Dang, fairy and folk tales are some of my favourite stories in the world; I love them! Ooooo, Twelve Dancing Princesses!!! I like that one too - for once it's the eldest sister who gets chosen as the bride. (I'm an eldest myself, so this feels like an important victory for older sisters everywhere!)
I don't like Hans Christian Anderson much, though, he's too depressing (apart from Eleven Wild Swans, which I've talked about in a previous I Like Monday). I remember being shocked when I heard that Disney were going to do The Little Mermaid: "Errr, they do know that she commits suicide at the end?!?" I saw the Disney version only recently and was pleasantly surprised at how many elements of the original they managed to fit in.
The really old version (as per the link above) is kinda startling when you read it: the Beast just demands if he can sleep with Beauty directly!!! No marriage proposal, no nothing. Then when she finally says yes, turns out he meant literally sleep; he conks
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Seriously didn't. We had no books of with fairytales in them when I was little. I knew of Aesop's fables. Got a book of his fables from school, one of those "free book things" they did every year at the grade school I went to, and honestly loved it. But no, no fairytales. Didn't stumble upon them at school, didn't run across them at libraries (no librarians ever suggested books sadly). So growing up really did think the Disney animated movies based on them were just stories they came up with for the movies and not something based on a book or story that already existed. Which is sad. Missed out on so many amazing stories. So when I did discover fairytales I went a little nuts with them and devoured any and all I came across
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I only found the Villeneuve version linked above when researching for this post; this seems to be the only place on the net that it exists! Be warned: it is VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY long. There's a pile of guff about Beauty's dad's time with the Beast, the different rooms and entertainments, all the dreams she has of the prince, and a huge argument at the end where the queen doesn't want Beauty to marry her son because she's just a commoner and the fairy has to reveal that no, actually she's a princess in disguise. Beaumont did the tale a favour in my opinion by removing all of that.
The Villeneuve version was written for an adult audience so the risque elements could be got away with. The academics all seem to think that it's about women learning to embrace sex and sexual desires along with the more chaste romantic ideals, usually within the context of arranged (if not outright forced) marriages. Beast is decidedly polite in actually bothering to ask if she wants to sleep with him - and then to listen and accept it when
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Dang, fairy and folk tales are some of my favourite stories in the world; I love them! Ooooo, Twelve Dancing Princesses!!! I like that one too - for once it's the eldest sister who gets chosen as the bride. (I'm an eldest myself, so this feels like an important victory for older sisters everywhere!)
I don't like Hans Christian Anderson much, though, he's too depressing (apart from Eleven Wild Swans, which I've talked about in a previous I Like Monday). I remember being shocked when I heard that Disney were going to do The Little Mermaid: "Errr, they do know that she commits suicide at the end?!?" I saw the Disney version only recently and was pleasantly surprised at how many elements of the original they managed to fit in.
The really old version (as per the link above) is kinda startling when you read it: the Beast just demands if he can sleep with Beauty directly!!! No marriage proposal, no nothing. Then when she finally says yes, turns out he meant literally sleep; he conks ( ... )
Reply
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The Villeneuve version was written for an adult audience so the risque elements could be got away with. The academics all seem to think that it's about women learning to embrace sex and sexual desires along with the more chaste romantic ideals, usually within the context of arranged (if not outright forced) marriages. Beast is decidedly polite in actually bothering to ask if she wants to sleep with him - and then to listen and accept it when ( ... )
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