“You are being polite,” he said.
“Well, yes,” I conceded. “But then you called me beautiful last night….”
“You do not believe me then?” he inquired.
“Well — no,” I said, hesitantly, wondering if this might anger him. “Any number of mirrors have told me otherwise.”
“You will find no mirrors here,” he said, “for I cannot bear them; nor any quiet water in ponds. And since I am the only one who sees you, why are you not then beautiful?”
Why, indeed? These lines from Robin McKinley’s Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast capture two things I like about the story: the heroine’s discomfort within her own skin, and the gentle challenge to her paradigms of beauty. I read it years ago, but I didn’t remember anything about it other than that I liked it. I read through it again this week, and much though I enjoyed revisiting it, it leaves me feeling restless in a couple of ways, too.
The narrator is the slightly unconventional Honour: her hands and feet are large, and she’s physically strong, loves horses, loves to read, and is part of a riches to rags family drama. She thinks she’s ugly, but her ugliness is never very convincing. The beast in the enchanted splendour of his palace, with his unfailing wisdom and gentleness and generosity, would have been more interesting if he’d made a misstep or two somewhere along the way. But these things didn’t keep me from enjoying the story. I liked the way Beauty struggled as much with her appearance as the beast struggled with his, and I also liked that “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” wasn’t confined just to how the beast looks, but to Beauty, the castle itself, its books, many aspects of life. McKinley does justice to the power of our inner eye, and to the way it’s strengthened and clarified by sympathy and love.
I found myself wondering about the fairy tale that this one retells. One question is, what’s the original source of this story? What was the earliest known version? I’ve seen the Disney movie, and I was familiar with the story before that somehow. But I’d like to do a little digging to find out more. I started here, and think I’d like to find a few older versions to see how the story has evolved.
Another question is, are there any versions out there of more seasoned, middle-aged Beauties and Beasts? (I may have seen the motif here and there in movies, though right now I’m drawing a blank.) I wonder if there are any formal retellings of the original fairy tale, in the spirit of this one, that don’t make youthfulness and physical attractiveness prerequisites for Beauty, and even for the Beast at the end.
One other thing. Is the pattern ever reversed? Part of the text of the above link points out,
‘Beauty and the Beast’ tales, which all require a woman’s patient tolerance of an ugly mate, have no companion tales in the modern period in which the obverse obtains, that is, a man who must love an ugly wife. In the medieval period, however, numerous companion stories circulated, the most famous of which is the Wife of Bath’s story in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales…
Surely there are some modern ones out there, somewhere…? The way I’ve understood the story is that it’s about the power of love to transform beasts into royalty – in the eye of the beholder, and perhaps in actuality, too. But I can’t at the moment recall ever reading a version of Handsome and the Beast.
I liked Beauty, and I enjoyed reading it as I always enjoy reading Robin McKinley. I liked her characterization of Beauty as a young woman feeling like an ugly duckling and learning the deceptiveness of mere eyes. But at the same time, I’d like to find a truer and more convincing vehicle of the oft-repeated idea that beauty is what you are inside. It’s often said. But it’s hard to find evidence that it’s really believed — not just in our supposedly shallow, media-drenched culture, but even in our old and established stories.
