This Week on Let's Retell that Fairy Tail!; Beauty & The Beast~

  ☆Maria Tartar's Introduction to Beauty & the Beast☆

Apparently the earliest told version of the 'Beauty & the Beast' tale was called 'Cupid and Psyche' and (not surprisingly) it was told by a "drunken and half-demented" women to a young bride. The heroine of the story, who falls in love thanks to Cupid with 'Eros' (the equivalent of the Beast character) is apparently quite determined to get the monster to love her back - which is an interesting twist considering that usually it is the beast feigning for love and not the pretty young heroine- but I feel as if this is because of Cupid's interjection. The lead sets off on an "epic quest fraught with risks and requiring her to accomplish one impossible task after another", which I think is pretty cool considering that instead of wallowing in her own pain of abandonment by what is deemed to be a 'monster' she goes out and she fights for what she wants, something we don't see in a lot of modern day re-tellings of this story. I think there is a moral here, though Tartar doesn't talk much about it, but the message seems to be that one can still fight for their love - even if their love isn't perhaps accepted by community, or even the other half themselves simply because of their appearances (??)

Eros and Psyche by blackeri

[Number one, Eros doesn't look like a monster at all - he just has wings??? Number two, I guess mythology thinks boys with wings are beasts???] 

To jump into something more familiar, Madame de Beamount's telling of 'Beauty & the Beast' is the classic moral fairy tail, shaped specifically to teach young kids (YOUNG GIRLS) a lesson in life. With this it's the basic idea of 'being good' rather then 'doing well' or aka if an ugly, beastly looking man wants to marry you (and he truly loves you and has money) then you should definitely marry him, have some virtue rather then selfish desire for beauty, and just go along with it basically. I like the mention of Beauty's two sisters who are apparently filled with 'envy' and 'malice' and is this perhaps because Beauty married the 'sensible but ugly' option or because they're more interested in someones aesthetic and that resonates them with the idea of 'malice'? 

There is also the mention of the 'transformative power of love' since we all know (thanks to Disney) that the Beast actually turns in to a beautiful young prince after being confessed to by Beauty. Basically, this is another ploy to tell girls that looks don't matter, you should value a persons being rather then their looks and they will immediately become more attractive to you no matter what.

Do I agree with Madame de Beaumont on that? No, not really. External appearances, charm, sexual attractiveness - all of that plays a key part in peoples decision to fall in love. I mean sure people marry for money, for safety, for stability- but are those people happy? Are those people really in a 'spellbound' love like Beauty and the Beast are? There isn't anyway to prove it, but I can guarantee that most people agree to the fact that first impressions of others - doesn't matter if they stay strangers or become lovers- are always off of looks and presentation. I give props to the idea that loving someone for who they really are is a good message, but it's also a message that shoves girls into a corner of "Oh, he's a nice guy - why don't you give him a chance?" and that's uncomfortable.

Source (x)

Source (x)

Out of all the re-tellings mentioned in the introduction, I really took a liking to The Grimm's "Frog King" one because of the particular scene Tartar mentions of the heroine "hurling the erotically ambitious frog against the wall". Also the fact that in a Scottish rendition the princess beheads her suitor, which is surprising considering that a lot of the fairy tails (or most writing in general to be honest) doesn't have a women commenting such a violent act, is pretty amusing. I think that out off all stories mentioned, this one has a moral I can actually stick with and it might just be that princess can commit crimes if they're being forced into wedlock with someone as icky as a frog. Of course, this might be me reading into it too much because the Brothers Grimm are known for having much more subtle and acceptable moral lessons to their stories then girls aren't scared too.

Source (x)

[Can we talk about how disgusted she looks by that frog??? It is so beautiful, I love it so much like her expression is just 'Dad-No-I-Am-Not-Marrying-This-Toad-Literally-Ew] 

To wrap up my reaction to this introduction, I wanted to mention the idea the Tartar brings up of 'Beauty & the Beast' being a model story rich in the expression of anxiety (specifically for women) about marriage. I agree with her that this was perhaps the idea of past writers, maybe even of the original teller, but now it's become a story that's more interested in the wild and taboo relationship between a young, naive beauty and a big, scary beast. The worst part is, unlike Little Red Riding Hood, this beast is put into a positive light. Now, I'm not trying to say the beast isn't a 'nice guy' but honestly, if you saw a young teenage girl walking down the street, kissing an older looking man with a gruff beard and an ugly expression, would you really think that was natural?

Let's take the modern definition of a 'beastly looking man' and try to pin it up with, for the sake of this, a perk, lolita looking girl - wouldn't you cringe? Be honest. I don't want to delve deeper into this, but I think the relationship between two like this can find root in things nowadays like age-gape relationship, the fetishizing (??) of young girls and older men and vice-versa. Perhaps this is just me being critical and tying it into some of the more popular pop culture - but isn't there this uncomfortable sympathy created for this large, ugly creature who could literally hurt or scare a young girl away? 

