Pulchritude

by Ana Mardoll

  If Beauty were a real person, I could imagine that an entire lifetime of being treated as a visible object might leave her anxious and lonely. I imagined her unable to connect with others, fearful that sharing her real feelings and inner thoughts might upset the delicate balance of being constantly beautiful to them. I saw her surrounded by friends and lovers and even superficially confident in their flatteries, and yet essentially alone and never fully understanding why.

  That is the Beauty I wanted to capture in my story, long before I ever put pen to page.

  Feminist Fairy Tale?

  Unlike many of the fairy tales that we grow up with, "The Beauty and the Beast" is not an anonymous tale of unknown authorship. Whereas many classic fairy tales were handed down from multiple competing and collaborating sources and gathered up by folklorists, "The Beauty and the Beast" was an original tale written in 1740 by the Frenchwoman Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, who chose older Animal Bridegroom legends as the inspiration for her story. 8 The original tale was exceedingly long (much longer than the short, archetypal version that Madame de Beaumont would later popularize) and explored in detail many social concerns of de Villeneuve's day.

  The original La Belle et la Bête might be considered a feminist work for its time. Written by a woman, it explored the social problems faced by the women of de Villeneuve's day, and argued for the rights of women to determine their own fate apart from the whims of their fathers and husbands. Author Terri Windling argues eloquently that many of the Animal Bridegroom stories of the 17th and 18th centuries -- de Villeneuve's tale included -- were an especially valuable rhetorical vehicle for exploring the dangers faced by women who had no right to choose their own husband, no right to refuse their husband's sexual desires, and no right to own property or sue for divorce. 9 Even a privileged and socially-valued woman, like the fictional Beauty, had no way of knowing whether she would find herself married off by her father to a beastly monster.

  Finding an English copy of de Villeneuve's original story is quite a hunt; for purposes of this deconstruction, I relied upon the version collected in "Four and Twenty Fairy Tales" translated by James Planché in 1858 and available online. 10 (The story itself is quite long, with my quotes covering only a fraction of the total story, but I hope to convey the most relevant pieces.)

  The tale starts out simply and familiarly enough with the story of Beauty's family and their sudden fall from riches to rags:

  In a country very far from this is to be seen a great city wherein trade flourishes abundantly. It numbered amongst its citizens a merchant, who succeeded in all his speculations, and upon whom Fortune, responding to his wishes, had always showered her fairest favours. But if he had immense wealth, he had also a great many children, his family consisting of six boys and six girls. None of them were settled in life: the boys were too young to think of it; the girls, too proud of their fortunes, upon which they had every reason to count, could not easily determine upon the choice they should make. Their vanity was flattered by the attentions of the handsomest young gentlemen.

  But a reverse of fortune which they did not at all expect, came to trouble their felicity. Their house took fire; the splendid furniture with which it was filled, the account books, the notes, gold, silver, and all the valuable stores which formed the merchant's principal wealth, were enveloped in this fatal conflagration, which was so violent that very few of the things could be saved. This first misfortune was but the forerunner of others. The father, with whom hitherto everything had prospered, lost at the same time, either by shipwreck or by pirates, all the ships he had at sea; his correspondents made him a bankrupt, his foreign agents were treacherous; in short, from the greatest opulence, he suddenly fell into the most abject poverty.

  He had nothing left but a small country house, situated in a lonely place, more than a hundred leagues from the city in which he usually resided. Impelled to seek a place of refuge from noise and tumult, he took his family to this retired spot, who were in despair at such a revolution.

  In the tale, the fate of the family and the futures of its daughters are wholly dependent upon the fortunes of the father, the Merchant. The Merchant's luck turns ill when all his holdings are consumed in a series of accidents and outright theft from his trusted associates. The luck of his daughters turns in immediate response: they lose their home, their dowries, the clothes and jewels they need in order to be socially attractive, and in total every chance they once had for a comfortable future.

  Whether or not this fate could have been avoided with more careful investments by the Merchant is ultimately a distraction from the fact that his children had no more say in their father's affairs than they did in being born to him in the first place. Their fates are inextricably tied to the father's and if a father's fortunes reverse, his children have no choice but to suffer alongside him.

  The daughters of this unfortunate merchant were especially horrified at the prospect of the life they should have to lead in this dull solitude. For some time they flattered themselves that, when their father's intention became known, their lovers, who had hitherto sued in vain, would be only too happy to find they were inclined to listen to them. They imagined that the many admirers of each would be all striving to obtain the preference. They thought if they wished only for a husband they would obtain one; but they did not remain very long in such a delightful illusion.

  They had lost their greatest attractions when, like a flash of lightning, their father's splendid fortune had disappeared, and their time for choosing had departed with it. Their crowd of admirers vanished at the moment of their downfall; their beauty was not sufficiently powerful to retain one of them. Their friends were not more generous than their lovers. From the hour they became poor, every one, without exception, ceased to know them.

