by Ana Mardoll
I wanted Guerrino to be at least partly responsible for the beauty's death so as to reinforce my overarching theme that the beast is not the villain so much as the surrounding toxic culture that has created him. Guerrino is no more a villain than the beast is, but he is a product of his society and a product of the prejudice and biases within. Like the beast, he sees the beauty as the key to his freedom from a bad situation, and like the beast, he is willing to accept the possibility that the beauty may need to be sacrificed in order to beat the curse.
This portrait of Guerrino was drawn by artist Emily Vreeland.
Character Portrait: Bella
I first knew I wanted to write a "Beauty and the Beast" retelling when, in the course of a deconstruction blog post on "Twilight", I idly wondered what it would be like to live one's life being constantly called Bella, or "beauty". The thought then struck me that at least one other time-honored literary character was literally named Beauty, and I was immediately fascinated by all the expectations and insecurities packed into carrying that name around for an entire lifetime.
What would it be like, I wondered, for your very name to be a reminder that your most valuable asset was one you had zero control over? Would some sort of precarious balance be struck between a vain self-confidence and a deep insecurity? Almost every beauty in all the "Beauty and the Beast" stories I knew of were good and sweet and kind and loving and intelligent and practically perfect in every way, but what if life in a patriarchal society under a constant male gaze made a beauty less-than-perfect and deeply insecure about her own inner worth?
After much consideration, I set my beauty in Italy as "Bella" instead of in the original France as "Belle". I wanted a beauty who, from her first moment on the page, read as imperfect -- sometimes selfish and vain, frequently insecure, yet capable of love and sacrifice -- and I thought I had a better chance conveying that imperfection through "Bella" than through "Belle", which was the name given to the bookish Disney beauty who has been deeply branded on so many hearts.
The hardest part about writing Bella was conveying her as a complex human in a manner that was reasonable to the reader. Fairy tale women tend to be one-dimensional -- either all good or all bad -- and it was frequently difficult to convey that the insecurity that drives Bella to vainly examine every inch of her face for a blemish in need of more powder is the same insecurity that drives her to sacrifice her life for her father and her husband. I wanted to convey a young woman who does everything she can to be perfect for the patriarchy and, in the end, is used up and destroyed by the demands of the men who should have protected her.
This portrait of Bella was drawn by artist Emily Vreeland.
Character Portrait: Cienzo
I think Disney knew what they were doing when they had the beauty seek out her father and pro-actively make the offer to exchange her life for his: it's very hard to have much sympathy for the original La Belle et la Bête father who rides home to put his affairs in order after being sentenced to death by the beast and immediately lets it slip that his life can be saved if only one of his daughters goes back in his stead.
I didn't want any overt villains in my story and the merchant was no exception. I tried to write him as a product of his culture, in much the same way that I think the original tale tried to do. He is a jolly enough fellow in casual company, but he lives in a bubble of privilege that he makes no attempt to break out of. He gladly gives his daughter food and shelter and doesn't sell her into an unhappy marriage at the first sign of financial trouble, but at the same time he is quick enough to allow her to put her life on the line when his own is in danger.
In a small way, Cienzo orchestrates his own fate with his casual refusal to empathize with his fellow humans: though he is kind enough to pay a common innkeeper generously for his drink, yet he mocks the underprivileged man when he queries him about making much-needed trades with the village. When he then remembers Bella's request for a rose and asks the man he has insulted where he can buy ornamental flowers for "one of my ladies" back home, the man is disgusted enough with the privileged merchant to send him straight to the nearby castle and its recently-cursed inhabitant.
Cienzo's name was scavenged from a merchant's son in an Italian fairy tale of the same name. t But the merchant in my tale makes his living from others without fully realizing it or appreciating them. He lives in the house owned by his first wife, and he regains his business through the wealth and patronage of his second wife. His job does not revolve around the creation of goods, but rather the redistribution of same, and though his living is made from luxury items like jewelry and fine cloths, he criticizes his daughter for wanting the trinkets that he and his society have reinforced as crucial to a woman's existence. And of course, when facing the prospect of his own death, he makes his living literally from the exchange of his own daughter to his would-be executioner.
This portrait of Cienzo was drawn by artist Emily Vreeland.
Character Portrait: Venizia
There is no stepmother in the original La Belle et la Bête, but there are sisters to the titular beauty. I wanted my story to have those sisters, but I wanted my sisters to be black. I was intensely tired of fantasy stories that have dragons and fairies and demons and unicorns, and yet no black people for reasons of suddenly-very-important "historical accuracy". My mind was made up: my Italy was going to have black people living and working and marrying in it, and it was all going to be perfectly normal and no one was going to kick up a fuss about it. And since I wanted the beauty's sisters to be black, that meant marriage into the family, and that meant a stepmother. And by gum, I was going to have an awesome fairy tale stepmother.