☆Jeanne-Marie LePrince de Beaumont's Beauty & the Beast☆

It's obvious that this is the story on which the cartoon movie is based off of and before I start making jokes about the talking dinning wear which I think is adorable in the film, I would like to say one thing about this story is that it's a pure and utter fantasy- right down to the core.

Starting from Beauty's request of the rose over her sisters silly wants for jewelry/clothing, down to the fact that it is her tears that bring the Beast into his true form (aka super hot prince) - it's a fairy tale that is supposed to make as stare in wonder at the power of '~*~*~ true love ~*~*~'.

I dislike it, mostly because I feel like there is just so much pity and sympathy being dragged out across the Beast because he's a rich, kind man looking for a girl to adorn in beautiful clothing and to let her live how she pleases as long as she agrees to marry him - even though he's ugly. Usually, I don't like making arguments for the 'strengthening' of male characters, but here the Beast is a total mess. The poor guy (or animal) does everything in his power and we are made to dislike Beauty because she basically 'friendzones' him - a tactic I never like because if someone is giving someone something and they don't give anything in return then obviously they're horrible - which is the case that seems to be building here with Beauty and the Beast.

But then, because Beauty feels bad about breaking the promise and sees the Beast almost dead - she automatically changes her mind and weeps for him to come back.

Beauty is a flimsy character, nothing like the heroines of the other stories we talked about in the introduction, and I wonder if she is supposed to really be a reflection of what a young women should be like? Uninterested in money and wealth at the beginning, befriends the scary looking Beast, and then cries out for him because of pity??? That just doesn't seem like a well rounded character to me at all. And when did Beauty figure out that she even loved the Beast? When he was almost dying? What a great way to confess to someone....

Anyway, THINGS TO DISCUSS IN CLASS: 

• when/why does Beauty actually fall for the Beast? Is there even a scene like this?
• Beauty's sisters. Discuss.
• what kind of character is the Beast really? what in our society/who in our society resembles the expectation of a 'Beast' and his reality? 

This Week on Let's Retell that Fairy Tail!; Bluebeard ~

☆Angela Carters "The Bloody Chamber"☆

Like in some of her other work that we've recently read, Angela Carter brings up blood a lot in this story (hence the name 'bloody' chamber I guess). Only this time around there are more subtle approaches such as the choker, which is made of rubies "A choker of rubies, two inches wide, like an extraordinary precious slit throat." (Carter, 114) that we see placed around the main characters neck, quite interestingly because "the aristos who'd escaped the guillotine had an ironic fad of tying a red ribbon round their necks at just the point where the blade would have slice through it, a red ribbon like the memory of a wound" (Carter, 115). Carter seems to incorporate the image of blood without really having to write about it at all as pieces of fashionable garments and perhaps a fore-shadowing of the poor young brides immanent future.

Speaking of that, I'd like to touch up on the parallel between the choker and the punishment which the Marquis chooses for the protagonist. When he finds out that she's been inside his forbidden room, he tells her that he'll kill her like the rest - but of course each of his wives has a different way of dying. Why is it that for this one he chooses beheading? Is it because of the choker, was that supposedly a hint of some sort, did the mother (who becomes the undying hero in the end) red past the lines and figure out his twisted message through the seemingly expensive wedding gift? Also, the painting which hangs in the bedroom, the one of Saint Cecilia, could also be a hint since she died by decapitation as well.  

The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Giles Mead

{I think the painting behind the heroine her is Saint Cecilia, wearing the same clothes and choker as the protagonist herself.}

The Bloody Chamber by aimeelockwood

{I like this image a lot because the choker actually never breaks in the story, but I feel as if here the artist portrays it as not only a choker but also bits of bloody glass, maybe the blood of the wives from before that the girl wears around her neck as a mark that tells her she is next to die???}

Another mention of blood comes up with the fact that the new bride is in fact a 17 year old virgin. Again, her purity and curiosity is compared to Eve several times in the story. The blind piano tuner says that she is 'like Eve' in she has done nothing to deserve punishment aside from being told to do the one thing she was told not to. Her virginity, especially the significance of losing her virginity and staining the sheets, is another perhaps undertone to the bloody horrors that await us in the next coming lines - Carter really knows how to drop hints if you ask me. 

But touching back up on the biblical significance in this story, there is a lot of it in the context of this story and Carter doesn't hide it. The mark that the key makes on the girls forehead is compared to the mark of Cain which he receives after killing his brother Abel, which if I remember anything from Gensis correctly, has a part where Abel's blood speaks through the soil and here again is a story with an important notion on blood. The young wife is of course seen as an Eve like figure, she even wonders if it's her innocence and musical talent that makes the Matquis fall for her - an obviously easy story to compare to the Virgin Mary. 

