Zipes, Jack. "Walt Disney’s Civilizing Mission." Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion. 2nd ed. Great Britain: Routledge Taylor and Francis Group, 2006. 208-09. Print.
“From Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs up through Beauty and the Beast there is an opening song that announces the yearning of a heroine; the young woman, always virginal and sweet, is victimized and is captured or imprisoned by evil forces; at the same time comical animals or animated objects, as in the case of Beauty and the Beast, provide comic relief and try to assist the persecuted heroine; at one point a male hero is introduced along with a romantic song or two; and because the girl cannot save herself, the hero is called on to overcome sinister forces represented by a witch, scheming minister, or dumb brute.” Pg. 209
“There is no complexity in a Disney fairy-tale film, no exploration of character or the causes that create obstacles for the protagonists in narratives. The emphasis is on purification, preparing oneself to become chosen, a member of the elite, and this American cleansing process based on meritocracy replaces the old schemata of European fairy tale while at the same time it restores the notions of hierarchy and elitism, reinforces a kind of redundant behavior controlled by a master builder such as Disney, and leads to a static dystopian vision of the world, that is, a degeneration of utopia.” Pg 209
Cummins, June. "Romancing the Plot- The Real Beast of Beauty and the Beast." Children's Literature Association Quarterly 20.1 (1995): 22-28. Project MUSE. Web. 10 Mar. 2014. <muse.jhu.edu/journals/chq/summary/v020/20.1.cummins.html>.
“But in spite of this insistence that Belle is a strong female character, that this fairy tale is “different,” I saw the same old story, a romance plot that robs female characters of self-determination and individuality.” Pg. 22
“It encourages young viewers to believe that true happiness for women exists only in the arms of a prince and that their most important quest is finding that prince.” Pg. 22
“Disney, on the other hand, strips the traditional fairy tale of anything but the romance trajectory, throws in a dose of violence, and woos its vast audience into believing it has been educated as well as entertained.”
“The action of the stories that end with marriage is concerned with courtship, “which is magnified into the most important and exciting part of a girl’s life, brief though courtship is, because it is the part of her life in which she most counts as a person herself. After marriage, she ceases to be wooed, her consent is no longer sought, and she derives her status from her husband, and her personal identity is thus snuffed out.” Pg. 23
“Because it is a major social institution, marriage functions not merely as a comic ending, but also as a bridge between the worlds of fantasy and reality. Whereas “once upon a time” draws the reader into a timeless fantasy realm… The wedding ceremony catapults her back into reality. Precisely this close association of romantic fiction with the actuality of marriage as a social institution proves the most influential factor in shaping female expectations.” Pg. 23
“… with subtle shifts in plot and character, Disney focuses attention on the romantic aspects of fairytales.” Pg. 23
“Beaumont’s Beauty was considered a new kind of heroine…Instead of being nobles, Beauty and her family belonged to the merchant class. Their wealth has been gained by the father’s hard work. He uses his money to educate his children, sons and daughters alike… Through commerce and education, the father perpetuates meritocratic rather than aristocratic advancement, and Beauty is the symbol of that meritocracy.” Pg. 23
“Although she encourages these girls to be virtuous and “agreeable,” she just as ardently wants them to be intelligent and well-instructed: Their several faults are pointed out,and the easy way to mend them, as well as to think, and speak, and act properly; no less care being taken to form their hearts to goodness, than to enlighten their understandings with useful knowledge.” Pg. 23
“Beauty and the Beast is essentially a love story, and in many ways is not even Belle’s love story as much as it is the Beast’s.” Pg. 23
“Belle functions as a plot device…she is necessary to the Beast not just for romance, but to undo the spell he is under.” pg 24
^ Made apparent through the enchanted objects saying “She’s the one we’ve been waiting for! She’s the one to break the spell!”
“This emphasis on how Belle helps the Beast differs from the Beaumont version, in which the Beast’s metamorphosis is only one aspect of a multifaceted story, and Beauty’s charter development is an issue as much as the Beast’s.” Pg 24
“Belle’s desires, her interest in exploration and education, have no meaning except in terms of how they can be manipulated into a romance to benefit the Beast and the bewitched servants.” Pg. 24
- In the Disney version, the Beast gives Belle the library in order to win her love so she will love him and break the spell.
- In Beaumont’s version, the Beast gives her things she is interested in because that is what makes her happy, and he encourages who she is. He never pushes her to love him, only what brings her happiness. ‘“No, you are the only mistress here,” replied the Beast. “If I start to bother you, tell me to go away, and I will leave at once.”’ Pg. 71
- “Go ahead and eat, Beauty,” said the monster, “and try not to get bored in this house, for everything here is yours, and I would be distressed if you were to become unhappy.” pg. 71
“As a narrative pattern, the romance plot muffles the main female character, represses quest, and incorporates individuals within couples as a sign of their personal and narrative success.” Pg 24
“The romance plot… Is a trope for the sex-gender system as a whole…. Necessarily inherent in this sex-gender system is the tendency to denigrate the female side of the relationship.”
^Expressed through Belle’s lack of desire and love for roses.
