Pulchritude

by Ana Mardoll

  The Queen, at these words, embracing Beauty affectionately, exclaimed, "Far from refusing my consent, their union will afford me the greatest felicity! Charming and virtuous child, to whom I am under so many obligations, tell me who you are, and the names of the sovereigns who are so happy as to have given birth to so perfect a Princess?"

  The "familiar" lady in the chariot is the benevolent Fairy whose magic maintained the enchanted castle, guided the Merchant to the castle gates, and kept Beauty and the Beast alive and entertained during their long confinement together. She has also been a regular feature in Beauty's dreams and has counseled her frequently on matters of love.

  The second lady is the Prince's Queen Mother, who has mourned her cursed son all this time and now embraces Beauty with warmth and gratitude. But her gratitude notably hinges on a single point: she desires Beauty to be a princess of noble blood, and her first action on receiving her potential daughter-in-law is to inquire as to the purity of Beauty's lineage.

  "Madam," replied Beauty, modestly, "it is long since I had a mother; my father is a merchant more distinguished in the world for his probity and his misfortunes than for his birth."

  At this frank declaration, the astonished Queen recoiled a pace or two, and said, "What! you are only a merchant's daughter? Ah, great Fairy!" she added, casting a mortified look on her companion, and then remained silent; but her manner sufficiently expressed her thoughts, and her disappointment was legible in her eyes.

  Beauty does not attempt to dissemble or sugar-coat the truth. She does not trot out the great-uncle on her mother's side who always claimed to be related to royalty in obscure ways. She lays out the bad news to the Queen Mother directly: Beauty's mother is dead and her father is a poor Merchant. She has no pedigree whatsoever, and she doesn't try to hide that fact.

  Many fairy tales don't concern themselves with this aspect of marriage. The poor, clever boy marries the princess with no obstacles whatsoever to him joining the royal family, or the humble, virtuous girl marries the king without a single objection raised to her suitability as mother of the next ruler. When fairy tales do bring up pedigree, it's usually to add an extra layer of challenge to the story: the brave boy may have passed all the king's tests, but now the proud princess has a few of her own to dish out. And thus the story can continue a little longer.

  The pedigree in this tale, however, is not a stalling device to draw out the story. There is a point here: by the standards of Beauty's society, she is utterly unsuited to marriage with the Prince. It doesn't matter if they love each other; love is what mistresses are for, not wives. Wives are for bearing legitimate children whose traceable lineage grants them power and protection from kings and emperors. Beauty has no pedigree, no power, no connections, and no wealth. She was valuable as a bride for the Beast because the curse merely required that any maiden submit willingly to marry him. She is valueless as a bride for the Prince because there is no longer any material benefit that a union with her will bestow.

  Beauty knows this. The Queen Mother knows this. And the Prince knows this.

  "It appears to me," said the Fairy, haughtily, "that you are discontented with my choice. You regard with contempt the condition of this young person, and yet she was the only being in the world who was capable of executing my project, and who could make your son happy."

  "I am very grateful to her for what she has done," replied the Queen; "but, powerful spirit," she continued, "I cannot refrain from pointing out to you the incongruous mixture of that noblest blood in all the world which runs in my son's veins with that of the obscure race from which the person has sprung to whom you would unite him. I confess I am little gratified by the supposed happiness of the Prince, if it must be purchased by an alliance so degrading to us, and so unworthy of him. Is it impossible to find in the world a maiden whose birth is equal to her virtue?"

  The Queen Mother has her mind so set in this matter that she is willing to push back against a very powerful Fairy. This is not something to be done lightly; it was at the whim of an offended Fairy that this curse was first laid on the royal family. And yet, so set is the Queen Mother on Beauty's pedigree that she is willing to risk the wrath of this Fairy, willing to risk even the Prince's life all over again, rather than give her blessing for him to enter into a union that she sees as beneath him.

  But what does the Prince think? Has he inherited the prejudices of his mother and his society? Will he value Beauty less now that he needs her no more? The Fairy calls the Prince to the conversation.

  "Your mother," said she, "condemns the engagement you have entered into with Beauty. She considers that her birth is too much beneath yours. [...] It is for you, Prince, to say with which of us your own feelings coincide; and that you may be under no restraint in declaring to us your real sentiments, I announce to you that you have full liberty of choice. Although you have pledged your word to this amiable person, you are free to withdraw it. [...] What say you, Beauty?" pursued the Fairy, turning towards her; "have I been mistaken in thus interpreting your sentiments? Would you desire a husband who would become so with regret?"

  "Assuredly not, Madam," replied Beauty. "The Prince is free. I renounce the honour of being his wife. When I accepted him, I believed I was taking pity on something below humanity. I engaged myself to him only with the object of conferring on him the most signal favour. Ambition had no place in my thoughts. Therefore, great Fairy, I implore you to exact no sacrifice from the Queen, whom I cannot blame for the scruples she entertains under such circumstances."

  Both the Fairy and Beauty offer the Prince an easy out: any oath he swore to Beauty as a Beast has no hold over him now that he is a Prince. The Fairy's exchange with Beauty is especially key; the Fairy asks if Beauty would accept a husband who doesn't want her as wife.

