Compare and Contrast: Beauty and Beast Essay

Throughout history, the use of subliminal messaging has been highly prevalent within various forms of media consumed by the human race. Using it allows authors to influence their political or societal viewpoint through implicit methods. Even stories as rudimentary as those produced for the entertainment of children, contain hidden messages deeply imbedded within them. Marxist theory, the analysis of the role of politics, money and power within literary works, allows readers to examine principles promoted by the author; these can be especially demonstrated in Jeanne-Marie LePrince de Beaumont’s Beauty and the Beast. These themes are exemplified through the bourgeoisie mindset of the elder sisters, the proletariat mentality of Beauty and the direct influence of wealth on the prominence of the merchant.

The fairytale “Beauty and the Beast” by Jeanne-Marie LePrince De Beaumont was produced in France in 1756. The story is about a wealthy merchant with six children, three boys and three girls. With the story’s primary focus on the girls, we learn that the youngest of the daughters, named Beauty, was admired for her kindness and well behaved manners. Due to Beauty being the town favorite, her sisters grew jealous and hated her. When Beauty’s father falls in debt with a Beast, her father sends her off to live with the Beast. In the end, Beauty gets to know the Beast and accepts to be his wife. Although, Beauty and the Beast have their ‘happily ever after’, social and economic complications hindered their relationship.

The story of the Beauty and the Beast is well known amongst all ages. Though the story they portray in the Disney version is much different than what they have portrayed it in France. La Belle et la Bête has been produced twice, once in 1946 and again in 2014. These two movies tell the same story but in very different ways. The perception of this story has changed between the different time periods.

As a child, I was told fairytales such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs every night before I went to sleep. Fairytales are an adventurous way to expand a child’s imagination and open their eyes to experience a new perspective. Modernizations of fairytales typically relate to a specific audience, such as adolescence, and put a contemporary spin on the old-aged tale. Instead of using whimsical themes heavily centered in nature, the contemporary poems connect with the reader in a more realistic everyday scenario. Also, many modernizations are written in poetic form to help reconstruct a flow in the piece and to develop or sometimes completely change the meaning from that of the original fairytale. Comparing Grimm’s Fairytale Snow White

Seger states that in fairy tales "an old woman, a dwarf, a witch, or a wizard helps the hero . . . The hero achieves the goal because of this help, and because the hero is receptive to what this person has to give" (173). Conversely, Beast is helped by the very damsel he imprisons. Belle is a normal woman, not a witch or a wizard; she has no special powers and is not old or dwarfish in any way. Also, Beast is extremely reluctant to accept any help from her. In the Disney version of the story, Belle tries to teach Beast how to control his temper and be more compassionate and loving. Beast is not receptive at all to this help throughout the story, but still manages to defeat the curse left on him by a self revelation. He decides after Belle's departure from his castle to learn to love and be kindhearted. Although her help may have had an impact on his transformation, it was the mere presence of her and his own self conscience that ultimately helped him conquer his relentless curse. This is quite different from what Seger illustrates in her hero myth theory.

Finding the similarities and differences between two things using just the brain and memories can be difficult sometimes. Using the internet, books, and movies can be extremely beneficial when it comes to comparing and contrasting. Something good to compare and contrast , that is very popular, would be Beauty and The Beast, as there is an original book, a cartoon, and a remake movie. What is your favorite book that has a movie made about it?

“Beauty and The Beast” is a classic well known romantic Disney movie that depicts the gender role of men and women in society. The film is based upon a smart young female protagonist named Belle who is imprisoned by a self-centered young prince after he has been turned into a beast. They both learn to love each other in the end and throughout the film there are several examples shown portraying the roles of gender. In the film the main characters Gaston and the Beast portray themselves as rude, conceited and more important than the woman even though the main character Belle is a woman whom is considered odd, yet smart, and unrelated to most women in society.