“The male sex is subject while the female is object” Pg. 24
- Belle is the object of desire. Beast is the subject. It isn’t about Belle’s character development, but the Beast’s metamorphosis. Belle is only necessary to break the spell.
“The trait that makes Belle different, more intelligent, and more “liberated” than previous Disney heroines is that she likes to read books about Disney heroines.” Pg. 25
“Throughout the movie, the writers advance the metaphor of reading. Gaston’s callousness and stupidity are underscored when he throws belle’s book in the mud, later resting his filthy boots on it, and the most exciting part of the Beast’s castle is its large, well-stocked library. In fact. this library helps the Beast woo Beauty; when he is trying to win her over, Cogsworth, Lumiere, and Mrs. Potts, the enchanted household objects. urge him to present her with the library.” Pg. 25
“As wonderful as it is that literacy finds encouragement in a Disney movie…, The intent of inclusion may extend beyond the desire to paint Belle as an intellectual… Maslin’s point and my contention that Belle’s propensity for reading ultimately has little weight in her development as an intelligent woman find validity in the fact that Belle is only once shown reading, for a very little time (exactly 14 seconds) after she is given the library… In fact, as the parallel commentary of the household objects confirms, this scene emphasizes Belle and the Beast reading together and thus developing their relationship more than it conveys the idea that Belle is reading to increase her knowledge or pleasure. Here is a crucial indication that Belle’s quest for adventure and education will be swallowed by the romance plot.” Pg. 25
“Belle’s desire for adventure gets lost first in her need to take care of her father and second in her growing affection for the Beast.” Pg 25
“In spite of Belle’s aspirations to educate herself, the film locates her real value in her capacity to nurture. The only human female in the movie with more than two speaking lines, Belle must take on the responsibility of caring for her father (to the point of self-sacrifice) and ministering to the Beast’s physical and emotional wounds.” Pg. 25
“Furthermore, Disney’s Beast has an angry, violent streak that is not present in Beaumont’s version. Her Beast is cordial, gentle and refined; as Beauty puts it, he has “virtue, sweetness of temper, and complaisance.” disney’s Beast, on the other hand, is characterized by a terrible temper, manifested through physical power…The film’s insistence on sexual difference, magnified when the Beast becomes the focus of the movie, will take its toll on Belle. Her traditionally unfeminine traits lose importance as the film progresses. While Belle Initially appears spunky, independent, and curious, her surrender to the seduction of sexual difference, like the plot’s surrender to romantic closure, denies her that independence and forces her into subjugation.” Pg 26
“That the Disney writers portray the Beast as an ignorant monster instead of as an intelligent being also substantially changes the meaning of Beauty’s acceptance of him. When Beauty returns to her family and misses the Beast, she realizes that she loves him for the qualities that made him a pleasing companion, despite his unattractiveness; Beauty has learned a lesson and grown as a result, just as the Beast, too, has changed and matured. Beaumont makes clear this position of growth occurs as a result of nightly, shared dinners that receive significant narrative attention in her version. In the Disney film, this period of mutual education is collapsed into a few moments of screen time… [It] is clear here who evolves and who stays essentially the same. Disney consciously discarded the dinner scenes, diminishing the reciprocity and mutual growth on which Beauty and the Beast’s relationship rests.” Pg. 26
“[Belle] is presented as a much more well-rounded person, with interests, goals, and aspirations. More than just as self-sacrificing, devoted daughter, Belle shows gumption when she stands up to the Beast, curiosity when she explores the forbidden West Wing, and rebellion when she runs away from the castle. But these traits, in and of themselves, are not rewarded or acknowledged as the tale closes. The emphasis is on Belle’s nurturing tenderness, her beauty, her sexuality, and her happily ever after commitment to the beast. Each of the refreshing traits set up at the beginning of the story is diminished or eliminated… Instead, we find her in virtually the same position as Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella at the end of their stories; by the side of her prince.” Pg. 27
Talairach-Vielmas, Laurence. "Beautiful Maidens, Hideous Suitors: Victorian Fairy Tales and the Process of Civilization." Marvels & Tales 24.2 (2010): 272-96. Project MUSE. Web. 27 Feb. 2014. <muse.jhu.edu/journals/mat/summary/v024/24.2.talairach-vielmas.html>.
“[B]easts function as veiled symbols representing sexuality that children must initially experience as disgusting before they reach maturity and discover its beauty. In contrast to such views, Jack Zipes argues that children’s instinctual drives are “conditioned and largely determined through interaction and interplay with the social environment”” Pg 272
“It is probably in the revisions of folktales and fairy tales featuring an animal bridegroom that the models of behavior and incorporated norms and values most reflect how the emerging bourgeois stamped their literary fairytales with the seal of patriarchy.” pg. 274
Hearne, Betsy. "Beauty And The Beast: Visions and Revisions of an Old Tale: 1950-1985." The Lion and the Unicorn 12.2 (1988): 74-111. Project MUSE. Web. 27 Feb. 2014. <muse.jhu.edu/journals/uni/summary/v012/12.2.hearne.html>.
