’t—wouldn’t be—

The creature stared at her for what felt like a very long time. She considered and discarded the possibility of running; he was terrifying, but so was Ralph, and the future that awaited her.

“You want to get away,” he said at last, half a question. It sounded like an offer.

“Oh, yes,” Mira said, her need for escape overwhelming fear and reason both. But any escape he offered her could only be a trap. “But I can’t. My family is depending on my marriage. We need the bride price desperately.” Or, failing that, the crown’s restitution.

“And do you want to be married?”

She thought of Ralph, of his bright smile and soft hands. She thought of Ralph three days ago, when he—

“No,” she admitted.

The creature nodded. “What is your bride price? I will pay it double, and take you away, and you needn’t be my bride.”

She studied the monster, his deep black eyes and soft snout, his large paws. He had no reason to help her, and she had no reason to trust him. He couldn’t lie, if he was a fairy, but she thought that he was not—they usually looked lovely and human—and other magical creatures could, as far as she knew, tell as many lies as they liked. He likely wasn’t lying when he said she wouldn’t be his bride, but only because she was more likely to be his dinner or his slave.

She could not stay here. Not like this, not with Ralph. And a fairy restitution would not be nearly as much money as double her bride price.

It was a foolish choice.  But she couldn’t stay here. And his face, for all it was monstrous, looked kind.

“You’ll have to speak with my father,” she said.

He nodded.

“I am Mira. What shall I call you?”

He didn’t answer for a long moment. “I don’t have a name,” he said at last. “You may call me Beast; it is what I am.”

~

The Beast spoke with her father in the doorway; his antlers prevented him from fitting inside. Not, Mira thought, that her father would have been inclined to let him in regardless. He closed the door on him, rudely, to discuss the offer.

“You can’t mean to marry a monster.”

“You can’t mean to turn down the bride price he offers, not with Mama sickly, and your only son still in diapers.” It would be a decade before Henry could truly contribute to the household, and the doubled bride price was far more than her own contributions were worth. She and Anna tried, but they had not the strength to do any of the things that would truly bring in money.

“Young Ralph has—”

“Ralph will offer you half what the Beast has. We’ve made him no promises. Take the better offer.”

“I am not so desperate for gold that I would—”

“I’ll not marry Ralph, Father. Accept the Beast’s offer, or I’ll go with him anyway, and bring shame on the family.”

She loved her family. She hated Ralph more.

“He has bewitched you. Mira, child. He’s a monster. He’s—”

“He’s bigger and stronger than us. And perhaps he has bewitched me; I don’t know if he has magic, but certainly he’s made of it. If he wants me he will have me, willing or no. Accept the bride price, and make it as right as you can.”

She walked past him to open the door. “If you will bring the bride price tomorrow, my father will send me with you then,” she told the Beast. “May I walk you out?”

She looped an arm through his—the angle was awkward, with his height—and led him back toward her hollow.

“I’ve no intention of forcing you,” he said, the clear anxiety in his voice at odds with his monstrous appearance.

“I know,” Mira said, mostly honest. “It was only to make my father agree.”

His voice was as kind as his face, and it could be a trap, but why bother to set one? He could have taken her easily enough without all this.

“You needn’t come with me,” he said. “You can have the bride price, and stay here—I’ve no need for the money.”

It was a very kind offer. She would never have thought to expect such kindness from a monster, never would have thought she could feel so irrationally safe with an enormous, alarming creature who by all rights ought not to exist.

She had to go with him. The money was not enough. No money would ever be enough. It would buy her time, but Ralph would persist.

“I will go with you,” she said, “if you will have me.”

“Of course.”

They had reached the hollow. She released his arm, and rolled her shoulder to calm the strain of the angle. “I’ll see you in the morning, then?”

“In the morning,” he agreed. He turned, and stepped through the trees, and was gone, as suddenly as he had appeared.

~

He couldn’t remember his name. He thought it was part of the curse, though he wasn’t quite sure. He hoped it was part of the curse. He hoped it was something that had been taken from him, rather than something he’d been careless enough to lose.

His memory wasn’t good. Like his body, it made him feel less like a man every day, farther and farther from whoever he used to be. But a name seemed the sort of thing he ought to have hung onto, even as the rest faded away.

He thought he used to be a man, with dark brown hair and a nose that wasn’t quite straight. He thought he used to have a little brother he carried on his shoulders, and a hunting hound who was quite terrible at hunting, and liked to sleep in his bed. He thought he attended balls, and hunts, and history lessons.

He knew he had a name.

Just not what it was.

He knew he used to be shorter, not because he remembered it, but because even now, he forgot to duck, and banged his antlers into things.

He knew something bad had happened, something other than becoming a monster, something worse. He didn’t know what, not because he couldn’t remember but because he refused to, because he spent long hours trying to recall the shape of his maybe-brother’s face, or any other details of his life before, but when the tiniest hints of the bad thing surfaced, he shoved them down, found a distraction, thought of anything else.

The memories came back, he thought, in nightmares, but he woke remembering only dread and sick fear, and not the details.

He knew because the look in Mira’s eyes when she spoke of marriage, when he offered an escape, felt so achingly familiar.

He hadn’t meant to invite a young woman to live with him. He hadn’t meant to be there at all. He’d been in that wild area behind the palace that used to be a garden, and then he had been in front of a crying girl.

The halls of the palace wound and changed without his say, but usually the grounds didn’t wander about without permission.

He decided to blame that on the curse, too.

Some days it felt like a living thing, writhing beneath his skin.

He’d made no attempts to break it. Not, at least, since his memory started going foggy.

The curse, he thought, was growing restless. It mustn’t be any fun, being a curse whose victim lies down and takes it.

If he didn’t try to break the curse, he couldn’t fail. If he didn’t fail, he would suffer only in the same old ways, no fresh entertainment for the one who cursed him.

(He thought it was a woman. He didn’t like thinking any harder about it than that.)

Also, the curse had made him larger and stronger and much more frightening, and that was not entirely a bad thing.

He had been boring. Content, even. So the curse had presented him an opportunity to be broken, since he refused to seek one out.

They needn’t fall in love, just because she was here. It seemed quite unlikely, really.

A woman was going to be living with him. He thought—he thought he used to wear clothes. Maybe he should do that again.

He didn’t look much like a man, and nothing showed through the fur. But still, if one was sharing a space with a young woman, and she was escaping an unwanted marriage, and her father seemed to think this was a marriage, then one ought to wear clothes.

He hoped he could find some. The curse might think it rather funny, forcing him into close proximity with a woman, nude.

Or, more likely, the palace might think it a waste of time to produce for him something so unnecessary.

He was going to be living with a woman.

She had touched him.

He thought of her little brown hand on his large brown arm. He tried to remember the last time another person touched him, and couldn’t.

(A silver white hand, cupping his cheek, his face changing beneath it, her smile like—)

He shook his head. He couldn’t.

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