History Literature / BeautyAndTheBeast

* AlienGeomitries: Beauty wishes the aviary was closer to her bedroom and immediately opens a door that leads to her room when she was pretty sure these were nowhere near eachother.

''[[http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/beautybeast/index.html Beauty and the Beast]]'' is an old French FairyTale that was, at the time, basically propaganda for ArrangedMarriage using RagsToRoyalty. Over time it has lost that meaning and become more romanticized. The original literary version of the story was written in 1740 by Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve, and was a sprawling and convoluted affair of {{contrived coincidence}}s and last-minute exposition, in which the Beast and Beauty were revealed to be [[KissingCousins first cousins]], and Beauty is [[HalfHumanHybrid half-fairy]] (on her mothers' side), and royalty (on her fathers' side). In 1756, Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont condensed it to the version which is best known today (excepting Disney's). While using tropes found in older folk fairy tales, de Villeneuve's version is the first to use the title "Beauty and the Beast", and the psychological plot -- revolving around Beauty's mental conflict -- is not found in folk tales prior to this one.

It is Aarne-Thompson-Uther tale type ATU 425C, "Beauty and the Beast", which has a good number of variants (some found [[https://web.archive.org/web/20200223031308/http://surlalunefairytales.com:80/beautybeast/other.html here]] and [[http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0425c.html here]]), but is less common than tales of 425A, such as "Literature/EastOfTheSunAndWestOfTheMoon". The counterpart in the [[Creator/TheBrothersGrimm Grimm collection]] is "Literature/TheSingingSpringingLark". Also compare "Literature/TheFeatherOfFinistTheFalcon". Distantly related to the Graeco-Roman myth of "Myth/CupidandPsyche".

* WifeHusbandry: In the original tale written by Villeneuve, the fairy had been the Prince’s nurse and raised him from infancy, even allowing the Prince to call her "mother". It was when he was around 14 thatthe Fairy realised that the Prince has become quite beautiful, and she began to long for his hand in marriage. Soon afterwards, the Fairy requests the permission to marry him from the Queen (despite the fact that the Prince has already turned down her proposal, on the grounds that he was too young, and he didn’t love her in that way), too which the Queen rejects on the grounds that the Fairy is already too old to wed her son. [[IfICantHaveYou The Fairy is obviously not impressed, and decides to take her anger out on the Prince...]]

It is Aarne-Thompson type 425C, which has a good number of variants (some found [[https://web.archive.org/web/20200223031308/http://surlalunefairytales.com:80/beautybeast/other.html here]] and [[http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0425c.html here]]), but is less common than tales of 425A, such as "Literature/EastOfTheSunAndWestOfTheMoon". The counterpart in the [[Creator/TheBrothersGrimm Grimm collection]] is "Literature/TheSingingSpringingLark". Also compare "Literature/TheFeatherOfFinistTheFalcon". Distantly related to the Graeco-Roman myth of "Myth/CupidandPsyche".

* CurseEscapeClause: A girl (specifically a [[NatureAdoresAVirgin virginal one]] in some versions) must fall in love with and/or agree to marry the Beast in spite of his monstrous appearance for him to be restored to his human form.

* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: It's quite a common belief that the story is meant to be a metaphor for arranged marriages, but quite a few readers have noticed that the Beast's curse comes across as a fantasy-world metaphor for having been sexually assaulted.
** In the book it's mentioned that the Prince is young, young enough that he can’t be left home alone when his mother the queen goes off to war, and a Fairy requests that the Queen leave her son in her care. But the fairy falls in love, and the now fifteen year old Prince doesn’t feel the same way. When the Fairy realises that she isn't going to get her way, she severely hurts the Prince and ruins any chance of him being able to be married normally. The Prince is left, abused, tortured, transformed, and not even able to properly express himself—able to think just as he normally does, but unable to express those thoughts, unable to communicate effectively, unable to even let the Beauty get to know him as he really is- much like anyone else who has been raped or sexually assaulted.
** Even the encounter with the merchant can be read as a form of sexual assault, as what the Merchant did to Beast was very wrong. The Beast sheltered, protected, fed him, lavishly met his every need, provided his transport home. The Merchant commits three serious crimes when he plucks that rose. (1) He broke the social contract between host and guest, taking more than was offered, without permission or consideration, dishonoring his host's generosity; (2) he stole property that happened to be one of the Beast's most prized possessions; and (3) what the property he stole was: a rose. Of all the fairy tale symbols of beauty and fertility, the rose is special. What might the plucking of that rose might mean to Beast? Ponder the meaning of the word: deflower. Given Beast's history, the theft of his rose is no paltry offense. Even in ignorance of his host's circumstances, the Merchant's ungrateful choice to steal his host's rose is inexcusable. If we cannot in good conscience blame the victimized Beast for being cursed in the first place, how can we then blame him for his anger when he is re-victimized by yet another questionable parent-figure? The Merchant's act can be interpreted as being a sexual insult toward a character who expressed nothing but compassion toward a stranger in need. This is why the offender's crime can be answered only by either death or a fulfillment via marriage of the "deflowering" the offender initiated. Since marrying the Merchant is certainly out of the question for Beast, once Beast learns who the rose is for, a path toward mercy is revealed. For all that it's a grim choice to ask a man and his daughter(s) to make, it's still a choice. A choice that can satisfy the interests of both justice and love, unraveling the horrors of rape for all the characters. The Beast insists that it must be the daughter's choice whether or not she will intervene to finish what her father started (a clue about Beast's true character).

