The Beast's Transformation: Animal Bridegroom vs. Monster Paramour
Being the huge "Beauty and the Beast" fan that I am, it's often my misfortune to stumble on multiple bad takes on the story from various people on the Internet. Many times, these arguments seem to fundamentally misunderstand the point of the story or confuse it with others. The Stockholm Syndrome accusation is unfortunately common on the Internet, but there's another opinion that crops up frequently as well, which is: the Beast's transformation ruins the point of the story.
This argument is especially frustrating when it comes from other "Beauty and the Beast" fans. If it was just a matter of them saying that they preferred how Adam looked as a Beast, that would be one thing. But when they start saying that the transformation is a betrayal of the story's themes, it makes me think that they're also missing the point.
"Beauty and the Beast" is one of many animal bridegroom tales that have been retold for centuries all over the world. And the template is basically the same: a young woman, for reasons that vary according to the tale, agrees to marry a monster or an animal who is actually a handsome man in disguise. Once she learns to love him and performs certain tasks, the spell is broken and her husband's true form is revealed. And this isn't gender-specific, there are also many fairytales where the bride is the one under the enchantment and her husband must undo the curse. Many literary scholars have discussed the metaphorical meaning of the spouse's transformation, but instead, I'd like to focus on something that I think that a lot of detractors miss, which is the Beast as a character.
We know what Beauty's goal is at the beginning of the story: save her father's life by volunteering to go in his place. After she arrives at the castle and accomplishes that goal, she obstructs the Beast's goal by refusing to marry him. She doesn't really want anything for herself at that point: she enjoys exploring the castle and she's happy to live with him as a friend. She eventually falls in love with him, but it's not a consequence of her actively seeking a goal, it's more of a revelation for her when she races back to the castle. No, during the middle of the story, the Beast is the one pursuing a goal. And what is that goal?
To become human again.
It's often said that critics of the transformation miss the point of the story's moral when they complain that the Prince's form is ugly or that he looked better as a Beast. And I would agree, but I think that they're missing the point of the story because they've fallen into the same trap that Beauty falls into at the beginning of the story.
In a way, their reaction is the inverse of Beauty's. Beauty can't see past the Beast's appearance, and so rejects the Beast's proposals. They can't see past the Beast's appearance, and thus complain when it disappears. But both don't realize that the Beast's appearance isn't real. It's fake. It's a DISGUISE. It's an illusion.
The Beast is NOT a beast. He's a human prince enchanted to look like one. That's the point of the transformation: it's the revelation of his true self. It has nothing to do with what Beauty or the audience finds attractive. And in versions which follow the Disney route of the curse as a punishment, the transformation metaphorically represents the inner transformation that the Beast has undergone in the story. He's ready to return to his true appearance once he has reached his true character.
The Beast has his own goal that is separate from Beauty's. Unlike the princess or prince/king in stories such as "Cinderella" or "The Brave Little Tailor", he's not just there to reward the heroine by marrying her and thereby making her queen. He has his own desire that he wishes to achieve and can only achieve through the love of Beauty.
So, when critics complain that he never should have turned back, they are essentially saying that his goals and desires don't matter to them. They don't want him to get what he wants. He should be trapped in a false form because it's what they find attractive or he should get over his shame about his appearance and learn to accept himself for who he is...even though a beast is NOT who he is.
Just imagine if there was a story where a homely geek was enchanted to become an attractive celebrity instead. And while it might seem great at the beginning, it would eventually prove to be a trap, because the geek would realize that the only thing people cared about him was his looks. They wouldn't care at all about who he really was as a person, just the image that he appeared to be. They'd ignore him when he tried to talk about science or whatever his interest was, they wouldn't care the least bit about his own passions and dreams. All they would do is moon over his looks and demand that he look pretty and be the idol that they wanted him to be, to the point where he'd wish to go back to normal. In that scenario, would it be fair to the character for the author to deny him his wish just because the audience thought that he looked better as a celebrity than he did as a geek? It's all right if he's living a lie, because it's a lie that appeals to the audience?
I've come across two ideas on this. The first is the desire to strip away any potentially problematic or squicky element from the story. They feel that the lesson of not judging a person by their looks is ruined once Beauty's love interest turns out to be attractive after all, so they make the Beast stay a beast in order to maintain that message.
For example, there's been a popular post circling around Tumblr that was reblogged by many BatB fans and, no disrespect to the author, but I honestly couldn't see the point of this reimagining.