  In de Villeneuve's world, the only means by which a woman might disentangle her fate from that of her father's is by a change in her familial status. She may exchange the dependence on her father for a dependence on a husband, but in either case the woman is merely choosing into which basket to place all her eggs. In de Villeneuve's tale, the Merchant's daughters had not settled on suitors prior to the loss of their father's fortune. This is unfortunate for them, since now those opportunities are summarily withdrawn.

  There is some sense in the text that the daughters have no one to blame for this ill fate but themselves. As profiteering speculators, they have played the market poorly by letting their vanity keep them on the marriage market for too long. They should have permanently selected a suitable suitor long before this misfortune occurred to rob them of their market value. And this marks the start of the villainization of the elder daughters, both as a typical fairy tale contrast to the virtuous Youngest Child, but also as a harsh embodiment of the rules of this world.

  Because the text is so harsh in its treatment of the Merchant's daughters, the reader is propelled towards sympathy for the young women. No matter how vain they supposedly are, the bitter irony is that even if they had prudently settled upon husbands before their father's misfortune, there would still be no guarantee of a safe and happy life for them. A woman could be saved from poverty, only to see the fortunes of her husband reverse the very next day. And such a reversal would almost certainly leave her in a worse position than before: equally poor, but now dependent upon a new husband rather than a familiar father, and without the fantasy of marrying out of poverty.

  The Merchant's daughters are ultimately in the unenviable position of having to choose which man to gamble their futures on, with no way to recover from a wrong choice and no way to know which choice is the right one.

  Humility and Hubris

  It is perhaps fortunate that the Merchant's daughters did not marry their suitors before their misfortune hits. Not only do the suitors lose interest in the young women in the wake of their impoverishment, but many of them also turn on the family with malicious rumors and gossip. The family is driven from the city by the ill-will of their former friends,
to live out the rest of their years in humble circumstances.

  This wretched family, therefore, could not do better than depart from a city wherein everybody took a pleasure in insulting them in their misfortunes. Having no resource whatever, they shut themselves up in their country house, situated in the middle of an almost impenetrable forest, and which might well be considered the saddest abode in the world. What misery they had to endure in this frightful solitude! They were forced to do the hardest work.

  In their country home, only hard work and manual labor awaits the family. The boys work the fields from dawn to dusk while the girls toil at the chores that their former servants had previously performed for them. The older girls are miserable, but the youngest one accepts her fate and cheers the family with songs and music. Her labors are appreciated by her father and brothers, yet her sisters despise her for it.

  The youngest girl, however, displayed greater perseverance and firmness in their common misfortune. [...] Every intelligent person, who saw her in her true light, was eager to give her the preference over her sisters. In the midst of her greatest splendour, although distinguished by her merit, she was so handsome that she was called "The Beauty." Known by this name only, what more was required to increase the jealousy and hatred of her sisters? Her charms, and the general esteem in which she was held, might have induced her to hope for a much more advantageous establishment than her sisters; but feeling only for her father's misfortunes, far from retarding his departure from a city in which she had enjoyed so much pleasure, she did all she could to expedite it. This young girl was as contented in their solitude as she had been in the midst of the world. To amuse herself in her hours of relaxation, she would dress her hair with flowers, and, like the shepherdesses of former times, forgetting in a rural life all that had most gratified her in the height of opulence, every day brought to her some new innocent pleasure.

  In the characterization of these sisters, de Villeneuve is following an old and established fairy tale tradition, that of the Youngest Child being more beautiful and desirable than her older sisters. 11 Here, the text argues that the universal preference for their younger sister is more than enough to render the older sisters bitter and angry. After all, everyone has spontaneously given her the appellation "La Belle", or "The Beauty", to the point where no other name or designation is even hinted for her in the text. Nor is she simply "Beauty" in the sense that one might name a girl "Hope" or "Charity". Rather, she is The Beauty, which begs the question: the beauty of what? The beauty of the family, surely, since all the sisters' suitors publicly and openly prefer the youngest girl to her older siblings. The beauty of the town, perhaps, given that she outshines with such relative splendor every person she meets.

  If we take the older sisters not as characters but as concepts, their dislike of their younger sister reflects the flaws of the society in which they live. Since women cannot earn their own living by talent or trade, their only hope for a secure and happy future is to "win" the most eligible suitor as a husband. Because of this, all the sisters are necessarily in competition with each other. Personal feelings and family loyalties fade before the reality that the youngest has an immeasurable advantage over her sisters: an apparent accident of birth has left her valued at a far higher price on the almighty marriage market that hangs over all their heads.

  With this in mind, it is easy for the readers to sympathize with the Sisters and their dislike of Beauty. Though the Sisters have been abandoned by their lovers, Beauty's impoverished state has not diminished the number of her suitors. Though the spurned Sisters have been driven to the bleak countryside by a lack of viable alternatives, Beauty's presence is wholly motivated by a filial devotion to their father. Is it surprising that Beauty's cheerful songs and daisy-chain making might grate on the nerves of her hard-working Sisters, when she alone has the freedom to leave that life at any moment? Where the Sisters are prisoners of fate, Beauty is by contrast free.

