Does The Beauty And The Beast Encompass The Modern Feminist?

Belle is the first character we really notice a defiance of gender stereotypes. She is a nerdy, withdrawn girl who loves to read. Her dream that she sings about is to leave her provincial town and seek a more adventurous life. She is very beautiful, and Gaston, the antagonist, sees this clearly.

In Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Belle is misunderstood, kind, and perceptive. Belle is shown to be misunderstood when she is walking through the streets, reading her book. The other townspeople remark, “that girl is strange, no question” (Beauty and the Beast). With the simple act of reading a book, the townspeople are quick to cast her out. At no point do any of the townspeople learn more about her to fully understand her. Even though she is misunderstood, Belle is also kind. After being taken prisoner at the castle, she helps the beast relearn several basic life skills, like how to use utensils and how to read. After reading him Romeo and Juliet, Beast makes the request that she read it again. She turns it back on him and asks him to read. When he hesitates, she realizes that he has forgotten how, and she says, “Here, let me help you” (Beauty and the Beast). Through helping him instead of questioning or taunting him, she shows the kind and

Belle is extremely important to original story, and the movie. Maybe you are asking yourself why? Well, she is for surely one of the two main characters, the other being the beast whom she is supposed to fall in love with to make him become a man again. Especially in the original book version, it is more focused on Belle because they leave out the “evil sisters”. She still has bitter

She starts crying and accepts his proposal if he just stays with her, “Alas! I thought I had only a friendship for you, but the grief I now feel convinces me, that I cannot live without you.”(Beaumont). Then the beast is transformed into a handsome prince and they live happily ever after. The Disney version starts with a spoiled, selfish and unkind prince is transformed into a hideous beast by a misleading and beautiful enchantress, “She warned him not to be deceived by appearances, for beauty is found within.”(Beauty And The Beast 1991). If he cannot learn to love another and earn her love also before his 21st birthday the spell will never be broken and he is doomed to remain a beast for the rest of his life. A few years after the spell was placed on him Belle’s father gets lost in the woods near the beast´s castle and he is chased by wolves into the castle to get shelter, where he is captured by the beast and is thrown into the dungeon for being a trespasser. While the father is imprisoned by the beast, Belle is in the village being harassed by the village strongman Gaston who asks her frequently to marry him. Belle soon starts to worry about her father and ends up finding him in the castle where she trades him places. When the beast finally gets her to warm up to him Belle’s father is sick, and he allows her to go save

Belle’s story of living with a beast is re-evaluated, claiming that she is not as sane as she was once perceived. When Belle enters the stage in a straight jacket and tied to a chair, there is a realization that she was dealing with a mental illness the whole time, something that is prevalent in our current society. In addition, her familiar radiant yellow ball gown was concealed by the straight jacket, blocking out her previous notion of nativity with the comprehension that it is not sensible to live and interact with a talking creature. The addition to Belle’s costume demonstrates

The biggest lesson that came to mind was not to judge a book by its cover. True beauty is found within. It may take a while to surface and show itself, but it eventually will become known. Belle is frightened and views The Beast as nothing but a monster. She only sees what’s on the outside. In actuality, The Beast is not really a monster, but a cursed lonely man who made a poor choice. Beauty is only skin deep. Belle doesn’t realize it until she spends time and understands who The Beast really is as a person.

“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.

Beauty and The Beast (Disney, 1991) is the first Disney princess that is not presented as a helpless young girl. Bell is an independent character that she wants more than the average life she is living. Early in the movie, she is shown the idea of love with a male character Gaston; she is quick to turn him down, this was the first instance that a Disney princess has turned down a strong male character that other characters in the movie are in love with. Bell takes initiative to save her father from the beast, instead of waiting for another male to save the day. She has been the first Disney princess to put other people’s safety in front more than her own since later on she is shown to want It to save the beast even if it ruins her reputation.

The first thing that comes to mind about this story is the importance of inner beauty, and how people’s appearance does not identify their personalities. When Beauty looks passed the Beast’s ugly appearance, and his lack of intelligence, she sees a kind heart inside him – the virtue that she most desired. However, in the 18th century, when this fairy tale was created, the story’s original purpose could aim for a different direction. As Lurie mentions, many stories back then with a female character “seems to be about the proper behavior of women” (360). The character Beauty, has all the possible virtues.