Basically, when Beauty goes to the castle in her father's place and sees the Beast, she's not scared of him at all. She immediately loves that he looks like an animal and squees all over him. And they settle in together and she just goes home to visit her family for the heck of it. And then she goes back to the Beast, I guess, because she was just visiting for the weekend. And then the Beast asks her if she's in love with him, she says no because he's an animal, and instead of being sad or disappointed, he's relieved. Because he's gotten used to being a talking animal, you see, so thank goodness Beauty doesn't do anything as crazy as fall in love with him. But they get married anyway, not because they do eventually fall in love, but out of convenience. Because it's so annoying to have to explain to people why a single man and a single woman are living together, so why not just shut them up with a passionless marriage? But that's okay too, because both of them are conveniently asexual and aromantic: Beauty was never into boys and Beast cares more about his flowers than girls. And so they settle into agreeable companionship. The End.
And here I'm thinking, "Buddy. This isn't a story. This is a situation." Where are the goals of our characters? Where is the CONFLICT?
There's no inner conflict on the Beast's end if he's fine with how he looks or learns to like it. If the Beast has no problem with being a beast, then he doesn't need to marry Beauty and therefore she doesn't need to refuse him. What is the conflict of the story if the Beast doesn't need to turn back? If he learns to be fine with his looks, then what was the point of the curse?
But then there is the second take, which depends on the separation of the Beast and Prince's identities, even though they're the same person. These critics feel that the Prince is 'boring' because he's conventionally handsome and safely human. He no longer has the 'wild' allure of the Beast and so audiences are disappointed when the Beast that they've learned to love melts away into the 'perfect man.'
First of all, the Beast and the Prince are the same person. This is not a case of split personalities. Again, the Beast's appearance is a MASK. Some versions do have him fall into animalistic behavior, but that's not a true indicator of his identity. His Beast persona is a metaphysical trap. Just like the knight frees the princess from the tower, Beauty frees the Prince from his beastly cage. It's not an expression of his hidden desires, it's a prison. The Beast is not Edward Hyde and the Prince is not Henry Jekyll.
Second of all, for all that they talk about loving the torment and passion of the Beast, they're forgetting about the reason for the torment. The Beast isn't angsty because he's an animal, he's angsty because he's trapped in a false form, the very form that they romanticize and he despises. So, no surprise that when he gets what he wants, he's not tormented anymore! And if they're talking about a version which follows Disney's route of making the curse a punishment, they're essentially saying that they don't like the Prince because he's completed his character arc. He's learned to move past his anger and sadness and become a happier person, which, apparently, is boring to them and they can't identify with it. They find the Beast's pain and ugliness to be more interesting, so they don't want him to change. They want 'terrible beauty' instead of 'ordinary beauty,' which, again, seems to go against the moral that they claim the Prince's transformation undoes. They don't see the Prince's happy ending as one where he heals and reclaims his true form, they see it as an ending that 'preserves the status quo' and 'upholds normality.'
Honestly, I think that the main problem with this argument is the general usage of the "Beauty and Beast" term. People apply it to any romance involving a beautiful woman and a monstrous-looking man. Hence why "The Phantom of the Opera" and "The Shape of Water" are often classified as BATB romances. But I think that readers' disappointment with the ending of "Beauty of the Beast" could be lessened if they learned to separate it from stories that they want. For example, instead of labeling these stories all together under the BatB umbrella, they could separate the stories into the following tropes/terms:
1) Animal Bridegroom
2) Monster/Beast Paramour
Animal bridegroom stories are what I described earlier in this post: they are tales of shapeshifting where the bride's husband is in disguise and yearns to be restored to his true form. That's what the "Beauty and the Beast" story is.
The Monster Paramour, on the other hand, is probably what these critics are looking for. There is no spell, there is no curse. What the heroine sees is what she gets. The bridegroom is disfigured, monstrous, animalistic, or otherwise strange and otherworldly. Erik will stay disfigured even if Christine agrees to marry him, and the Asset will never become human no matter how much Elisa loves him. If they want a love interest who never becomes normal, then I think that this is what they probably want. In this situation, the conflict would center more on forbidden love, as the heroine would struggle against her feelings for someone who is clearly an outsider. The struggle on the Beast's end would be more in line of what these critics seem to want: learning to accept himself for what he is or learning to transcend his natural limitations and inclinations to become a better person (ex. if the Beast in question is a vampire or demon).
Now that I think about it, you could also qualify this in mythological terms. "Eros and Psyche" has been claimed by many scholars to be an ancestor of the "Beauty and the Beast" story and it follows its ending as well. Psyche thinks that she's going to marry a monster, but he turns out to be a handsome god. "Hades and Persephone" has also been likened to "Beauty and the Beast," but it's more akin to a Monster Paramour story. Hades is not disguised under a false persona when he kidnaps Persephone (or when she willingly goes with him to the Underworld, depending on the version) and he does not undergo a physical transformation when he marries her.
