KidLit Forum

This story is a because it resembles another story- The Beauty and the Beast. What I found different is that in the original story of Beauty and the Beast the two characters represent two diametrically opossed souls that can’t get along with each other. Beauty is feminine, innocent while Beast is a wild man. In this story the roles seem reversed. At first Beauty is a helpless girl who is forced by the rich Beast to live in his castle, but she rapidly becomes an experienced girl, active, capable of living without problems in a big town, self-sufficient. While the rich Beast is afraid of living in the big world, Beauty rapidly loses her inner beauty and replaces it with a false air of city. Beauty proves to be more than a traditional heroine because she is capable to get rid of her father’s authority /a man’s authority. Also the Beast seems to be more than a traditional hero. At first, because of his appearance (a lion), he embodies only power, confidence, rough and is unable to have human interactions. But in the end he transforms into a gentle human. In the end the two characters seem to change the roles, they complete each other with abilities that only the other one has. Beauty seems to gain the characteristics of a lioness while Beast seems to have the inner qualities of Beauty. The proof is that both of them take the name of Lyon family.

Almost the same reversed situation but with a different plot in Beauty by Tanith Lee

Let me start with the beginning....The father,Levin, and the three daughters: Lyra, Joya, and Estar, who lived in a robot-run house. This time the rose is green...even the little daughter's hair, Estar is green-brown...She has to live with an alien...she refuses to see at first in his full"splendour" naked,she dreams of him every night, refuses to admitt that she loves him, to discover in the end that she has alien genes because she was supposed to be aborted but alien seed was planted in her mother's womb(the woman who had carried Estar inside her) and Levin refused to gave her away, accepting her as his own, so she doesn't look like an alien. He tries to convince her to be his wife because they are able to make living children, but he allows her to decide. She finds him "strangely alienly lovely", now that she know that she has alien blood.

"She shut her eyes then, and let him move to her across the dark. And she experienced in her own mind the glorious wonder he felt at the touch of her skin’s smoothness like a cool leaf, just as he would experience her delirious joy in the touch of his velvet skin, the note of his dark and golden mouth discovering her own."

curious ??? read the story...you'll love it...full of weird descriptions, your imagination will simply fly away, and, you'll discover how patience he is...the moment she asks to see him as "he is", and she decides to see him at the pool...

"The single rose is, in essence, a symbol of completion, of consummate achievement and perfection" (A dictionary of symbols, J. A. Cirlot) while the white rose is associated with beauty, purity and graciousness. Beauty identifies herself with the white rose -the perfection.The entire action goes around the white rose, beginning with the moment when Beauty's father stole the white rose from Beast's garden and continuing with Beauty who sends white roses to the Beast while she is in London. The rose represents Beauty as a perfect woman, pure and graceful , as she is seen through the eyes of her father and the Beast.

The beautiful pastiche of Angela Carter "The Courtship of Mr. Lyon" is a mixture of ancient and modern things...Reading it we travel in time. In the end when the lion turns into a human it seems that all his power goes to Beauty...As Anca said before, Beauty takes his characteristics because it is the time for her to be strong.
She asks him not to die because she would die with him. Moreover she promises: „If you’ll have me, I’ll never leave you.” And the most important thing here is that she keeps her promise. This is a happy end though we don't have a formulaic language such as ..."they lived happily ever after". The fact that they walked in the garden to have breakfast ensures the reader that this is a happy end.

This story seems to me a modern version of an unmarried couple who experience a trial marriage. The classic story is the basis for the modern perspective which Angela Carter brings. We can observe that like in chemistry the contraries attracts:Beauty vs. Beast. Kindness,feminity vs. masculinity. The father leaves Beauty to the Beast castle as a guarantee till he regains the lost fortune. Beauty acts like a mature woman and she really enjoys Beast‘ company. In the end they reunite and became Mr. and Mrs. Lyon.The end might suggest the perfection and the androgine.

Have anyone of you ever thought of what happens after the end of story?
Or, does it matter??? We all know that fairy tales, maybe not postmodern ones, end up with a wedding, the 31-st Propp's function, but we have no proof, there is no demonstration that everything happened exactly as the author has suggested...maybe because a fairy tale has this power to absorb you, to fascinate you so that you will never, ever ask this question again...

Allow me to compare a fairy tale with a photo album...if you look inside it from the very beginning, you'll see only happy faces, smiles and when you get to its end, you imagine that "they('ll) live happily ever after"...