“In the story of "Beauty and the Beast," a wealthy merchant with three beautiful daughters, the youngest incomparably lovely and good-hearted, loses everything through misfortune. Hearing of one cargo ship's safe return, the merchant sets out to straighten out his finances. His older girls clamor for rich gifts, but Beauty requests only a rose. After a fruitless journey, the merchant turns homeward, gets lost in a storm, and discovers a magic palace, where he plucks from the garden a rose. This theft arouses the wrath of a terrible Beast, who demands he either forfeit his life or give up a daughter. Beauty insists on sacrificing herself but becomes instead mistress of a palace and develops an esteem for the Beast. In spite of her growing attachment to him, however, she misses her ailing father and requests leave to care for him. Once home, she is diverted by her two sisters from returning to the palace until nearly too late. Shemisses the Beast, arrives to find him almost dead with grief, and declares her love, thereby transforming him into a prince who makes her his bride.” Pg 74- 76
Ross, Deborah. "Escape from Wonderland: Disney and the Female Imagination." Marvels & Tales 18.1 (2004): 53-66. Project MUSE. Web. 27 Feb. 2014. <muse.jhu.edu/journals/mat/summary/v018/18.1ross.html>.
“When the marriage seems to grant the heroine true personal fulfillment and possibilities for fur- there growth, the ending may actually seem like the beginning of a new life. Such is the case with Beauty and the Beast, a tale endowed by ancient archetypes with a feminine power that resists the attempts of individual authors, such as Madame Leprince de Beaumont in 1757, to tie its heroine down to mediocrity.” Pg. 60
“One problem with the plot that ends in marriage, of course, is its reduction of the heroine to an object of desire, and therefore a heroine actually named Beauty would not, on the face of it, seem like a good role model. In this tale, however, with its roots penetrating beyond the Cupid and Psyche tale…the heroine is more subject than object because her quest for a desirable mate drives the plot.” Pg. 60-61
“Of course, the whole question of the story’s sexual politics hinges on whether the heroine’s desire can be consciously controlled, by herself or by others; whether, as is often said in Christian wedding ceremonies, love is an act of will rather than a feeling; whether, therefore, she can make herself love the one she “ought.” Conservative versions of Beauty and the Beast do tend to assume such schooling of the will is possible, as Jack Zipes emphasizes (29–40). Nevertheless, an important feature even in such versions is that the beast, though he may be dutifully or even cheerfully endured, cannot become a handsome prince until the heroine actively wants him, truly chooses him for reasons of her own. The young female audience is thus reassured that sex in conjunction with love is pleasant rather than frightening (Bettelheim 306; Warner 312–13); in other words, the beast of one’s choice is not a beast at all.” Pg 61
“Beauty feels “esteem” for the Beast because of his “great service” to her, and eventually she comes to feel “tenderness” for him as she wants to care for him and ease his distress (Beaumont 37). Out of this tenderness comes a desire to marry him—including, one supposes, some sexual feeling. The romance code word for active sexual desire—“inclination”—never appears.By telling her young readers that esteem and tenderness are the best basis for marriage, Beaumont warns them not to wait for the handsome, witty lover of their fantasies; in the closing words of the rewarding fairy: “You have preferred virtue before either wit or beauty, and you deserve to find one in whom all these are united” (47). In this way, the author joins the tradition of conservative writers who urge girls to face reality and, to the very limited extent they will be permit- ted to choose, to choose wisely.12 Still, while schooling the reader in what she ought to desire, Beaumont cannot avoid conveying the importance of the heroine’s will, for until Beauty desires the Beast, a beast he will remain.” Pg. 61
“the movie has its share of politically correct modern touches to underscore the heroine’s self-determination (Warner 316–17; Zipes 46). Interestingly, however, each apparent innovation in fact draws on the French romance tradition that Belle and Arabella revere. Most notably, the movie makes contemporary-sounding statements about gender stereotypes by introducing a new character as foil to the Beast, the hypermasculine Gaston, who boasts in a Sigmund Romberg-ish aria, “I’m especially good at expectorating,” “I use antlers in all of my decorating,” and “every last inch of me’s covered with hair.” He is the real beast, of course, an animal who sneers at the Beast for being so openly in touch with his feminine side, “the Male Chauvinist Pig [. . .] that would turn the women of any primetime talkshow audience into beasts themselves” (Jeffords 170). But Gaston is not really new. He dates back, beyond the Cocteau movie often cited as his source, to the French romance villain who loves the heroine selfishly, determined to possess her by force: by winning her in a duel, carrying her off, or scheming to get her parents to give her to him. Gaston arranges to have Belle’s eccentric father locked in a madhouse unless she agrees to marry him. Then he nearly kills the beast under the illusion that the winner gets Belle as prize. The Beast, in contrast, is the romance hero who fights the villain to win the heroine’s freedom, not her hand, which he will accept only as her gift. In fact, he would rather die than oppress her. By choosing the Beast over Gaston, Belle helps this ancient story confirm the value of a woman’s equal right to a will of her own.” Pg. 62