Which is not to say that the two types of stories can't overlap in terms of themes, characters, storylines, or motifs, but I think that if the ending is what really disappoints critics, then this could be an easier way to search for stories that they want.
This argument is especially frustrating when it comes from other "Beauty and the Beast" fans. If it was just a matter of them saying that they preferred how Adam looked as a Beast, that would be one thing. But when they start saying that the transformation is a betrayal of the story's themes, it makes me think that they're also missing the point.
"Beauty and the Beast" is one of many animal bridegroom tales that have been retold for centuries all over the world. And the template is basically the same: a young woman, for reasons that vary according to the tale, agrees to marry a monster or an animal who is actually a handsome man in disguise. Once she learns to love him and performs certain tasks, the spell is broken and her husband's true form is revealed. And this isn't gender-specific, there are also many fairytales where the bride is the one under the enchantment and her husband must undo the curse. Many literary scholars have discussed the metaphorical meaning of the spouse's transformation, but instead, I'd like to focus on something that I think that a lot of detractors miss, which is the Beast as a character.
We know what Beauty's goal is at the beginning of the story: save her father's life by volunteering to go in his place. After she arrives at the castle and accomplishes that goal, she obstructs the Beast's goal by refusing to marry him. She doesn't really want anything for herself at that point: she enjoys exploring the castle and she's happy to live with him as a friend. She eventually falls in love with him, but it's not a consequence of her actively seeking a goal, it's more of a revelation for her when she races back to the castle. No, during the middle of the story, the Beast is the one pursuing a goal. And what is that goal?
To become human again.
It's often said that critics of the transformation miss the point of the story's moral when they complain that the Prince's form is ugly or that he looked better as a Beast. And I would agree, but I think that they're missing the point of the story because they've fallen into the same trap that Beauty falls into at the beginning of the story.
In a way, their reaction is the inverse of Beauty's. Beauty can't see past the Beast's appearance, and so rejects the Beast's proposals. They can't see past the Beast's appearance, and thus complain when it disappears. But both don't realize that the Beast's appearance isn't real. It's fake. It's a DISGUISE. It's an illusion.
The Beast is NOT a beast. He's a human prince enchanted to look like one. That's the point of the transformation: it's the revelation of his true self. It has nothing to do with what Beauty or the audience finds attractive. And in versions which follow the Disney route of the curse as a punishment, the transformation metaphorically represents the inner transformation that the Beast has undergone in the story. He's ready to return to his true appearance once he has reached his true character.
The Beast has his own goal that is separate from Beauty's. Unlike the princess or prince/king in stories such as "Cinderella" or "The Brave Little Tailor", he's not just there to reward the heroine by marrying her and thereby making her queen. He has his own desire that he wishes to achieve and can only achieve through the love of Beauty.
So, when critics complain that he never should have turned back, they are essentially saying that his goals and desires don't matter to them. They don't want him to get what he wants. He should be trapped in a false form because it's what they find attractive or he should get over his shame about his appearance and learn to accept himself for who he is...even though a beast is NOT who he is.
Just imagine if there was a story where a homely geek was enchanted to become an attractive celebrity instead. And while it might seem great at the beginning, it would eventually prove to be a trap, because the geek would realize that the only thing people cared about him was his looks. They wouldn't care at all about who he really was as a person, just the image that he appeared to be. They'd ignore him when he tried to talk about science or whatever his interest was, they wouldn't care the least bit about his own passions and dreams. All they would do is moon over his looks and demand that he look pretty and be the idol that they wanted him to be, to the point where he'd wish to go back to normal. In that scenario, would it be fair to the character for the author to deny him his wish just because the audience thought that he looked better as a celebrity than he did as a geek? It's all right if he's living a lie, because it's a lie that appeals to the audience?
I've come across two ideas on this. The first is the desire to strip away any potentially problematic or squicky element from the story. They feel that the lesson of not judging a person by their looks is ruined once Beauty's love interest turns out to be attractive after all, so they make the Beast stay a beast in order to maintain that message.
For example, there's been a popular post circling around Tumblr that was reblogged by many BatB fans and, no disrespect to the author, but I honestly couldn't see the point of this reimagining.
Basically, when Beauty goes to the castle in her father's place and sees the Beast, she's not scared of him at all. She immediately loves that he looks like an animal and squees all over him. And they settle in together and she just goes home to visit her family for the heck of it. And then she goes back to the Beast, I guess, because she was just visiting for the weekend. And then the Beast asks her if she's in love with him, she says no because he's an animal, and instead of being sad or disappointed, he's relieved. Because he's gotten used to being a talking animal, you see, so thank goodness Beauty doesn't do anything as crazy as fall in love with him. But they get married anyway, not because they do eventually fall in love, but out of convenience. Because it's so annoying to have to explain to people why a single man and a single woman are living together, so why not just shut them up with a passionless marriage? But that's okay too, because both of them are conveniently asexual and aromantic: Beauty was never into boys and Beast cares more about his flowers than girls. And so they settle into agreeable companionship. The End.