I wanted Venizia to be a wealthy widow who married out of choice and love rather than necessity. I wanted her to be a loving mother who had tried to raise her daughters to be wise and cautious in passing judgment. She loves aphorisms and hands them down to her daughters, while still recognizing in her own life that some advice is easier to give than to follow. She's lived her entire life in a busy port city and as such has a very different perspective from the people in the small country village she has moved to. Even her name "Venizia" has been derived from one of our most famous Italian cities. u Her reliance on justice and the courts, her lack of interest in country royals, and her skepticism of magic have all been formed by her life in a completely different society. Like everyone else in this story, she's not perfect, but when she fails she does so in ways that I think are reasonable, given her background.
Once Venizia was created, I was pleased at how beautifully she entwined with the narrative. Her financial backing of the merchant allowed him to assert his claim to his ship's goods when it limped into harbor several years late. Her attempts to mold the family into a cohesive unit might have succeeded given a little more time. Her fierce defense of her daughters (both natural and by marriage) provided a striking contrast to the merchant's willingness to sacrifice them all to save his own skin. And I think that -- had the beast been willing to let his beauty visit her family or allowed them to come visit her -- things could have ended very differently under Venizia's sensible guidance.
This portrait of Venizia was drawn by artist Emily Vreeland.
Character Portrait: Marchetta
In the original La Belle et la Bête, the beauty has sisters who refuse to go to their deaths to save their father. The text treats them very meanly: the sisters are vain, the sisters are selfish, the sisters are cruel. And yet, just as I imagined that my beauty would not be a paragon of perfection, so too I imagined that my sisters might not be the heartless harpies portrayed by their predecessors. I had something else in mind.
My Marchetta is in many ways a deliberate foil to my Bella. By the standards of their world, she is just as conventionally beautiful; she is tall, slender, and with a lovely and pleasing face. The biggest way in which the two girls differ is with their respective parents: where a selfish father has consistently undermined Bella's confidence and sense of self-worth, a l
oving mother has carefully built up Marchetta's self-esteem.
Both girls are capable of biting wit, as when Marchetta snaps at the nosy storekeeper or when Bella teases the beast that he smells like an animal. Both girls know how to manage resources, as when Marchetta takes over the management of the kitchen and finances, or when Bella scavenges for makeup and money. Both girls have strong instincts for survival, and a strong willingness to sacrifice in order to please their parent. In another story, Bella and Marchetta could be friends, but yet here their histories have rendered them two entirely different people. Bella acts out of fear and nervousness, while Marchetta lives in a state of steely calm.
Had Marchetta been offered the chance to give her life for the doomed merchant, she would have refused. Not because of insufficient love or selflessness, as in the original tale, but because Marchetta would have recognized that the request was unfair and unjust. When the merchant asks his daughters who will die for him, he is in essence asking which of them loves him the most. Sure, he says, you all claim to love me, but who will step up and prove that love with her life? The request is not a fair one, and the daughter who steps forward is acting under duress: so anxious to 'prove' her love that all other considerations fall by the wayside. Marchetta has been given the tools to recognize that unfairness and to push back against it. Bella has not.
Marchetta's name, like her mother's, ties deliberately back into the port city home she misses so much, by attempting to invoke the history of our famous Venice. v Marchetta is also a lesbian, though unfortunately I never could find a way to work it into the story as overtly as I wanted.
This portrait of Marchetta was drawn by artist Emily Vreeland.
Character Portrait: Fiorita
When I decided to retain the sisters from La Belle et la Bête, I wanted one of the sisters to be younger than the titular beauty. If the older sister was a representation of what our beauty might have become under the guidance of a better parent, then the younger sister would be a picture of what our beauty might have been had not her father tried to mold her into the "perfect" patriarchal daughter.
Fiorita is lovely, but not conventionally so: she is heavy-set, as we see when Cienzo calls her his "chubby chipmunk" and later when one of the village children needles her about her weight. Because of this and because of the fierce protection of her mother and older sister, she's avoided some of the strong societal pressures that have assailed Bella. She does not, for instance, offer her own life in order to save the merchant, despite being a loving child and eager to please. Instead, she finds his request confusing and upsetting, and doesn't understand how he can ask someone he loves to suffer on his behalf.
Fiorita has not been shielded entirely from society. She is very conscious of what others think of her, and frequently self-censors in order to please. We see her nervously calculate what to ask as a gift when her stepfather solicits requests, before her mother comes to her aid with an appropriate suggestion. And because she is ostracized by the village children for her bodily appearance and general foreignness, she chooses to stay home and wait for (and then actively search for) her missing stepsister rather than trying to use the socially appropriate channels that her mother and sister are fruitlessly pursuing.
I had originally intended for Fiorita to be sixteen, in a stepping-stone arrangement of Fiorita-16, Bella-18, Marchetta-20, but my early readers felt that anything older than fourteen felt inconsistent with the character. Her cheerful exuberance and ready embrace of her standoffish stepsister seemed to speak of someone a little younger and more spontaneous. Accordingly, I adjusted her age in the text since I could not at that stage imagine how to alter her personality from what had already been written.
