First posted June 2019.

Friends, it happened! I attended a discussion of Beauty and the Beast in which no one mentioned Stockholm syndrome! We can achieve change in our time!

Anyway, yesterday I went to a screening of Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bête and what’s on my mind about Beauty and the Beast right now is the romance. The term ‘fairytale romance’ is often met with eyerolls and vague murmurings about naivete, idealisation, and unhealthy interpersonal relationships. It’s true that there are some eyebrow-raising relationships within the realm of folklore and fairytales—Snow White’s prince stealing a pretty corpse, the Italian Sleeping Beauty, Talia, being raped in her sleep, essentially 85% of everything Zeus has ever done—but examining the angle at which we’re looking at fairytale romances will clear up why we find the Beauty and the Beast romance so particularly enduring and alluring.

Let’s talk first about the French version of Beauty and the Beast on which Cocteau’s film is based. This is a much longer fairytale than most of its era, more in the tradition of later literary fairytales than the transcribed oral stories, and much of that time is spent on Beauty’s viewpoint. The reader is very much in Beauty’s head, and Beauty’s thought process is shown through her conversations with the Beast over time. From the beginning she is taken with the Beast’s kindness and knows him to be a good person beneath his beastly appearance. She is honest about his looks initially being a barrier to any romantic feelings, but she finds that she loves him for who he is so much that his looks cease to matter.

"You are very obliging," answered Beauty, "I own I am pleased with your kindness, and when I consider that, your deformity scarce appears."

"Yes, yes," said the Beast, "my heart is good, but still I am a monster."

"Among mankind," says Beauty, "there are many that deserve that name more than you, and I prefer you, just as you are, to those, who, under a human form, hide a treacherous, corrupt, and ungrateful heart."

Next, I’d like to talk about the Italian version, “Zelinda and the Monster.” In this version, the Beast is kind in manner to Zelinda, but unlike his French counterpart, he never claims to be concerned about the Beauty for her own sake. When she rejects his offer of marriage, he says, “If you were to be my wife, wonderful things would happen, but I can’t tell you what they are.” He eventually lies to her and says that her father will die unless she consents to marry him. Zelinda, “in despair and half mad with grief,” agrees to marry him, and at that moment the Beast is transformed. And I suppose we’re meant to think they live happily ever after, but this version leaves a bad taste in the mouth that we don’t get from the French version. The Italian Beast is willing to purposefully cause distress to the Beauty and uses dishonesty to get what he wants from her. The French Beast frets himself into malaise thinking he has made Beauty unhappy. There is a selfishness and treachery to the Italian Beast that we just don’t see in the French.

Aside from the country of origin, what I find the most relevant difference between the crafting of these stories is that the French was written by Madame Jeanne-Marie LePrince de Beaumont, and the Italian by Thomas Frederick Crane (with Giuseppe Pitrè). The feminine perspective at work in the French version, to me, clears up the differences quite succinctly.

There is a central question that is either consciously or subconsciously answered by anyone making an adaptation or retelling of Beauty and the Beast: does the Beauty fall in love with a monster? LePrince de Beaumont’s answer is unequivocally no; the Beast is not a monster, though he may have the appearance of one. Zelinda’s Beast is proclaimed a monster by the very title of his story and does nothing within the story to contradict it.

If the answer to that question is yes, that does lead us more toward that detested ‘fairytale romance’ filled with unpleasantness and misery. But if the answer is no, we get a real, deep connection between the characters in the story that the audience finds fulfilling and desirable, and that is what has kept people coming back to this story for hundreds of years. Guillermo del Toro’s wonderful The Shape of Water is a great Beauty and the Beast adaptation that answers the question with a resounding no; the Asset is kind, curious, and, above all, loving. “He sees me for what I am, as I am,” as Elisa says. And in this case it isn’t just the Beast is kind to her, but also that he appreciates the Beauty for the person that she is—that they each love each other for who they are, not just based on appearances.

It reminds me in a way of the romance between Commander Shepard and Garrus Vakarian in the Mass Effect trilogy. Initially, the game writers hadn’t intended Garrus to be a romance option. He’s a spikey cricket cat bird alien with pointy teeth; why would a human (or a human player) be interested in that? Garrus was introduced as a potential romantic partner in the second game of the trilogy based on player response to his character in the first game. What the writers hadn’t counted on was a Beauty and the Beast-style reaction to a character who treats the player character with kindness, support, awe, and respect.

The Mass Effect games are hardly the only games out there with unorthodox romance options, but the running theme remains that while, yes, there are people who are into that, those characters gain the widespread popularity that they do because of who they are, not what they look like. The expectation that adherence to popular standards of beauty is what makes someone attractive is exactly what Beauty and the Beast exists to contradict. It is still actually a great moral takeaway—and many fairytale morals haven’t aged as well. Physical beauty may or may not corollate with inner beauty, but ultimately, physical beauty means nothing. One should love and be loved based on who they are, not what they look like.