At the beginning of the story, Beauty is defined through objectifying feminine attributes. In the first line, Beauty is looking “outside her kitchen window ”(Carter 137), her being in the kitchen represents conformity to feminine stereotypes. She is then described as being so pale that “you would have thought she was made of all snow” (carter 137). The whiteness of the snow symbolizes her purity. She represents a desire to conform to feminine sterotypes through her desire for the white rose Like Beauty, the beast is not free from conditional gender roles either. Being a lion-like animal, he is large and

The 2 versions of Beauty and The Beast that we looked at in class, The Italian short story, and English film, were different in many ways but also had similarities. In both the movie and the short story, The Beast is mean at first, trapping Belle in his castle, but towards the middle to end of the book and movie he allows her to leave the castle, giving her more freedom. Also a similarity is at first Belle and the Beast did not necessarily like each other, so when Belle left him to visit her father/family, the Beast expected her to leave but inevitably she returns because he is sick or the castle was being attacked. Some similarities in the book and movie might not be as apparent as the differences, however there are some key similarities.

The beast is described as this dreadful monster, the epitome of a masculine figure. He is a provider for beauty and her family and is therefore suppose to be seen as a dominant figure in the story. In the book Go! Be A Beast: Beauty and the Beast written by Marina Warner, Warner says “Beauty stand in need of the Beast, rather than vice versa, and the Beast beastliness is good, even adorable''(Warner 416). By the end of the story it is realize that the Beast is really dependent on Beauty and not vice versa. Without Beauty acceptance and true love kiss, the beast isn’t able to become the handsome guy he truly is. Therefore the beast would be left to live a life of

Beauty and the Beast is done in third person where as Beastly is done in first person, it is from the beast’s point of view. This gives you more information of how the beast is feeling and thinking and reveals more of his personality. Most stories are either done from the beauty’s point of view or an omniscient view. In some cases the omniscient view tells you things that the character would not and helps clarify the story. Beauty and the beast is an omniscient view which is why it is easier for younger children to understand. Beastly is done in first person who lets the person watching it know more about him and how he is feeling and what he wants.

Lyon”. Carter retells the well-known fairytale “Beauty and the Beast,” but her version is far from “classic.” It is a tale of self-discovery and rejection of female objectification. In the beginning of Carter’s retelling of the classic fairy tale “Beauty and the Beast,” Beauty is seen as a penniless, helpless girl, whom the rich, powerful and world-weary Beast forces to live in his house. When her father uses her as payment for his debt to the Beast she becomes an object. However, she rapidly becomes the more active, experienced, and adventurous character. Throughout the story, Beauty proves herself to be more than just a traditional fairy tale heroine, but in the beginning, she conforms to the paradigm. Just like many of Carter’s heroines, she must start within to be able to then break free from the restrictions and assumptions of patriarchal society. In the words of da Silva, “The daughter is conscious of her annihilation in the patriarchal society but she doesn’t have autonomy to overcome it.” Even though Beauty finds enjoyment in reading fairy tales while living with the Beast, it is as though despite living in a modern world with telephones and cars, Beauty wants to believe in the conventional “happily ever after.” By comparing Beauty to the immaculate snow upon which she gazes Carter emphasizes Beauty’s femininity, innocence, and virginity. By associating Beauty

European folktales, through their malleable nature, embody a dynamic role in cultural history. These tales, and further their adaptions, provide insight into varying time periods and spaces. The modifications of tales and the varying interpretations surrounding them, provides much information in this. Several popular and enduring fairy tales, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Puss in Boots, and Sleeping Beauty will be examined in this essay. By tracking the changes of these tales the deeper implications regarding differing societies and period can be gained.

Madame Le Prince De Beaumont wrote one of the first versions of Beauty and the Beast in 1745. She was a teacher and her intent was to teach her students moral lessons. She felt so strongly in these lessons that she turned them into a fairy tale to help her students grasp them. The story starts off with a merchant who had three daughters and three sons. The two older girls were very arrogant because they were rich. The sisters would not marry because they wanted to be wed to someone who was very rich. Beauty was the youngest and she had many suitors, but she refused to marry because she felt she was too young and she wanted to stay with her father longer. The merchant loses his wealth and is forced to move to the country. The two older sisters were devastated and lost all of their suitors. Beauty on the other hand was so nice that her suitors still wanted to marry her. A while after their move to the country, the merchant got a note that said his stuff had arrived. This would make them rich again. ?When the sisters got word of this they begged

The relationship between Beauty and Beast is chaotic and unhealthy in every possible level. Beauty whose truly too nice marries Beast who showed right in the start of the story that he could have hurt Beauty’s father just because he picked up one rose. Also as Beast acts selfishly manipulating Beauty to stay with him, Beauty probably never even noticed this as she is too blind to see anything bad in people. This relationship has every ingredient to make it unhealthy and