Fiorita's name, like her sister's, is borrowed from a family crest used in an Italian city. w Rather than evoke Venice, however, Fiorita's usage ties most closely in with the province of Bologna, which is famous for its sausages. This is, however, entirely a coincidence.
This portrait of Fiorita was drawn by artist Emily Vreeland.
Character Portrait: Flavio
Flavio has neither a picture nor a chapter to his name, as I genuinely did not expect to use him past his introduction in Chapter 2.
He was originally created as a characterization exercise for the prince: I wanted to conversationally convey the prince's frustration at his expensive banquet, tiresome guests, and financially-forced betrothal. I had planned for the prince to strike Rosella, but I wanted to set the scene sympathetically by highlighting that he is under a tremendous amount of social and financial pressure. At the same time, I wanted to clarify that this was a man steeped in birth privilege and casual selfishness; his proposal to set up his illegitimate half-brother in an arranged marriage so that the prince can 'borrow' his wife was a convenient way to foreshadow that the prince viewed women more as objects to be maneuvered than as people in their own right.
I didn't expect to see Flavio again after he fled into the night. I knew it was a loose thread in a story where all the other named characters were automatically important (the deceased Prince Domenico and Bella's friend Agata had not yet been granted names), but it seemed unavoidable as I couldn't realistically have a long conversation without granting the half-brother his own name. I gave him the name "Flavio", as the next letter in the alphabet after his older brother Ezio and meaning "golden", as per his sunny temperament. x
Fortunately for Flavio, the original La Belle et la Bête has the beauty make a visit home before returning to the beast out of love and concern for his safety. I had intended to preserve this aspect of the story in Chapter 12, but when the time came, it no longer worked within the narrative. The beast was supposed to let the beauty go, but Ezio was neither confident that she would return nor selfless enough to take the chance. The beauty was supposed to want to go home, but Bella was reluctant to leave a husband who claimed to love her for a father who very clearly didn't. The sisters were supposed to receive the beauty spitefully and thereby strengthen her resolve to return to the beast, but Marchetta and Fiorita would have received Bella with open arms and encouraged her to remain with them.
I had departed from the narrative so thoroughly in terms of characterization that I could no longer follow the plot as I had intended. And yet, I still needed a means of interaction between Bella and the outside world. I wanted her to learn that her father's life had gone on without her, and for her to feel a nadir of defeat that ultimately propels her to accept the situation and attempt to make the best life of it that she can. And if I couldn't send Bella home to have her illusions shattered, I would have to send someone from home to her.
Fiorita was the obvious choice: she had enough belief in the possibility of magic and the truthfulness of Cienzo to look for "the magician" who had taken her sister. But she needed a guide, and a mode of transportation would additionally be very welcome. I toyed with the idea of revisiting the innkeeper who had sent Cienzo to the castle in the first place, but then the thought struck me that I had a perfectly good half-brother holing up with his friends from the castle guard in their families' homes and additionally tortured with guilt and keeping his ears to the ground for any news of his brother's malignant condition.
And thus was my Chekhov's Gun born from a character I had originally conceived as a deliberate loose end.
Deconstruction
The Author's Afterword on "The Beauty and The Beast"
La Belle et la Bête
I have held a passion for fairy tales since the first "Brothers Grimm" adaptation given to me in early childhood. I loved the stories with their heroes and heroines and their magical twists and turns.
But as I grew older, I started to balk at the black-and-white morality that was sometimes served alongside many of my fairy tale collections. I began to read the tales with a willingness to mentally compose my own modifications to the tales when I felt it was needed. If I felt particularly strongly about a story, I would dream of rewriting the tale entirely with my own personal spin. M
ore frequently than not, the dream was dropped in favor of something more interesting in the moment, and nothing ever came of such fancies.
The idea that I might seriously attempt to write an adaptation of "The Beauty and the Beast" came simply enough one day. I was musing that many of the lovely ladies of fairy tale lore would possibly not in Real Life be quite so supremely well-adjusted after a lifetime of being called lovely all the time by everyone they met. "Beauty" of the classic La Belle et la Bête tale particularly intrigued me -- in the original, she is simply known as La Belle everywhere she goes.
In the fairy tale, Beauty's identity is defined solely in terms of what others see when they look at her. Almost everything we know about her is simply that she conforms to the social standards of female attractiveness for her culture. As a character, she embodies the concept of Gaze 7, or the awareness that one's self is being viewed by external people as a physical object. Gaze holds a crucial place in both feminist theory and literary deconstruction, because the awareness of being observed can create a disturbance in a person's behavior. I wondered what kind of disturbance could result from Beauty's awareness that she is constantly being evaluated by everyone around her?
What would life be like for a girl spontaneously named "Beauty" by all her peers, even to the point that any prior name she bore now fades away? What kind of effect would such a name have on her personality? Would she be self-assured, possibly even haughty, in her unmatched beauty? Or would she tend towards the nervous and fretful as she strove always to live up to the expectations of others? Mightn't she possibly end up both vain and self-conscious at the same time?