Beauty and the Beast, The Originals, and a Few Retellings

Recently, before reading a few Beauty and the Beast retellings, I re-read a couple versions of the original tale.

Madame Le Prince de Beaumont

Charles Perrault

After reading the version by Madame Le Prince de Beaumont, and gagging over Beauty’s saintliness, I read the Perrault version. They were just about identical, which I found interesting.

I identified twelve story elements:

1. The Curse
2. A Reversal of Fortune
3. A Daughter Nicknamed Beauty
4. Beauty Requests a Rose
5. The Father Loses His Way
6. The Beast Drives a Hard Bargain
7. Beauty Makes a Willing Sacrifice
8. Beauty Has a Dream
9. The Magic Mirror
10. Beast Sets Beauty Free
11. Beauty is Tested
12. Beauty’s Love is Awakened by Beast’s Absence
13. Beast’s Final Transformation

The five retellings I read were:

The Fire Rose by Mercedes Lackey, which used or twisted all of the elements from the original.
Pentimento by Cameron Jace, a science fiction retelling, went in a totally different direction with aliens and other planets.
Lenore by Alyne deWinter, a gothic short story, used several elements from the original with some clever twists.
Beauty's Beast by Amanda Ashley, a bodice ripper, used a lesser number of elements from the original tale.
Little Bird of Heaven by Joyce Carol Oates, although not described as retelling of Beauty in the Beast in the synopsis, one of the reviewers suggested that it was so I included it here.

(Note: I use Beauty and Beast to refer to the main female and male character in each tale.)
(Warning: Spoilers ahead!)

Photo Credit

In The Fire Rose, The Curse is self-inflicted, a spell gone awry. Beauty is (most actively) Tested in this retelling by an earthquake and the Beast’s enemies. As for Beast’s Final Transformation, there isn't one, but they live happily ever after anyway!

In Pentimento, The Curse is global. Radioactivity has destroyed the beauty of the earth and everyone on it. This retelling had by for the most striking use of The Rose, as Beauty uses a red rose as a symbol of hope and remembering.

In Lenore, Beauty is male and Beast is female, which was refreshing. The Magic Mirror is crucial here as the source of The Curse.

In Beauty's Beast, The Curse is front and center, with the witch re-entering the story for several key scenes throughout the book. Mirrors are used to force the Beast to view his beastliness.

Is Little Bird of Heaven a Beauty and Beast retelling? Perhaps. If so, The Curse is mundane but tragic. As a young boy, “Beast” discovers his mother’s body after a sordid murder. “Beauty’s” father becomes the murder suspect. The Father Loses His Way in an exhaustive downward spiral in which he involves his daughter. Throughout the story, the question of identity is a subtext. The father’s Reversal of Fortune subsumes the daughter’s identity, even extending to her choice of career. If Beauty’s Love is Awakened by Beast’s Absence in the original, Beauty’s love is inflamed by Beast’s distance in Little Bird of Heaven. At the end of this tale, the transformation is also mundane, a release from the illusions which The Curse has spawned.

But then again, that’s the crux of Beauty and Beast … illusions and their effects.

Jane Eyre… Is She a Fairy?

I become curious about Gothic Romances, go to the Amazon Best Seller page for the genre, and download several of the top books. What a mixed bag. I finish one book, stop reading a second, and am more than half-way through Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.

I don't know why I always confuse Jane Eyre and Amelia Earheart, but I do. In the past, whenever I've come across the novel or name, Jane Eyre, I've always thought, oh, yeah, that's the chick who flies airplanes. Apparently, Eyre and Earheart are homophones in my mind. Shoulder shrug. Palms to the ceiling. Look, I have no excuse, it's just what happens. But Jane Eyre hangs out in the top 20 Gothic Romances, so for $0.99 I'll check it out.

OMG. That opening scene is so fantastic. Funny, in a grim way. Sad. Devastating. I have to re-read it. John Reed throws the book… AT HER HEAD. And so Charlotte Brontë reels in another reader. And by the time I reach Jane's exit interview with Mrs. Sarah Reed, I've join the swelled ranks of those who've come before me—thousands of ghostly readers (dead and alive) lined up through time fist-pumping "Our Jane."

Because she kind of becomes "Our Jane." The heroine who finds her voice, and at such a tender age. To be able to deliver so severe a tongue-lashing—and with such clarity—at ten years old. Would that have been me, I dream. (Maybe others do too. Uhmhum.)

Look, the book is old. Orphanages, rigid social classes, gender stereotypes, and tedium abound. The best bits are Rochester's claims that Jane is a fairy, some creature from Elf-land. And of course, there's that nod to Beauty and the Beast…

The Monster of Blackwell

I'm still in the midst of The Red Garden by Alice Hoffman. Tonight, I finish the "The Monster of Blackwell."

It's bruising and graceful—a tender, aching spin on the iconic tale of beauty and the beast. Red-haired Kate is the beauty; and Matthew's the beast that hides in the woods and becomes a bear.

One day Kate loses herself when she loses a boy; Matthew finds them both.

And so begins another kind of hiding, a different way of seeing, but it's all wrapped up in melancholy. Because Matthew is so ugly he can't even look at himself and people run away from him. And Kate is the daughter of the free-spirited sister, Azurine, who went to Paris in the story before.

That's how The Red Garden works, a loosely woven cloth that the forward momentum of time unravels thread by thread.

I want Matthew to stay, to become an impressive man on the outside, too. That would be a different fairytale, charming and soft. Not one that cuts so deep you nearly die from a single wound.

Sigh. I can only read one story at a time.