The Tiger's Bride Characters

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.

Angela Carter’s ‘The Bloody Chamber’ attempts to change this ideal by re-establishing the feminine narrative through her story. Although the view of female as a commodity is far older than psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic theory has consistently re-enforced the ideals of women as objects and of a lower status than men (Loftus). In ‘The Bloody Chamber’ Carter works to discredit the concept of the female as a commodity. When reflecting on the Marquis’ previous wives, the narrator of ‘The Bloody Chamber’ references the portrait model saying “her face was common property” (pg. 5). From the surface, this is an allusion to the fact that she allowed herself to be painted,

These expectations increased when she was in the presence of “great power, [her] mother talking story” (20). In one particular situation, the narrator recalls her mother singing about Fa Mu Lan, the woman warrior. Although her mother expected her daughter to become a wife or a slave, the narrator had a different idea; she would “grow up a woman warrior” (20). As a young girl, she said that she “couldn’t tell where the stories left off and the dreams began” (19). This is the case in “White Tigers.” The narrator’s dream-state takes readers into the mind of a girl who attempts to please her mother and entire family by becoming a woman warrior. This is possibly an attempt to subside much of the harsh ridicule she receives from her mother due to cultural differences. Although this is a key factor in her early childhood, she learns to block out these criticisms as she grows older.

As exposed in Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid, female characters are determined to be of importance and rewarded only when they comply to the standards of a patriarchal society. Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont’s Beauty and the Beast, is merely written as guide for

Gwen Harwood’s poem The Lion’s Bride, written 1981 revolves around the time period when women were objectified as housewives whose only job was to breed and nurture children, as well as care for their husbands. This poem creates a vivid image about a lion who falls in love with the zookeepers daughter but fails to recognize her when she greets him on her wedding day, wearing her dress, and mistakes her for a ghost. In response to this misinterpretation, the lion proceeds to maul the woman and lies in wait for the zookeeper’s daughter to arrive and feed him. The underlining message behind this poem revolves around a man who believes he is caged by his lover’s father in response to the feelings the father doesn’t agree with, and on her wedding day, the lover feels as though he is destroying the woman because she is marrying someone else.

If great writers are able to escape the influences of their era and write in a timeless fashion, then Jeanne Marie LePrince de Beaumont is certainly not a great writer. Beaumont wrote Beauty and the Beast in eighteenth-century France during the reign of Louis XV. It was a time when the enormous bourgeoisie population was slowly growing in independent wealth, yet remained grossly overtaxed and starved. These peasants were systematically excluded from the aristocracy and the workings of government. France was a stronghold of the dying feudal-influenced monarchy system, in which the king declared himself an absolute monarch with the divine right to rule as

Beautiful is perhaps not how one might describe the lives of the main female characters of Absalom, Absalom! The term tragically beautiful is perhaps a more accurate description of Rosa Coldfield, Ellen Coldfield Sutpen, and Judith Sutpen. Their beauty is in the context of their struggle to live, much less thrive, in such a male-dominated environment. The excommunication from all reality is a fascinating way of building a stage on which to work notions of gender. There is, therefore, a great dichotomy of gender that emerges from two different understandings of personal relation to the surrounding world. Faulkner’s treatment of the female characters brings forth moving images and incredible social commentary. A stinging general statement about women is made by Mr. Compson: “Years ago we in the South made our women into ladies. Then the War came and made the ladies into ghosts" (7). It is in this realm that the women can be understood.

This foregrounds potential of narcissism within Beauty. The Beast allows Beauty to go back to London to be with her father under the condition that she must return before winter is over. While in London, she, “[sends] him flowers, white roses in return for the ones he had given her; and when she left the florist, she experienced a sudden sense of perfect freedom, as if she had jus escaped from an unknown danger” (48). With this gesture, Beauty feels all her debts are settled and she no longer has an obligation to the Beast. When she puts on her robe of fur, she becomes her own beast, showing a parallel between her and the Beast.

Beauty has been a word that people use to described objects, things and most important people. Beauty can be defined in so many ways. The play “Beauty” written by Jane Martin has more than just one meaning. The author uses beauty to be her main objective that makes almost every situation in the play revolve around “beauty.” Being that beauty is considered something almost all women want and it can lead to devastation when you get greedy and envious about it, as it did to both Carla and Bethany.

Beauty and the Beast is another film with questionable morals. Despite a sixty year time span between the two films, gender relations changed very little. Though the main characters come off as slightly more rounded, there are still some eerie instances that should be addressed. Belle is (yet again) a stunning young woman who is revered throughout for her

Madame de Villeneuve’s version of “Beauty and the Beast” uses excessive stereotypes, such as Beauty being named “beauty”, due to her looks,

There are many different versions of Beauty and the Beast; It is a magical story of unconditional love. It teaches children that beauty is much more then skin deep. In this assignment I am to compare two, Beauty and the Beast stories; one by the renowned, famous Grimm Brothers as presented by Disney. The other called Beastly by the modern author Alex Flinn. The two versions have many similarities but still quite a few differences.

The story “ The Lady, or the Tiger” is by Frank R. Stockton. It mostly talks about how a princess has to make a choice as do people today. Even though, the princess loved her lover she might have sent him to the tiger’s cage.

The first stanza focuses on the tigers and creates an impression of majesty and power, such as with their ‘sleek chivalric certainty’ (l.4). In psychology and literature, ‘the symbol of the cat was related to the redemption of something feminine’ , and so Rich’s use of the tigers as a predatorial and strong member of the cat family demonstrates Aunt Jennifer’s internal power that derives from her being a woman. The word ‘chivalric’ is traditionally associated with knights and military prowess, and Rich subverts this typically male adjective to the feminine tigers and their representation of Aunt Jennifer’s inner strength (l.4).