Pulchritude
Page 25
The merchant could not help weeping, without being able to tell whether his tears were caused by the pleasure of seeing the happiness of Beauty, or by the sorrow of losing so perfect a daughter. His sons were agitated by similar feelings. Beauty, extremely affected by this evidence of their love, entreated those on whom she now depended, as well as the Prince, her future husband, to permit her to reward such tender attachment. Her entreaty testified the goodness of her heart too sincerely not to be listened to. They were laden with bounties, and by permission of the King, the Prince, and the Queen, Beauty continued to call them by the tender names of father, brothers, and even sisters, though she was not ignorant that the latter were as little so in heart as they were in blood. She desired they would all, in return, call her by the name they were wont to do when they believed her to be a member of their family.
The fate of the Merchant is not a happy one. As much as he loved Beauty, he must now deal with the fact that she is a changeling, and that his biological daughter has been dead, unknown and unmourned by him all this time. And now his adopted child is being taken from him and given to a royal family, with the title of 'father' taken from him.
We might pity another man, but the Merchant has not conducted himself well over the course of this tale. It is almost karmic that his daughter is ultimately taken from him after he has been so eager to throw her away, once to a violent monster to save his own life and then again to a boorish beast out of gratitude for the riches sent his way. The Merchant has consistently valued Beauty less than he has his own wealth and safety. Now as a favorite of the Princess he will have both, but too late he recognizes that he has carelessly sacrificed "so perfect a daughter".
Beauty and the Prince immerse themselves into the pleasures of their wedding and each other's company.
Enraptured with the scenes around them, entranced by the pleasure of loving and expressing their love to each other, they had entirely forgotten their royal state and the cares that attend it. The newly-married pair, indeed, proposed to the Fairy that they should abdicate, and resign their power into the hands of any one she should select; but that wise being represented to them clearly that they were under as great an obligation to fulfill the destiny which had confided to them the government of a nation as that nation was to preserve for them an unshaken loyalty.
They yielded to these just remonstrances, but the Prince and Beauty stipulated that they should be allowed occasionally to visit that spot, and cast aside for a while the cares inseparable from their station, and that they should be waited on by the invisible Genii or the animals who had attended them during the preceding years. They availed themselves as often as possible of this liberty.
And they lived Happily Ever After.
Modern Spins
When I first set out to write a retelling of "Beauty and the Beast", I had never read the original La Belle et la Bête. Indeed, despite my best efforts, I could not even find the original until after I had penned my first three chapters -- and then only because a dear friend sent me a copy. And yet even without reading the text, I knew something of the tale. How could I not? Our culture is saturated with it.
At the time of writing this, Wikipedia lists no fewer than ten film versions of the tale, four television tie-ins, and twenty prose adaptations. 15 Pulchritude will, I suppose, mark the twenty-first, and yet I have no doubt that dozens of other adaptations exist that simply have not been added to the Wikipedia database. For whatever reason, this tale has resonated deeply with our society. So what more was there to be done with a story that can be abridged into a few pages and yet has been repeated endlessly over film, television, books, and musicals? Did the world really need another "Beauty and the Beast" adaptation?
I hoped so. I started from the standpoint that the tale as I knew it -- a cursed man desperately waiting on a young woman to realize her love for him and restore him to humanity before the time limit runs out -- could not possibly end well. Not because the Beast was beastly or because Beauty was damaged by an abusive home or any other reason relating directly to the characters themselves, but rather because the society that shaped them was fundamentally toxic. I saw the tale as one in which privilege damages us and prevents us from having nice things in general and healthy relationships in particular.
It's ironic that I hope to use de Villeneuve's classic story to tell a feminist tale, and yet I depart so wildly from her happy ending. I knew, even before I had read her original text, that she meant the story as a commentary on the social ills of her day, and I hoped to replicate that. But where she was able to embrace the difference between Fantasy and Reality and take her story to a place where abusers can be suddenly redeemed and victims can be magically elevated to positions of ultimate power, I couldn't.
She followed a path that she hoped would map out how much better the world could be if society gave women choice, agency, and equal power in their relationships. I followed one that I hope will demonstrate how good people can meet terrible ends when society isn't willing to give those tools to the disenfranchised.
Endnotes
Sources
[1] "pul-chri-tude. noun; physical beauty, comeliness."
Source: Dictionary.com
Link: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pulchritude
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[2] "Just like its English and French counterparts, the Italian word fata comes from Latin Fatae, which is the feminine form of Fatum, 'fate, destiny.'"
Source: Raffaella Benvenuto
Link: http://www.endicott-studio.com/rdrm/rrItalianF.html
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[3] "A portative organ (from the Latin verb portare, "to carry") is a small pipe organ that consists of one rank of flue pipes, sometimes arranged in two rows, to be played while strapped to the performer at a right angle. ... The instrument was commonly used in secular music from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries."
