Literary Theory: Beauty & the Beast

I shouldn't have been surprised that Beauty and the Beast has been around so long. Even Disney admits that it's a Tale as Old as Time! But still, as a Classical Studies minor, I was surprised that I had never realized that Beauty and the Beast is based on the myth of Cupid and Pysche. Loosely based.

I can't say that I'm entirely on board with all of the stories included in "The Classic Fairy Tales" counting as Beauty and the Beast. Obviously De Beaumont's version is the most similar, and someday I would like to read de Villeneuve's version since it was not included in the book due to length. My favorite quote from de Beaumont's version is: “It is not good looks nor great wit that makes a woman happy with her husband, but character, virtue and kindness and Beast has all those good qualities. I may not be in love with him, but I feel respect, friendship and gratitude for him." I feel like every little girl needs to recite that quote again and again. "The Classic Fairy Tales" states that Beauty and the Beast is a parable for arranged marriages and was meant to help ease anxieties about marriage, but I see it more as a guide for what qualities young women should look for in men.

I don't find The Pig King nearly as favorable because the beast-character doesn't have any redeemable qualities. He's a cold-blooded murderer and doesn't even have to be a pig! At least Meldina loved him, unlike the swan maiden in The Swan Maiden, who was tricked and captured by a young hunter. She doesn't have the option to fall in love with him. My least favorite is The Frog King, because the beauty-character is not virtuous and in fact throws the frog against a wall, yet is still rewarded with a handsome prince in the end! I thought Urashima the Fisherman was a lovely story, because (a) it sounds like a Greek myth and (b) they truly loved each other. Plus, I think it's a nice tale for children, since Urashima is the cause of his own grief by disobeying his love and opening the jeweled box. Finally, The Frog Princess is one of my favorite versions just because the Beauty-character is clever. It is also the only version with a suitor, so perhaps that's the foundation for Gaston. Like Urashima, Prince Ivan causes his own grief by being too impatient. Unlike Urashima, Prince Ivan searches for, fights for, and wins Elena the Fair in the end.

Beauty and the Beast has always been one of my favorite Disney movies. My parents never had a problem with me watching it again and again because they thought it held such great values for young girls. I always found it interesting that Disney changed Beauty to Belle (which obviously means "beauty") but they didn't give Beast a name, even after he transforms into a handsome prince. That always has and always will bother me.

Lit & Civ: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

*SPOILER ALERT*

I very much disliked the movie "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" so I wasn't sure how much I would like the short-story. But I gave it a go, since my main problems with the movie were: the slow-as-molasses-Nawlins drawl and the fact that Daisy is hit by car, since I first watched the film a mere month after I was hospitalized from being mowed down by a Range Rover. (The only reason I went to see was because my acting coach is in it.)

So let's start with the basic differences between the film and short-story: location. New Orleans v. Baltimore. In the film, Benjamin was raised in New Orleans by an African American woman whose name I can't remember. In the story, his parents keep him. His major love in the film is Daisy, who does not exist in Fitzgerald's short story. Benjamin has a son with Hildegarde in the story but has no children in the film. Benjamin goes to college in the story, and I don't remember him going to college in the film. Finally, Benjamin was the size of a baby when he was born in the film but was 5'8" at birth in the short story, which is inconceivable.

A common theme between both, different as they are, is that Benjamin is an outsider. He cannot live a normal life and can relate to no one. The most powerful part of the movie is that Daisy understands and accepts him for who he is and even rocks him as he dies as a newborn baby and she an old woman. But without Daisy, that powerful love theme is completely completely lost in Fitzgerald's version. Not even Benjamin's own son, Roscoe, loves him. He is embarrassed by him. Benjamin dies alone in with his nurse.

The most prevalent theme in this short story is gossip, scorn from the community, and the loneliness caused by it all. I think that Fitzgerald wrote this story for everyone who is different, who doesn't quite fit in, or even anyone who has suffered from inconspicuous glances and whispers from those around them. Benjamin couldn't help the way he looked/aged but that didn't matter to his community, peers, family. Both his wife and son accuse him of "refusing" to stop his aging. Maybe, too, Fitzgerald was trying to get across that people fear what they do not understand and people ridicule what they fear.

Lit & Civ: The Yellow Wall-Paper

I have always adored "The Yellow Wall-Paper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. I first read this six thousand-word short-story in high school a few days before Halloween as part of our Ghost Story week. The interpretation of the story is apparently what stuck in my mind, because I was quite surprised to re-read it and discover a key fact missing: I was taught that the yellow wall-paper was the narrator's skin!

*pauses for reaction*

Doesn't that interpretation make the story a million times creepier? The mental image of her husband walking in to find her bloody, mangled self, totally unaware that she had just peeled off her own skin instead of the "wall-paper" she so hated. Grosssssss. I could have sworn that it was an explicit part of the story, but alas, the story ends with her husband fainting.

I then googled "The Yellow Wall-paper" to read some interpretations and was dismayed that I found none claiming that the wallpaper was her skin. Was my high school teacher wrong? Whatever. I like that interpretation and I'm stickin' with it!

But that wasn't the only reason I liked this short story so much then and now. I love how easy it is to read the narrator's mental decline to insanity. You can pinpoint exactly where she snapped: one minute she's worried about what her husband thinks and by the next entry, all is well and she's fine! She's not fine. But crazy people never know they're crazy!

I also love the self-denial in this piece. The narrator believes that her husband loves her and spends time with her, but I think he never saw her until the end of the story. Several times she mentions her "imagination;" I think she imagined that her husband cared enough to see her, when really, he locked her in a room because she scared him and he didn't want to deal with him. That's my take anyway.

All in all, I think this is a fantastic piece. It's an easy read showing the woe-some ways of past recovery techniques. Now we can see how ridiculous it is to put a mentally unstable person in a room by herself for months without anything to occupy her. It would drive anyone crazy! And that was precisely Gilman's point.

Literary Theory: Little Red Riding Hood

I can tell already that studying and challenging fairy tells in this course is going to be endlessly fascinating to me. I have heard several versions of Little Red Riding Head but never have I sat down and compared them, nor have I ever likened any of the stories to rape. I do have to say though, I always thought Little Red Riding Hood was stupid. (I was surprised and disappointed to learn that my revered Charles Dickens refers to LRRH as his "first love." That says a lot about his taste in women, doesn't it?) It's actually better, in my opinion, to know that this particular fairy tale was never initially meant for children, but rather used as entertainment for adults. Thinking about LRRH as victimless in a rape situation shines a new light on the story and makes me appreciate it in a way I never have before. Besides, the moral of this Kindergeschichte is good: never talk to strangers, and (at least in one story) listen to your mother.

On the same note of being having new light shone on an old idea, did anyone else find themselves stopping to consider practically every example in chapter two of Jonathan Culler's "Literary Theory?" I kept stopping and thinking, "My God, what is a weed?" and "What does Hamlet stand for?" This chapter further confuses the conversation we had in class about What is Literature. Is it a fortune cookie? Is it a song? Is it a recipe? My mind was blown... just a little. Before this Fall, I have never before questioned what falls under the umbrella of Literature but now I find myself questioning everything. Next to my computer right now is a picture of me leaning in to kiss the Frog statue in the snow. The picture frame says "KISS LIKE YOU MEAN IT." Literature? If that were a sentence in a novel, sure. What about a lyric in a song? If it can fit into either of those mediums, does the sentence as it stands on the frame count as literature?