What Beauty and the Beast can teach us about True Love
Fairytale Analysis
Beauty and the Beast has been often maligned by literalists and materialists who have been fuelled by a petulant disdain for spiritual nobility and true love. You may have heard things like “the romance between Belle and the Beast is nothing but bestiality” or that “Gaston was the good guy and Belle only chose the Beast because of her greed for money and status”. These criticisms are not merely trite little jokes to laugh at, but rather belie a real spiritual disease that would impel a culture to repeat them at all. Beauty and the Beast is a profound love story about redemption, the nature of nobility and the transformative power of love. It is no surprise that a culture that rejects all three of these things would be so enthusiastic about perverting a story that endorses these values so boldly and beautifully. This essay is a deep dive into the story of Beauty and the Beast from the history of the fairy tale to a close analysis of the common Disney tale that everyone is familiar with. I address many of these criticisms and reveal not only why they are wrong, but what values they are in particular rebelling against which the story endorses. Get a cup of hot chocolate and join me, dear friends.
History