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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