  After two years in country exile, the Merchant receives news that he may not be as poor as he previously thought. One of his ships thought lost at sea has arrived unexpectedly in port, bursting at the seams with riches ripe for the collecting.

  Two years had already passed, and the family began to be accustomed to a country life, when a hope of returning prosperity arrived to discompose their tranquility. The father received news that one of his vessels, that he thought was lost, had safely arrived in port, richly laden.

  The Merchant is immediately counseled by friends and family that if he does not make the trip at once to take his goods in hand, the vultures at port will pick him clean and he will not see a cent of his earnings. He readies for his journey to the port while his children's hopes are raised for a restoration to the lifestyle they were once accustomed to.

  His daughters, with the exception of the youngest, expected they would soon be restored to their former opulence. They fancied that, even if their father's property would not be considerable enough to settle them in the great metropolis, their native place, he would at least have sufficient for them to live in a less expensive city. They trusted they should find good society there, attract admirers, and profit by the first offer that might be made to them. [...] They requested him to make purchases of jewelry, attire, and head-dresses.

  It is easy for the reader to mistake the Sisters' requests for "jewelry, attire, and head-dresses" as a useless vanity. Here their father has not yet seen a single cent from his newly returned ship, and yet they are already spending his earnings on worthless trivialities. Haven't they learned from their time in the country what is important in life and what is not?

  And yet, to condemn the Sisters for their vanity is to understandably fail to comprehend their world. Their requests are completely logical and sensible, just as soon as we accept their frame of reference. They have learned a painful lesson: they missed their chance at forging an advantageous marriage once before, and they are anxious not to repeat the same mistake. Their first order of business -- and a decision that benefits both themselves and their father -- is to place themselves back on the marriage market at once, with the intention of taking the first reasonable offer presented. And in order to get back on the marriage market, money must be invested to cultivate their social attractiveness: the right clothes, jewels, and hair pieces must be bought and worn to signify that they are desirable and worthwhile. The Sisters are not dressing to appease their vanity; they are costuming as part of an elaborate social mating dance.

  Their haste is perfectly sensible given their circumstances, and yet at the same time is palpably tragic. The text implies that the Sisters do not have faith that their father will be able to keep his riches long enough for them to shop carefully for suitable husbands. Considerations such as a suitor's business sense or his genial attitude or their mutual compatibility must be discarded in favor of sealing a deal as quickly and permanently as possible. Once again, we are given the sense that in the Sisters' world, the transition from a father's house to a husband's home is as much a gamble for a better future than a meeting of hearts.

  Beauty, who was not the slave of ambition, and who always acted with prudence, saw directly that if he executed her sisters' commissions, it would be useless for her to ask for anything. But the father, astonished at her silence, said, interrupting his insatiable daughters, "Well, Beauty, dost thou not desire anything? What shall I bring thee? What dost thou wish for? Speak freely."

  "My dear papa," replied the amiable girl, embracing him affectionately, "I wish for one thing more precious than all the ornaments my sisters have asked you for; I have limited my desires to it, and shall be only too happy if they can be fulfilled. It is the gratification of seeing you return in perfect health."

  This answer was so unmistakably disinterested, that it covered the others with shame and confusion. They were so angry, that one of them, answering for the rest, said with bitterness, "This child gives herself great airs, and fancies that she will distinguish herself by these affected heroic
s. Surely nothing can be more ridiculous."

  The text indignantly tells us that Beauty is not "the slave to ambition" and that she holds back any requests from the realization that if her father purchased all the items required by her Sisters, then he would have nothing left to spend on her. And yet, there's a subtext to this passage that the reader simply cannot ignore.

  Beauty may not be a slave to ambition, but she has the distinct privilege of not needing to be. The text has already noted that she is universally loved and valued by her community, on account of her adherence to the local social standards of physical beauty and personal amiability. She is completely dependent for her livelihood on the whims of her father and brothers and suitors, yet even in her powerless state, she is probably the most "empowered" woman for miles. She can, at any moment, decide that the shepherdess life is for the dogs and petition her father to make a mutually beneficial match between her and any eligible bachelor in the community.

  Though Beauty sardonically notes that her Sisters' requests will consume the entirety of her father's fortune, with none left over for her, it is a fact that she does not need anything from her father. And this is a difficult aspect of the text, because once again the reader must remember that the Sisters' "jewelry, attire, and head-dresses" are not vanities but necessities. If they are to escape their current status as a burdensome mouth to feed in their father's household and install themselves as ambassadors in a family that can help the Merchant and his sons prosper in their trade, they must invest in the necessary trappings to augment their attraction. Beauty needs no such augmentation, and as such has no real needs to request of her father.