(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.
Preorder your copy of To Be Loved from waxheartpress.com!
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