  The circumstances of the curse are now ironically reversed. Before, the Beast was the party at a disadvantage, cursed to be monstrous, frightening, and slow-witted. The onus was on Beauty to look past the outward manifestation of a bad husband to see the real value within. But now that the curse is broken and the Prince is restored to his full form and rightful place in society, he is the most powerful party in their relationship. Beauty is still lovely and virtuous and good, but she is also impoverished and low-born and a tremendous social handicap for the royal family. If they are to have a happy marriage, the Prince must look past social prejudices and cherish the rare goodness of his bride.

  In both cases -- both when Beauty was choosing whether to wed the Beast, and now that the Prince is choosing whether to wed Beauty -- the decision must be entered into willingly by the two parties most affected by the decision. Their choice must be made without duress and without the prejudices of their parents, again, not because they are magically best suited to make the right choice, but because it should be their right to make this one decision that will guide the rest of their lives.

  The Prince, who, by order of the Fairy, had been silent throughout this conversation, was no longer master of himself, and his respect for the commands he had received, failed to restrain him. He flung himself at the feet of the Fairy and of his mother, and implored them, in the strongest terms, not to make him more miserable than he had been, by sending away Beauty, and depriving him of the happiness of being her husband.

  At these words, Beauty, gazing on him with an air full of tenderness, but mingled with a noble pride, said, "Prince, I cannot conceal from you my affection. Your disenchantment is a proof of it, and I should in vain endeavour to disguise my feelings. I confess without a blush, that I love you better than myself. [...] It is enough for me to know who you are, and that I am to renounce the glory of being your wife."

  "Generous Fairy!" exclaimed the Prince, clasping her hands in supplication, "for mercy's sake, do not allow Beauty to depart! Make me, rather, again the Monster that I was, for then I shall be her husband. She pledged her word to the Beast, and I prefer that happiness to all those she has restored me to, if I must purchase them so dearly!"
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  It is not enough for de Villeneuve that the Prince choose to wed Beauty despite her low birth. Such a choice would not truly be comparable to the choice that had been put before Beauty. The Prince, by marrying Beauty, would give up some degree of social standing, but it is easy to imagine that the unsettling news that he has spent the last several years as an enchanted beast-creature would probably eclipse the shame of his marriage to a low born woman. Then, too, Beauty is in all things good and beautiful and pleasing and charming; she would no doubt be integrated into his society in time, by the virtue of her personality and the power of his influence.

  Beauty had to give up far more than a degree of social standing when she made her choice. She gave up her family and her freedom, knowing that her husband the Beast would probably not allow her to travel any more than before when she was his captive. She gave up her future, her chances to bear children, and all her ties to friends and society. She sacrificed everything she had out of fondness and love for a creature who arguably did not deserve either -- not because of an accident of his birth, but because of the wrongness of many of his actions.

  And thus we come to this moment of redemption for the Prince. He is able to match Beauty's choice in every point. If she will not have him as a Prince, let him be returned to his beastly, slow-witted form. Let him give up entirely his family, his future, his legacy, his friends, and his society to live in happy isolation with Beauty. He would rather return to the suffering he felt under his curse than be restored to the form he craves as a man, if the difference is whether or not he may marry Beauty.

  No one spoke for some minutes, but the Fairy at length broke the silence, and casting an affectionate look upon the lovers, she said to them, "I find you worthy of each other. It would be a crime to part two such excellent persons. You shall not be separated, I promise you; and I have sufficient power to fulfill my promise."

  The Fairy -- and de Villeneuve -- is satisfied. The Prince has chosen Beauty, and has chosen her in such a way that truly conveys his willingness to sacrifice everything to be with her. He has passed essentially the same tests as Beauty, and has been willing to make the same sacrifices that she was, and now the choices of the two lovers will be honored. And if society or the Queen Mother or the Merchant or anyone else has anything to say about it, the Fairy is there to lay down the law.

  Changelings and Changes

  And as it turns out, there is someone who does have something to say about the Fairy's decision, namely Beauty.

  Beauty, at these words, embraced the knees of the Fairy, and exclaimed, "Ah, do not expose me to the misery of being told all my life that I am unworthy of the rank to which your bounty would elevate me. Reflect that this Prince, who now believes that his happiness consists in the possession of my hand may very shortly perhaps be of the same opinion as the Queen."

  "No, no, Beauty, fear nothing," rejoined the Fairy. "The evils you anticipate cannot come to pass. I know a sure way of protecting you from them, and should the Prince be capable of despising you after marriage, he must seek some other reason than the inequality of your condition. Your birth is not inferior to his own."

  To the impatient reader, this must seem like yet another delay to the inevitable happy ending, but de Villeneuve has one last unhappy reality to address. She and Beauty both recognize that while the Prince currently values Beauty more than the good opinion of his family and society, that position is subject to change. Just as the Queen Mother considered Beauty worthless once the girl was no more use to the family, the Prince may come to value Beauty less over time as he gains distance from his time as a Beast. Thus we come to de Villeneuve's final feminist argument: Beauty must be raised to a position as powerful and privileged as the Prince's own in order to protect her from the whims of him and his family.

