This paper examines Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont's classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast and its modern adaptations—most notably the Disney animated film—through a postmodern critical lens. Focusing on themes of superficiality, deception of appearances, and the nature of truth, the paper argues that Beaumont's original text delivers its moral lesson about not judging by appearances in a more direct and structurally comprehensive way than later adaptations. Through close readings of key characters including Beauty, her sisters, and the Beast, the paper traces how each version constructs and complicates its central moral message, ultimately suggesting that Beaumont's tale may itself be considered surprisingly postmodern in certain respects.
It is the conceit of nearly every epoch to assume that certain ideas, perspectives, and frameworks are new or unique to the current time. With postmodernism, this assumption has extended to the notion of purposefully and meaningfully fragmented texts. Many postmodernists view fragmentation — and a purposeful alienation from, or questioning of, what constitutes reality — as the quintessential and definitive postmodern element (Erb, 51). While it cannot be denied that the postmodern period and postmodern works frequently embrace and utilize such fragmentation, and while perhaps no era has employed it to the same extremes or with the same prevalence, it must also be acknowledged that concepts of alienation from truth and reality are not new to the period, even if earlier texts dealt with them quite differently.
The classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast provides an excellent example. The original text by Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont has been adapted into modern story and film versions that clearly display the changing perspectives of each era while preserving much of the story's foundation. In all versions, the admonition that people should refrain from making superficial judgments is made quite clear. However, Beaumont delivers this lesson on separating appearance from reality in a far more straightforward fashion than her successors.
Comparing the general stories of Beaumont's text and certain adaptations reveals the changing yet similar attitudes towards truth and appearance in Beauty and the Beast as it has been told and retold through the ages. For Beaumont, the entire point of the story seems to be that things are not always as they seem, and that judgments about deeper reality should not be made from superficial observations. This can be seen from the very opening line of the story, in which the unnamed man who is Beauty's father is described as a "rich merchant" and a "man of sense" — two things that very quickly turn out not to be entirely the case (Beaumont, par. 1).
In more modern texts, most notably the Disney animated film that has received a great deal of critical attention, the father is presented as rather hapless from the outset, and also as somewhat out of step with society and even reality (Craven, 125). Both portrayals convey a sense of alienation that some have dubbed postmodern, but Beaumont's text is far more all-encompassing and direct — it is the "point" of the work, whereas to distill any truly postmodern text down to a single "point" is ostensibly an act of futility (Erb, 50). Beaumont also structures her story as a series of reversals, such that situations are entirely changed for many characters multiple times, while later versions follow a more singular arc, albeit from multiple and more complex perspectives. In this, too, there is a directness in Beaumont's commentary about appearances being both deceiving and highly temporal, while modern adaptations tend toward more ambiguous and moralistic commentary.
The lessons of Beaumont's Beauty and the Beast — and the differences introduced by modern adaptations — are not confined to minute details or overall structure. In many of the characters, from Beauty to her sisters to the Beast himself, there are continual lessons not to trust or rely upon appearances. It might seem unusual to apply this conclusion to Beauty herself, but she is one of the most surprising characters upon close examination. Meek, submissive, and forgiving almost to a fault, Beauty hardly seems the type to display physical courage. A readiness to endure suffering and a willingness to sacrifice, of course, but true active entrance into danger would appear out of character. She is nevertheless the clear heroine of Beaumont's tale, showing her active bravery not only in her initial venture to the Beast's castle but in her repeated meetings with him and in her final approach to his presumed lifeless body. In the Disney adaptation, the Beast has largely supplanted this heroic quality (Hearn & Devries, 12–19; Craven, 126–9). In that version, Beauty — or the French Belle, as she is called — is inherently more fragmented: sweet and yet not at all meek. Her own fragmented nature, however, prevents her from acting with the decisive heroism suggested by her earlier spiritedness. In this way, both texts preserve the notion of misleading superficial realities (Hearn & Devries; Craven).
Beauty's sisters play a relatively minor role in the actual plot of Beaumont's tale, and their excision from many adaptations is therefore not surprising. They do, however, provide interesting insight into the issue at hand. Also beautiful and educated, these girls possess nothing of the heart or spirit of their younger sister, and are themselves shaken by several confrontations with reality as it breaks through their own delusions. Their absence in the Disney version — with some replacement by the girls who fawn over the newly invented character Gaston — removes a clear foil for Belle, further complicating her character and making the moral message more ambiguous, though it remains present.
Finally, there is the Beast himself. His transformation and revelation is the most compelling element in any version of the text, serving as the culmination of the plot and as the most explicit indicator of the story's central lesson — even in more modern texts that resist true certainty in this regard. In Beaumont's version, the Beast is a good and kind creature who has apparently always been so. His fearsome appearance and the manner in which his treatment of Beauty's father is initially perceived are both evidence of a superficiality that has been imposed upon him from without, while in truth he is a handsome prince without the ability to properly connect to the world around him.
"Beast's transformation as the story's central lesson"
Beauty and the Beast has been and will remain a well-loved tale for a variety of reasons. One of its most enduring and timeless qualities is its representation of truth, artifice, and its questioning of the nature of reality. While newer texts have found new means of engaging with these questions, Beaumont's original handles them with a directness and structural elegance that its adaptations have yet to surpass.
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