History WMG / BeautyAndTheBeast

believing the the dishes and furniture are speaking to her, when really they're not. She lost herself just enough at first to see The Beast, who in reality was an ugly, very hairy and unkept man, as some sort of inhuman Beast, perhaps as a coping mechanism for not wanting to see her cruel captor as simply a man without much of a conscience but a lower creature who was such. Ultimately, she succumbs to the Stockholm Syndrome and comes to believe that she is in love with her captor. In the end, she becomes completely psychotic, believing that she has changed him into a kind, handsome hero. Her delusions were induced by the books she read and perhaps lack of sleep and other vital stuff.

[[WMG:Belle, victim to a vicious kidnapping, begins to lose her mind in captivity,]]

I got this from the above WMG about the alternate [[BrokenAesop Broken Aesops]]. The idea is that Beast was jsut as much of a jerk as Gaston, but was given a chance to change, while Gaston didn't. But Gaston did indeed have as many opportunities to change, and even knew Belle (the main catalyst for Beast) well before the Beast did. The key difference was that Beast was horrified, not just by his own change, but by the curse being inflicted on his servants. As has been stated before, it seems pretty unfair that they were punished for his offence (especially the children), and I beleive this made Beast realize what a truly selfish jerk he was. He saw how his action affected all thsoe around him, and his bitterness and rage at the start of the film was from his guilt and self-hatred more than anything else. This also explains why the servants didn't seem all that upset about it, even after he let her go; they seemed more upset over the fact taht he lost his one true love than about the curse, and even Cogworth seemed resigned to their fate. They never blamed him for what happened; they just wanted him to stop hating himself and find the love he needed to breka the spell. As to how this ties to comparisons with Gaston: the servants did challenge Beast to change even before Belle arrived, and while they followed his orders in general, they were more than willing to breka or ignore them when necessary (like helping Maurice). Gaston, on the other hand, has his near-sociopathic self-indulgence fueled by the enabling villagers. He is never questioned or challenged, except by Belle. This is key: it shows that Belle BY HERSELF could not change Gaston nor Beast, and the best part is ''she knew this''. She knew that [[LoveRedeems]] wouldn't work; Gaston was a [[Jerkass]] through and through, and she was ready to write Beast off as one too. it was only after the servants told Beast what he did wrong and showed him the folly of his ways (something that would never happen to Gaston) did she see anything worth saving in him. It may seem like random rambling from me, but it seems to me that, at least in the Disney version, the servants' role in the Beast's redemption is severly overshadowed.

There was a complaint in the JBM about the fact that Beast seems to have HUNDREDS of slaves. Well my idea is this; only the characters like Lumière, Cogsworth and Mrs. Pots were people where as the other things such as the spoons and cups were always cups and spoons that the curse had animated.

After living in close quarters with the Beast and his servants for several months, she still only ever calls him "Beast." I think it's highly unlikely that she didn't know his real name, so why else would she call him that?