Beauty and the Beast: General background with Links

3 Feb 2003 Beauty and the Beast: General background with Links
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/98248

Beauty and the Beast is one of the most popular fairytales with origins stretching back to Apuleius' story of Cupid and Psyche, found in The Golden Ass, alternately known as Metamorphoses.

Ashlimann: Cupid & Psyche
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/cupid.html

British Library
http://www.bl.uk/whatson/exhibitions/psyche.html
retellings of Cupid and Psyche

Latin Forum: Apuleius
http://www.lateinforum.de/persap.htm
bibliography and papers on apuleius

The first version of Beauty appears in 1740 written by Madame Gabrielle de Villeneuve as La belle et bete. The story, written for adults, takes more than 300 pages. The opening echoes the story of Job, "Once there was a wealthy merchant who had six sons and six daughters..." narrating a sequence of catastrophes which leave him penniless as they are forced to move from a the mansion of an aristocrat to the cottage of a poor plot farmer in the country where they can eke a living from the earth. Largely unwieldy for narration because of the contrivances of the supernatural powers in the likeness of squabbling faeries over the destinies of the merchant, his daughter, Beauty and the Beast. Where Shakespeare succeeds with meddling faeries in both Tempest and Midsummer Nights Dream, Villeneuve fails.

Sur la Lune: History of Beauty & Beast
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/beautybeast/history.html

Madame Le Prince de Beaumont was busily engaged tutoring young English ladies in social proprieties and grooming them for their future lives. Concerned about young ladies education, Beaumont published articles regarding pedagogy and educational reform. In 1748, her first book, La Triomph de la verite ou memoires de La Vilette appeared. Between 1740-1780, she published more than 49 volumes which included her version of Beauty and the Beast that appeared in magazine les enfants in 1756. This was followed by Magazine des adolescens (1760) and Magazine des pauvres (1768). At the ripe age of fifty, she left England to return to France where she married Thomas Pichon.

Ashlimann: Beauty and the Beast
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/beauty.html
Jeanne-Marie LePrince de Beaumont version

Beaumont cut out all the unnecesary machinations of faeries behind the scenes interfering in the daily lives of mortals. Moving from Catholic France to the rebellious England, the wealthy merchant's family got halved. However, she changed the focus of the story to emphasize the proper social role of women to be adequately prepared for marriage. The story became a vehicle for social moralism regarding the woman's role as malleable, loyal and persevering. Considering womens' subordinate role in society, given in marriages of convenience as chattels and having little or no civil rights, the story reflects attitudes clearly. Marriage for young ladies was the terror of confronting the beastly sex of men as they were raised in china-doll clothing to have drawing-room teas, attend balls and look beautiful. It also reflects the strict Christian mentality of women being servants to their husbands as Eve was created from the rib of Adam. Love is patient, kind, forebearing, it endures all, suffers all and is loyal to the end. Moreover, it transforms the beast into a gentle prince, a theme taken up ten thousand times over in literature, including Stravinsky's Rake's Progress based on the Hogarth engravings with Auden's verse libretto. And in withdrawing the faeries, Beaumont inserts some heavy Christian moralism.

A third version, edited by Andrew Lang, appeared in the Blue Fairy Book in 1889 which is a blend of the two, but turns the focus more onto self-determinism and spiritual growth as Beauty is caught between the conflict of childhood and adulthood, love for her father and her future spouse. Lang crafts the story so that it reads more naturally and takes greater interest in Beauty's psychological development, inverting, "Genesis 2:24 therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh."

Sur la Lune: Beauty and the Beast
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/beautybeast/
Madame de Villeneuve, ed Andrew Lang, Blue Fairy Book
re-issue in Dover Books

The introduction of the story though is disturbing in both versions, as Beauty is presented as the only diligent and uncomplaining member of the family when it lands in the farmer's rut. Introduced as a assiduous laborer to keep the family togeter, she humbly concedes to be sacrificed to the Beast. upon arriving in the Beast's castle, she becomes grossly self-centered and indolent, wasting her time wandering about in rooms and really doing nothing. A truly diligent person, would ast least embark on a new pet project and go on, but Beauty only becomes self-indulgent which nearly kills the Beast who proides her with everything to satisfy her whimsy.

However examined, Beauty and the Beast presents many problems which cannot be easily answered. From the pagan matriarchal rule of Venus and the seething jealousy played out between the rivals, Venus and Psyche, the story is converted to become a vehicle of Christian moralism where women are expected to be chattels in marriage and satisfy their husbands demands. Beaumont's Beauty suffers no trials or tests to recover her Beast, but psyche must search nearly to the end of the world and overcome one trial after another to recover the loss of Cupid.

Ricochet-Jeunes
Beauty and Beast: Historical Notes
http://www.ricochet-jeunes.org/eng/biblio/books/beautybeast.html
gives a chronology of the editions, major illustrators and a brief history of Madame Leprince de Beaumont

The tale of Beauty and the Beast was first collected in Gianfranceso Straparola’s Le piacevolo notti (The Nights of Straparola) 1550-53. The earliest French version is an ancient Basque tale where the father was a king and the beast a serpent. Charles Perrault popularized the fairy tale with his collection Tales of Mother Goose in 1697


The Cinderella Bibliography : Beauty and the Beast
by Russell Peck
http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/cinder/cinintr.htm
has links for student pojects at the University of Rochester, educational materials, stories & analogues, Modern Fiction, Modern Poetry, Pantomime-Drama, Drama-Television-Film_Ads, Musical Composition-Dance and a bibliography of literary criticism

18 links for story variations, 12 links for teaching materials, substantial research and bibliography for Beauty and the Beast

Illustrations:
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Sur la Lune: illus H J Ford
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/illustrations/beautybeast/fordbeauty.html

Sur la Lune: illus Walter Crane
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/illustrations/beautybeast/cranebeauty.html