And here I'm thinking, "Buddy. This isn't a story. This is a situation." Where are the goals of our characters? Where is the CONFLICT?
There's no inner conflict on the Beast's end if he's fine with how he looks or learns to like it. If the Beast has no problem with being a beast, then he doesn't need to marry Beauty and therefore she doesn't need to refuse him. What is the conflict of the story if the Beast doesn't need to turn back? If he learns to be fine with his looks, then what was the point of the curse?
But then there is the second take, which depends on the separation of the Beast and Prince's identities, even though they're the same person. These critics feel that the Prince is 'boring' because he's conventionally handsome and safely human. He no longer has the 'wild' allure of the Beast and so audiences are disappointed when the Beast that they've learned to love melts away into the 'perfect man.'
First of all, the Beast and the Prince are the same person. This is not a case of split personalities. Again, the Beast's appearance is a MASK. Some versions do have him fall into animalistic behavior, but that's not a true indicator of his identity. His Beast persona is a metaphysical trap. Just like the knight frees the princess from the tower, Beauty frees the Prince from his beastly cage. It's not an expression of his hidden desires, it's a prison. The Beast is not Edward Hyde and the Prince is not Henry Jekyll.
Second of all, for all that they talk about loving the torment and passion of the Beast, they're forgetting about the reason for the torment. The Beast isn't angsty because he's an animal, he's angsty because he's trapped in a false form, the very form that they romanticize and he despises. So, no surprise that when he gets what he wants, he's not tormented anymore! And if they're talking about a version which follows Disney's route of making the curse a punishment, they're essentially saying that they don't like the Prince because he's completed his character arc. He's learned to move past his anger and sadness and become a happier person, which, apparently, is boring to them and they can't identify with it. They find the Beast's pain and ugliness to be more interesting, so they don't want him to change. They want 'terrible beauty' instead of 'ordinary beauty,' which, again, seems to go against the moral that they claim the Prince's transformation undoes. They don't see the Prince's happy ending as one where he heals and reclaims his true form, they see it as an ending that 'preserves the status quo' and 'upholds normality.'
Honestly, I think that the main problem with this argument is the general usage of the "Beauty and Beast" term. People apply it to any romance involving a beautiful woman and a monstrous-looking man. Hence why "The Phantom of the Opera" and "The Shape of Water" are often classified as BATB romances. But I think that readers' disappointment with the ending of "Beauty of the Beast" could be lessened if they learned to separate it from stories that they want. For example, instead of labeling these stories all together under the BatB umbrella, they could separate the stories into the following tropes/terms:
1) Animal Bridegroom
2) Monster/Beast Paramour
Animal bridegroom stories are what I described earlier in this post: they are tales of shapeshifting where the bride's husband is in disguise and yearns to be restored to his true form. That's what the "Beauty and the Beast" story is.
The Monster Paramour, on the other hand, is probably what these critics are looking for. There is no spell, there is no curse. What the heroine sees is what she gets. The bridegroom is disfigured, monstrous, animalistic, or otherwise strange and otherworldly. Erik will stay disfigured even if Christine agrees to marry him, and the Asset will never become human no matter how much Elisa loves him. If they want a love interest who never becomes normal, then I think that this is what they probably want. In this situation, the conflict would center more on forbidden love, as the heroine would struggle against her feelings for someone who is clearly an outsider. The struggle on the Beast's end would be more in line of what these critics seem to want: learning to accept himself for what he is or learning to transcend his natural limitations and inclinations to become a better person (ex. if the Beast in question is a vampire or demon).
Now that I think about it, you could also qualify this in mythological terms. "Eros and Psyche" has been claimed by many scholars to be an ancestor of the "Beauty and the Beast" story and it follows its ending as well. Psyche thinks that she's going to marry a monster, but he turns out to be a handsome god. "Hades and Persephone" has also been likened to "Beauty and the Beast," but it's more akin to a Monster Paramour story. Hades is not disguised under a false persona when he kidnaps Persephone (or when she willingly goes with him to the Underworld, depending on the version) and he does not undergo a physical transformation when he marries her.
Which is not to say that the two types of stories can't overlap in terms of themes, characters, storylines, or motifs, but I think that if the ending is what really disappoints critics, then this could be an easier way to search for stories that they want.