Disney’s Beauty and the Beast deprive Belle of her independence, freedom, and self worth. As opposed to the men in Disney’s version of the story, Belle is portrayed as demure and civilized. Beast is of course a Beast, but Gaston is downright beastly with a thin veneer of good looks. The main reason Beauty and the Beast was such a favorite of mine, was that Belle seemed to be in charge of her own life, she chose to be studious and not vain, she chose to rescue her father and go to the beast, she chose each aspect of her life, but it is Beast who progresses from an errant and temperamental child to a respectful Prince. Despite having independence (however limited) the story no longer is her story. She is the supporting character in the story of first the father, then Gaston and finally the

We could see that the prologue narration that opens the film is narrated by a third person, a woman’s voice that belonged to the character Mrs. Potts. By having a third person narration in the opening scene, it helps us understand more about the beast’s background. We know that the cause is the beast’s act of unkindness, which register the effect. The effect seen here is his punishment living under the monstrous form of a beast and the fact that he has to earn true love to break the curse. Based on the viewers already knowing the story that the film will tell from the original classic, we expect that the Beast and Belle and their actions will intertwined with one another. Our expectations are characteristics of narrative form itself. We expect that Belle will be the one that breaks the spell so the beast can transform back to his original human form. Along with this, the viewers picks up cues that the two main protagonists will fall in love based on their interactions with one another. The narrative also cues us to draw parallels among the characters. We could identify the parallels among the servants in the beast’s castle to the talking antiques. An example is how the talking teapot is actually the servant Mrs. Potts and the head of the household staff turns out to be Cogsworth the mantel clock. These characteristics of narration form will give the audience the anticipation of whether or not the beast will find true love beyond his monstrous

Belle was kind to the Beast, and then she found her prince. It took courage to look into the eyes of someone that took away everything and see the good.

Beauty’s role in beauty and the beast glorifies her as a sweet girl who can find light in any darkness. She prefers to move forward in life rather than sulk in misery. Being such a positive female character allows her to fall in love with a man who is not of the society standards of handsome, name Beast. She was more intent on focusing on what he had to offer as a person. Karen Rowe states in “Feminism and Fairy Tales” “such alluring fantasies gloss the heroine's inability to act self-assertively, total reliance on external rescues, willing bondage to father and prince, and her restriction to hearth and nursery” (Rowe). The heroine being beauty in this case, doesn't have opinions or rights because her character wasn't created to. Rowe believes that fairytales have paved the way for our expectations towards what women and men should be doing and what romance is. Rowe argues that “These "domestic fictions" reduce fairy tales to sentimental clichés, while they continue to glamorize a heroine's traditional yearning for romantic love which culminates in marriage” (Rowe). Beauty’s character found herself in these “sentimental cliches” with her

For example, Beauty’s curiosity led her to finding the love of her life; the beast. While Beauty had many characterstics that were peculiar to her town, Cinderella lacked much personality. The moral of the story was having a gracious attitude will lead people to their dreams, hence Cinderella had always been nice and hopeful but lacked other traits like confidence. Therefore, even though Cinderella conveys the importance of the personal traits, kindness and being hopeful, it lacks other personal traits needed for an assertive character such as strength and courage. Another distinguishing feature between Cinderella and Beauty is Beauty’s ability to make her decisions on her own. When Beauty’s father, Maurice, had not returned home, Beauty took the liberty of searching for him herself without anyone’s consent or saying. This scene illustrates Beauty’s independence and self motivation because instead of waiting until her father to come home, she went to look for him alone. Ultimately, she inspires people to strive for independence and not reply on other people because it builds confidence and

Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la Bête) is a traditional fairy tale firstly written by the French Gabrielle- Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve and published in 1740 in French as a book. There are many adaptations of the fairy-tale all over the world in various mediums such as for the television, for the stage and for the screen. Some are more faithful to the original and some others are very far from it. The most commonly known version today is Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont’s version which was published in 1756 and it was a shorten, simplify and revised rewriting of the original because it addresses children. In this essay, we will compare and contrast Beaumont’s version with the modern film adaptation Beastly (2011) directed by Daniel Barnz and