(I hope this is the right place to put this, mods feel free to move it elsewhere!)

A hideous beast falls in love with a beautiful young girl. Such is the essence of the “beauty and the beast” story type. Whether it’s an actual beast, a giant gorilla, a hunchback, a wild jungle man, or a masked mystery who haunts an opera house, the idea remains the same: the ugly and unlovable develops a passion and longing for the lovely and pure.

Each story is slightly different. Sometimes, as in the classic Beauty and the Beast, the girl learns to love the monster for his heart, not his appearance, and they live happily ever after. Other times, like in Tarzan, the beauty falls in love with the beast, but cannot bring herself to share her life with him, leaving him lonely and brokenhearted. Still other stories, such as King Kong or The Hunchback of Notre Dame feature a girl who is repulsed by the beast. All different, yet all the same.

Why do we love this story so much? Why does it continue to attract us in its various forms? And why is it that we sympathize with the beast so strongly? What part of us is drawn to this tale as old as time?

I noticed as I was thinking over this topic that the oldest and greatest story in the history of the universe is actually the opposite. Rather than a beast who loves and sacrifices himself for a beauty, a Beauty, perfect, flawless, without blemish or spot, descended from His throne to sacrifice Himself for the beast whom He loved more than anything — us. We are the beast.

Thus, we relate to the beasts in the stories. At first glance, I thought that our love for the tales might be related to pride. We want to believe that we are truly beautiful underneath our blemished, ugly exterior, that our hearts are good rather than “desperately wicked and deceitful above all things” as the prophet Jeremiah tells us. We want to think that there is something in us that would be drawn to the beauty, something innately good.

But a friend encouraged me to look deeper, by pointing out the redemption of the beast in most of the stories. Tarzan is wild, hopeless, a true animal without any ethics or understanding of love, until his beauty enters the jungle. The Beast too is wild, animal and completely selfish until Beauty finds her way into his castle, and her lovely spirit calls out love in his heart. Quasimodo changes from a cowardly kidnapper to a man who is willing to lay down his life for Esmeralda, while Erik, the Phantom, goes from a selfish, monstrous ogre, to being willing to give up the woman he loves when he knows that he is not best for her.

Perhaps then, these famous tales present a stronger resemblance to our own story than one might expect. As the beast, we need to see that a beauty can love us, despite what we are. And the love of the one true Beauty is the only thing that can redeem us from our ugly past, the only thing that can call forth true, though still flawed, love. They are a reflection, if a vastly imperfect one, of our own story.

Thus, we shall doubtless continue to read and write beauty and the beast narratives, no matter how many we’ve experienced before. They give us hope, by pointing us to our Beauty, who loved us despite our beastly character, and whose love and purity cannot help but create beauty in all of us, if we only keep our eyes on His glorious light.

Disclaimer: I have not read/seen all the stories mentioned in this article, and thus cannot recommend them — and I doubt I would recommend most even if I had read them.

Do you have any thoughts about the Beauty and the Beast story type? Have you written or do you plan to write one? If so, how are you going to do it?

Very interesting thoughts, Gracie. Thankyou for sharing them!

One thing I often think about concerning Beauty and the Beast type stories is how the beast became one in the first place. Often I find the Beast an object of sympathy because we don't always know what caused the beastly character to become so in the first place. Was the prideful attitude a result of a neglected childhood? Was the cowardly spirit from a painful experience in their youth? I don't know. But those are often ponderings that come to mind when any character is labelled "the beast" of the story.

Those are a few random thoughts for the time being, but I hope to be back with more rambles after some more pondering and probably reading everyone else's posts on here.

Yes, very good thoughts. I'd never thought much about these stories before, other than Tarzan, which I've read. Or, the first three books at least. I'm not sure his story really counts as a Beauty and the Beast story though.

Also a good point about how the beast is an object of sympathy. He tends to have a Painful Past.

Good thoughts ... but, as usual, it's not anywhere near that simple. "Snow White and Rose Red" is far closer to "Beauty and the Beast" than Tarzan (which ... the story I've heard was that Burroughs got started writing those when he read some "pulp" stories and said something to the effect of, "If the public wants something that bad, I can do that!"), as is "Bluebeard." There are, in my opinion, far too many (really, really old) stories (the Lang Fairy books and the Child ballads only scratch the surface ...), in far too many different versions (that's the folk process and the oral tradition for you ...) that it's usually far better to work toward Truth from individual stories than by any sort of taxonomy.

I think Tarzan counts as a Beauty and the Beast story because while not physically ugly, he was unable to be loved by the beauty for some other kind of ugliness... in this case, his behavior. Though Tarzan has a really lame ending, and I'm not very fond of it.