But most of all I would like to talk about the character of the blind piano tuner- Jean-Yves. Though he has no biblical counterpart, the fact that he is blind is something that got me thinking. Why include a blind, young boy character, especially as a potential love interest for the girl? Is it because he is the opposite of the Marquis- disabled, still young in age, poor? Does his blindness have some sort of pureness to him as well, as he cannot see the horrors of the chamber, but believes every word of it when the heroine explains it to him? The ending to 'The Bloody Chamber' has quite a happy one, for the heroine marries the blind boy and lives with him and her mother, using the castle as a school for the blind. She goes from a naive girl to an independent piano teacher all because Jean-Yves is able to help save her from her doom. Is her perhaps a symbol of some sort that Carter uses to tell a story about men in general - or about people with disability? I haven't formed much of an opinion on this yet, I would like to get input from other sources first!

And ok I lied, the thing I would like to talk most of all about is the bloody chamber itself. The line between sadomasochism and outright murder here is rather obvious, but it is also obvious that their is a heavy sexual undertone to all of the Marquis' work. When the narrator finds the book in his library, the Marquis plays it off and tells her cooingly that she's too young for such things, yet when they sleep together the heroine does admit that it was painful (and I'm pretty sure that's not just because it's her first time in bed). I think it is safe to say that the Marquis gets an erotic pleasure from killing. It goes beyond sadism though, maybe even into Erotophonophilia (lust murder??) and the way each of the last of his wives died is not a simple stab or a bullet, the murders are carefully thought out. For instance, the iron maiden is something associated with the Middle Ages, an old torture device that's probably hard to come across. The first wife is embalmed which is a lengthy and difficult process and the second has her skull strung up across a wire and beautifully decorated. The Marquis plans these out, he takes time, and probably chooses a his victims with their deaths already in mind. He probably thinks about spilling their blood while he beds them for the first time. This story is stuffed to the brim with sexual innuendo and it got me to thinking about the significance of taboo love, taboo marriage, taboo topics in general. For one, the daughter of a single-poor-mother getting married to a French, rich Marquis is already a flag and I think that the age gape, the fact that the girl feels like she is not good enough for the Marquis, that she is too young and too inexperienced, all ties into this overall topic of "wrongness" you might say. Everything in this story is just a little off, a little tilted- starting with the marriage, the opal ring (which the mother nags about), the BLIND piano-tuner, the sense of jealousy toward a man the narrator didn't even love, all of it is just a bit twisted and that's what leads up to the chamber revealing - that this whole story has been building up to this big twist.

THINGS TO REVISIT DURING DISCUSSION:

• is the girls age also a paraphilia for the Marquis
• why make Jean-Yves blind? (to add to how uncomfortable all the characters are in this story/ to highlight a disability? another paraphilia perhaps?)
• why does the narrator have no name? 

OTHER COOL ART:

ilustracion de Shaunagh Radcliffe

{Like this one because of Jean-Yves in the back! Also I couldn't find the original artist for this piece!}

✧Charles Perrault's "Bluebeard"✧

Here we have the original version of 'Bluebeard' that I was told as a child. Perrault's story is here to teach the moral that curiosity can be a fine thing, but it can also easily bring you harm. "So tormented was she by her curiosity that, without stopping to think about how rude it was to leave her friends, she raced down a little staircase so fast that more than once she she was going to break her neck." (Perrault,145). He once again makes the female protagonist out to be the one at fault for it is her disobedience that deserves the punishment (as harsh as it is). "Women succumb, but it's a fleetin pleasure/ As soon as you satisfy it, it ceases to be. / And it always proves very, very costly." (Perrault, 148).

The one parallel I'd like to draw between "Bluebeard" and "The Bloody Chameber" is that the character of 'Bluebeard' or the 'French Marquis' both seem rather different. We know the Marquis has a beard, but he is never described as being 'ugly' rather the heroine finds him more 'manly' then anything else. But here, the (literal) blue beard makes the man unattractive to women and I wonder if it is because of this that he begins killing them? I don't think Perrault's Bluebeard has any sort of sexual release from his murders, but rather is he carrying them out because of spite?

✧Brothers Grimm's "Fitcher's Bird"✧

Ok, this story had a lot of twists and turns and it was a wild ride because the sorcerer is obviously the 'Bluebeard' character, but why does he suddenly have magical powers? And what's with the egg? And why does he have to carry gold back to the mother and father? And why in the world does the bride disguise herself as a bird? Most of my reaction to this story was confusion because it jumps all around the place, but the decorated skull resonated well with 'The Bloody Chamber' since one of the wives' skulls was decorated and hung up for beautiful display, as the skull is adorned her but not by the sorcerer but by the wife.

✧Brothers Grimm's "The Robber Bridegroom"✧

Less confusing then "Fitcher's Bird", I really liked the heroine in this re-telling because she seems to have an inate bad feeling about the suitor her father picks. "-and she didn't trust him. Whenever she looked at him or thought of him, her heart filled with dread." (Brothers Grimm, 151). She does right since he turns out to be a robber and a murderer, but I also like the character of the old women who insists on helping the girl because she reminds me of Jean-Yves from "The Bloody Chamber". I wonder if she is the one who inspired his character, or better yet is she the inspiration behind the mother character in "The Bloody Chamber" since she saves the girl in this reading, and the mother saves the narrator in the other.

hi moore

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