  And so Beauty, we are about to discover, is a Fairy Princess by birth, and the niece to this good guardian Fairy standing before her. She was switched as an infant with the Merchant's youngest daughter (who had died of crib-death) in order to protect Beauty from a malicious Fairy. But now that her birth-right has been revealed as the daughter of a King and a powerful Fairy, her pedigree is even greater than that of the Prince and his Queen Mother. The Prince -- as foretold by the escutcheons -- will be "Beauty's Husband", rather than she "The Prince's Wife".

  At first glance, this seems like something of a contradiction after the impassioned argument moments before that Beauty's birth is immaterial and only her virtue and goodness is required to make the match suitable. Is de Villeneuve trying to have her cake and eat it too by arguing in the same breath that Beauty's birth is immaterial but that she's also a Fairy Princess? I don't think that's the case.

  It seems to me that the raising of Beauty from a low-born state to a high-born one isn't the result of simply wanting a good pedigree as icing on the cake that is Beauty's perfection. Rather, I think the point here is to raise Beauty to a position of power so that she has the tools to defend herself. After all, the Queen Mother and the Prince (should the mood take them) can taunt and torment a low-born Merchant's daughter to the point of misery, but they would not dare do so to a powerful Princess protected by a high King and a good Fairy. And this, I think, marks the point at which this fantasy stops being about protection and starts being about power.

  The fantasy of being protected and valued by a powerful creature is a meaningful ideal for many people, but it has a double-edge. In order to need protection, one must also be vulnerable. And in order to be protected, one must necessarily be weaker than the protector. This is all well and good within the setting of the fantasy, until we ask what then? Will the protector continue their protection forever? Will they never slip up, never fail, never grow tired, never get weary? Will the vulnerable one be vulnerable for a lifetime, both to their attackers and to the protector, should they break faith down the line?

  I do not think it is a coincidence that many "protection fantasies" eventually evolve into "power fantasies" where the protected ends up surpassing the protector. This evolution of vulnerable-to-powerful has the effect of rendering the vulnerable partner ultimately on an equal footing with the protector. The protector's job becomes not to protect the vulnerable party forever, but merely to facilitate them on their way to power. The appeal of this fantasy seems to lie in the accessibility at the start: anyone who has ever felt vulnerable can step into the shoes of the protected and then enjoy the ride to a climax of privilege and strength.

  Beauty started this tale in the most vulnerable of positions. She was the youngest child in a society that disproportionately favors the elder children. She was a woman in a society that disenfranchises women to the point that not a single objection or investigation is raised when she disappears from her father's home the night he leaves her with the Beast. She was a daughter in a household that valued her life and her worth as so much less than that of her father that she was expected to give her life in his place in order to settle his debts. She was a prisoner to a captor who demeaned her wants and needs to the point where she was forced to hide her feelings lest she be emotionally and verbally abused.

  From this position of vulnerability, Beauty gained the love and protection of the Beast and his guardian Fairy. And that protection evolves now into power of her own: without the Beast, Beauty would never have known her hidden lineage as a Fairy Princess, but now that she knows her heritage, her whole life will change. She is the eldest child of a King and a Fairy, and the inheritor of all their power and privilege. She is the lost daughter of a doting family who has been mourning her loss since the moment she was taken away as an infant. As the descendant of fairies, the daughter of a king, and the wife of a prince, she is possibly the most powerful woman in the land.

  Now is the story truly over. Beauty has broken free from the rules of society and exercised her own choices. The Beast-Prince has done likewise, and has shown himself a better man than the Merchant by his willingness to make the same sacrifices for Beauty as she would have made for him. A
nd Beauty has been raised from her initial place as the most marginalized to her final destiny as powerfully privileged. All that remains is tying up a few loose ends, specifically the movement from her old family to her new one. The Fairy conjures the Merchant and his children to the castle to greet Beauty.

  The moment he perceived her he ran to her with open arms, blessing the happy moment that presented her again to his sight, and heaping benedictions on the generous Beast who had permitted him to return; he looked about for him in every direction, to offer him his most humble thanks for all the favours he had heaped on his family, and particularly on his youngest daughter. He was vexed at not seeing him, and began to apprehend that his conjectures were erroneous. Still, the presence of all his children seemed to support the idea he had formed, as they would scarcely have been all assembled in that spot if some solemn ceremony, such as that marriage, were not to be celebrated.

  These reflections, which the good man made to himself, did not prevent him from pressing Beauty fondly in his arms, and bathing her cheek with tears of joy. After allowing due time for this first expression of his feelings, "Enough, good man," said the Fairy. "You have sufficiently caressed this Princess. It is time that, ceasing to regard her as a father, you should learn that that title does not appertain to you, and that you must now do her homage as your sovereign. She is the Princess of the Happy Island, daughter of the King and Queen whom you see before you. She is about to become the wife of this Prince. Here stands the Prince's mother, sister of the King. I am a Fairy, her friend, and the aunt of Beauty. [...]