* MassiveNumberedSiblings: The Villeneuve version of the tale gives Beauty six brothers as well as five sisters. Subsequent versions reduce the number of siblings(see RuleOfThree below).

* MissingMom: Beauty's adoptive family is missing one despite the merchant having a dozen children. In her biological father's kingdom, he's not entirely sure what happened to his wife but we the reader get to learn why she's missing in the backstory.

** The first time, the queen politely rejects the old Fairy’s proposal of marriage, which the Prince [[AndNowYouMustMarryMe does not object to]].[[note]] In the original tale by Gabrielle de Villeneuve, due to a declaration of war, the Queen entrusted her infant son into the care of a Fairy. After leaving for a few years, and returning when the Prince was around 14, upon seeing how beautiful the Prince had become in his adolescence, the Fairy realised that she’d fallen in love with him and asked him to marry her; something he turned down on the grounds of believing that not only was he still too young to enter into such an arrangement, but he also saw the Fairy as nothing more than a maternal figure in his life. Scarcely a year later, when the war is over, the Fairy decides to ask the Queen for her permission to marry the Prince, something that the Queen turns down for many a reason. [[IfICantHaveYou You can guess what happens next...]][[/note]]
** The second time, after the Prince had been freed from his curse, the queen objects to him marrying Beauty (before the reveal of her parentage) because she is a merchant's daughter and, she claims, affection for her missing niece.

* SwitchedAtBirth: In Villeneuve's version, this turns out to have happened to Beauty but not at birth. The merchant's youngest daughter, a toddler, was ill and taken to the countryside to for treatment. She conveniently perished just as the good fairy was looking for a safe place for her niece.

* [[KidHero Teen Hero]]: Beauty is canonically sixteen in the original tale by Madame de Villeneuve. Likewise in the same version, the Prince became a war hero at fifteen after saving his Queen Mother’s life.

* VagueAge: The Prince/Beast. Beauty is canonically sixteen in the original tale by Madam de Villeneuve, but the only age we’re given of the Prince is when he’s fifteen years old and was cursed, though the story implies that only a year or two has progressed since that day so he’s possibly around 16-18. The fact that the Queen’s permission to marry the Prince is required by both the Fairy and Beauty only cements this possible age.

** Additionally, the Queen tries to veto the marriage. After the explanation, she says, by way of apology, that she had recently learned of her niece and had thought that a more suitable match than a merchant's daughter -- but now, of course, Beauty is the niece.

* WifeHusbandry: In the original tale written by Villeneuve, the fairy had been the Prince’s nurse and raised him from infancy, even allowing the Prince to call her ‘mother’. It was when he was around 14, the Fairy realised that the Prince has become quite beautiful and she began to long for his hand in marriage. Soon afterwards, the Fairy requests the permission to marry him from the Queen (despite the fact that the Prince has already turned down her proposal on the grounds that he was too young, and he didn’t love her in that way), too which the Queen rejects on the grounds that the Fairy is already too old to wed her son. [[IfICantHaveYou The Fairy is obviously not impressed and decides to take her anger out on the Prince...]]

* AdaptationalVillainy: Beauty's sisters get this treatment in Beaumont's version, going from somewhat self-centered and envious of Beauty in Villeneuve's original story to flat-out evil sisters who plot to stop Beauty from returning to the Beast in the hope that it will cause him to get angry and devour her (even though in Villeneuve's story, they were actually more than happy to see her return to the Beast if only because their suitors were getting too enamored of her and it was her well-meaning father and brothers who begged her to stay longer). Ironically, they often undergo AdaptationalHeroism in modern retellings, being portrayed as completely supportive and loving of Beauty in Robin [=McKinley=]'s ''[[Literature/BeautyARetellingOfBeautyAndTheBeast Beauty]]'', ''Literature/RoseDaughter'', and several other retellings.
* AdaptationSpeciesChange: [[spoiler:Beauty is actually a half fairy in the original version, while most versions made her a full human]].