Beauty and the Beast

Oh, my beloved boar-man.

Hello again, reader. This week, I'd like to talk about a story where it is the beauty on the inside that matters...as long as there's also beauty on the outside. I'm talking about Beauty and the Beast, and you can read the version I'm looking at here.

One of the morals we pick up is from the Beast himself. After Beauty has begun to get used to him, he proposes to her. If you don't ask for something, you never get it. She did refuse him, timidly, but that put the thought in her mind, and, at the end, she does agree to marry him. So, even if someone says they don't love you, just keep them prisoner in your castle for a little longer. Eventually, the Stockholm syndrome will set in and she'll even come back if you let her leave!

The next moral is, of course, about looking pretty. This is a common theme in fairy tales. I keep waiting for the villain to twirl a handlebar- mustache while chortling, but I think I'll have to keep waiting for that. In any case, as is standard, our protagonist is both beautiful and virtuous. Because the two things always go hand in hand. Once she loves the Beast for who he is, the Beast also becomes beautiful. You see, if he'd stayed ugly then he would not have been a good reward for Beauty.

So, to wrap this up, if you're going to steal a rose from a magical castle, you'd better be prepared to sacrifice your daughter, but only if she's beautiful and virtuous. If she's not, this might turn into Bluebeard's story instead.

Snow White

A dead girl? Can I keep her?

This story is a little different than the Disney version we're probably all familiar with. Go ahead and read this version here. It's a little bit more intense than the more common one, right? Snow White is seven when she's kicked out of her house for being too pretty. It is interesting to me that this is one of the few fairy tales where it's actually a bad thing to be pretty, at least at the beginning.

Also, can we talk about the seven dwarves? Not in a creepy way, lots of folks have covered that to death. In this particular story, the seven dwarves' house is incredibly clean. Just indescribably spotless. They also have dinner ready on the table for them when they get back. So, when they offer Snow White room and board for the cost of keeping house for them, how much does she actually do? The list looks pretty lengthy: "take care of our house, cook, make the beds, wash, sew and knit, and if you will keep everything neat and clean". I wonder how much of that list she actually ended up doing. Those miners are very generous.

They're also patient. I know Snow White is a child, but she opens the door for a stranger three separate times. And she nearly dies each time because of it. I do have to salute the queen's creativity, though. Lacing Snow White's corset too tightly is kind of a standard idea, at least for me, but a poison comb, and poisoning only half of an apple? That's pretty darn impressive. Through all of these various ways that Snow White almost dies, the dwarves never yell at her. They just warn her to be careful. I would have dragged her to the mine with me. Although that has its own set of dangers, so maybe not.

At the end, after all of this care that the dwarves give to her, they willingly give up her body to a prince who has seen her once and declares that he loves her. To add to this, she was seven when she was kicked out of her house. We're not told how much time passes before the prince shows up, but she's still probably a kid. Ew. I guess luckily for Snow White, when she wakes up, she decides that she loves the prince as well and is totally fine with marrying him.

In the end, everyone danced at Snow White's wedding, even the evil queen. It was the last dance she ever had. I told you it was brutal.

Jack and the Beanstalk

An ogre, just trying to life his life. With cattle on his belt.

Of course, not all fairy tales are princess tales. This week, I thought we'd take a look at Jack and the Beanstalk, found here. I managed to find a version of this story by Perrault, but he made Jack out to be much too nice of a character. Part of what I find interesting about this story is that the protagonist is rewarded for being a thief and a jerk.

Firstly, Jack is an idiot. He trades five beans for a cow. Of course the man who gives him the beans goes into detail about how the beans sprout up into the sky overnight, and then he adds that if Jack isn't completely satisfied with his product, he can have his cow back the next day. You know, if he can find this guy. It's like Jack has never been scammed before. Then, surprisingly, the beans actually grow into a beanstalk. I suppose if the beans are going to turn out to be magic, it can only be in a fairy tale.

Once Jack gets up the beanstalk, we see how rude is. After begging breakfast from the first person he sees, he hides in her oven and hears her husband talk about how he eats little boys, but the wife conceals Jack from her murderous husband. This woman feeds him and keeps him safe. How does Jack repay her? He steal a sack of gold from her. Yes, stealing it out from under her husband is just like stealing it from her. After he gets bored with the gold, Jack steals from her two more times, taking the gold-egg laying hen, and the magic harp, which are possibly the two most awesome things in their house.

We all know how it ends. Jack gets caught stealing the harp, but he manages to get away and kill the ogre, so he can live happily, and richly, ever after. And marry a princess as an add on.

I suppose the lesson to learn from this tale is that if you're going to be a thief and a jerk, then you'd better be fast. At least it's better than having to rely on being pretty.

Sleeping Beauty

The only woman with attractive bedhead.

Sleeping Beauty is another classic fairy tale with questionable morals. As with all of these tales, it was originally told for entertainment to a wide audience. There is a version where our main character gives birth to twins. Before she wakes up. We'll get to that version later. For now, we'll start with the one most people know, which you can find here.

Let's start with our main character, the Sleeping Beauty. We don't learn very much about her at all. We know she's beautiful, has the "temper of an angel" whatever that means (I'm assuming the avenging kind of angel), she's full of grace, sings like a bird, dances like a flower (which probably doesn't look like how people dance), and she plays music unlike any folks have ever heard. Other than those things that others put on her, we have no idea what she's like. She could be arrogant and have an over developed sense of vengeance. Did anyone else notice how her parents got old and died before she woke up? Maybe she decided to get revenge on the fairy who saved her. I would read that story. Either way, from what we know of her, Sleeping Beauty is not a real person. She's an idealized cut-out.

On that note, she's hardly a character in her own story. All she does is wander the castle at seventeen and find some deaf old woman so the princess can prick her finger on a spindle. Then she wakes up, talks to some stranger for hours, and marries him the night she meets him. I'm assuming he was the one who proposed. She is only a vehicle for this prince to find a bride and for the story to have a happy ending.

As far as morals go, this story doesn't have many that I've seen. If you're pretty, some guy you've never met will kiss you while you sleep and marry you that night. But only if he has to wander through a creepy castle to get to you. And only if you're not an actual person, but an idealized collection of attributes. Hopefully no one takes Sleeping Beauty as a role model.