Anyhow, good thoughts, both of you! The beast does seem to often have a painful past, either imposed on him by others (Erik) or of his own making (The Beast). He can be an object of sympathy both because of his pain, and because, I think, in every case he wants to be loved. We can all relate with that, we all want to be loved, especially by someone beautiful, whether in form or spirit.

Thank you for your thoughts also, Kingjon! I recognize that it is not that simple, but I see value in finding patterns that we can work off of and expand, that resonate widely or even universally with an audience. However, you're right to remember that it's not just a "simple formula" to plug into. It's far more complicated, as should be our stories.

Which Tarzan though? Jane did love him, but she wouldn't marry him because she was already engaged.

I suppose this could be almost like an archetype story, similar to archetype characters.

Interesting thoughts...

Yes. This actually is the usual course of events in "beauty and the beast" stories in my experience... with the one major exception that I know of being "Beauty and the Beast" itself. Jane loves Tarzan, but doesn't marry him (and is rather stupid about it, really ), Christine and Esmeralda and Faye do love Erik and Quasimodo and King Kong, but not in a romantic way. Rather in a compassionate way.

Belle/Beauty, on the other hand, does end up marrying the Beast. But this seems to be the exception, interestingly.


Yes, exactly.

(Yes, Jane wasn't that great of a character)

Archetypes are cool.

Agreed.

One thing that is good is to learn to work within archetypes while still being original.

Yeah. That's important.

"Snow White and Rose Red" has the heroine marry the "beast" character (who's a most virtuous prince under an enchantment), and "Bluebeard" starts with the female lead marrying the title character---and as I said, I think both of those stories are far closer to "Beauty and the Beast" than Tarzan is.

The trouble---what I was trying to get at in my wail of "It's not that simple ..."---is that for every story (of sufficient antiquity---there's only one Tarzan (ignoring recent fan-fiction) because Burroughs' creation is too recent to have gone through the folk process) any given proposed "archetype" purports to explain, there are often a half-dozen versions of that story that contradict the theory, and a dozen more stories that it ought to explain (because they're so similar to the ones you started with) but can't. This is rather like (to introduce a math/physics joke---sorry, I was a computer science major ...) the "proof" that all odd numbers are prime: "1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is experimental error, 11 is prime, 13 is prime, so by extension all odd numbers are prime."


I agree ... but it's not helpful, and not good practice (I speak here as a sometime academic) to start with a very few items from a class of items and then draw sweeping conclusions about all items in that class from just those items. The reason I objected so verbosely is that if I were asked for "three stories that could be titled 'Beauty and the Beast'" (or however you want to phrase the criterion), I would not have picked Tarzan, King Kong, or "The Hunchback of Notre Dame"; I would have picked "Snow White and Rose Red," then gone searching through the Andrew ang Fairy books for the others I vaguely remember (which largely involve the prince and sometimes the princess getting turned into animals by their fairy guardians to reform their character)---and none of them fit the "all the same" generalizations you drew from your selected examples at all well. And even "Beauty and the Beast" (the one item on your list where we don't have a single authoritative source) probably has many versions that don't fit it as well; such is the nature of the folk process.

I thought of another story-pattern (unless you want this thread to be just about the Beauty-and-the-Beast trope ...). I can't think of what we might call it, but there are many examples, as it comes up over and over both in Scripture and in many folk and fairy tales. Each time, there's a role that needs to be filled, or something needs to be done---but it appears that no one is qualified. Sometimes, as in the story of David (in fact, in several of the stories of David!) and the legends about King Arthur, this happens near the beginning of the story; sometimes, as in "Cinderella," it happens near the end. "The one" who can fill the need usually appears (I think I've heard of a story set in a world where there was such a need and no one appeared, taking place many years after those events---or this might have just been an example of how to turn a trope on its head given in a book about writing or something like that), and his or her special or unique qualification is revealed. (Cinderella is the only one with feet small enough to fit the glass slipper; Arthur is in fact Uther's son, the rightful king; David is the one God wants as king despite being the least of his brothers, and then volunteers to fight the giant; and so on.)

No, it's perfectly fine to bring up other story types. I'm fascinated!

That is a very interesting one, and I can think of more examples. One interesting thing about it is how you pulled out the example of David, which is a true story that follows the pattern. That brings us to something else I've been pondering, which is how so many of the "types" that work are rooted in real life. I think that's part of why they work so well...

Thank you for sharing, kingjon! I'm sorry it's taking me so long to respond, I've been busy.

Inspired by this thread, I have begun creation of the short-story/novella with the working title of "Caesar the Troll," a Sci-fi post-apocalyptic mix of elements from these stories... with some deeper themes woven in for fun. Hopefully this will be forthcoming on my blog gradually over the next few weeks.

*feels inspirational*

Let me know when that comes out, Reiyen!