Source: Wikipedia.org
Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portative_organ
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[4] "...a myriad of different magical creatures: not only fate, but also the diminutive beings usually called folletti, the Italian counterparts of the various sprites, gnomes, leprechauns and pixies encountered in the folklore of western and northern European countries."
Source: Raffaella Benvenuto
Link: http://www.endicott-studio.com/rdrm/rrItalianF3.html
Folletto is rendered as elf in the Google English translation.
Source: Wikipedia.org
Link: http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folletto
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[5] "Like most spirits of this type, monachicchi are tiny, extremely lively, and wear red hoods; they also stand guard over a treasure (usually a pot of gold), and exact revenge on anyone trying to steal it by turning the gold into lumps of coal."
Source: Raffaella Benvenuto
Link: http://www.endicott-studio.com/rdrm/rrItalianF3.html
Monachicchio is rendered as gnome in the Google English translation.
Source: Wikipedia.org
Link: http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monachicchio
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[6] "An example is the Mazapegol of the north–eastern, coastal region of Romagna (formerly inhabited by Celts), described by folklorists as a cross between a goblin and an incubus."
Source: Raffaella Benvenuto
Link: http://www.endicott-studio.com/rdrm/rrItalianF3.html
Mazapégul is rendered as goblin in the Google English translation.
Source: Wikipedia.org
Link: http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazap%C3%A9gul
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[7] "Gaze is a psychoanalytical term brought into popular usage by Jacques Lacan to describe the anxious state that comes with the awareness that one can be viewed. The psychological effect, Lacan argues, is that the subject loses some sense of autonomy upon realizing that he or sh
e is a visible object."
Source: Wikipedia.org
Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaze
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[8] "Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la Bête) is a traditional fairy tale. The first published version of the fairy tale was a rendition by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, published in La jeune américaine, et les contes marins in 1740. The best-known written version was an abridgement of her work published in 1756 by Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont, in Magasin des enfants, ou dialogues entre une sage gouvernante et plusieurs de ses élèves; an English translation appeared in 1757."
Source: Wikipedia.org
Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauty_and_the_Beast
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[9] "The story she came up with was uniquely her own, however, and addressed issues of concern to women of her day. Chief among these was a critique of a marriage system in which women had few legal rights -- no right to choose their own husband, no right to refuse the marriage bed, no right to control their own property, and no right of divorce. Often the brides were fourteen or fifteen years old, given to men who were decades older. Unsatisfactory wives risked being locked up in mental institutions or distant convents. Women fairy tale writers of the 17th & 18th centuries were often sharply critical of such practices, promoting the ideas of love, fidelity, and civilité between the sexes. Their tales reflected the realities they lived with, and their dreams of a better way of life. Their Animal Bridegroom stories, in particularly, embodied the real–life fears of women who could be promised to total strangers in marriage, and who did not know if they'd find a beast or a lover in their marriage bed."
Source: Terri Windling
Link: http://www.endicott-studio.com/rdrm/forbewty.html
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[10] "Four and twenty fairy tales : selected from those of Perrault and other popular writers."
Source: Archive.org
Link: http://www.archive.org/details/fourtwentyfairyt00planiala
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[11] "Youngest Child Wins: A common Fairy Tale situation. Whenever multiple siblings are portrayed, the youngest is the hero; the older ones are either evil or just boring."
Source: TVTropes.org
Link: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YoungestChildWins
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[12] The "Power and Control Wheel" contains the following categories: Coercion and Threats; Intimidation; Emotional Abuse; Isolation; Minimizing, Denying, and Blaming; Using Children; Economic Abuse, and Male Privilege.
Source: National Center on Domestic and Sexual Violence
Link: http://www.ncdsv.org/images/PowerControlwheelNOSHADING.pdf
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[13] "In psychology, Stockholm Syndrome is an apparently paradoxical psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, who essentially mistake a lack of abuse from their captors for an act of kindness."
Source: Wikipedia.org
Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome
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[14] "In heraldry, an escutcheon is a shield which forms the main or focal element in an achievement of arms. The word is used in two related senses. Firstly, as the shield on which a coat of arms is displayed. Escutcheon shapes are derived from actual shields used by knights in combat, and thus have varied and developed by region and by era. [...] Secondly, a shield can itself be a charge within a coat of arms."
Source: Wikipedia.org
Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escutcheon_%28heraldry%29
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[15] "The tale has been notably adapted for screen, stage, prose, and television over the years."
Source: Wikipedia.org
Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauty_and_the_Beast
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[o] Author's website.
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[p] Rosella's name.
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[q] Ezio's name.
Link: http://www.behindthename.com/name/ezio
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[r] Ezio of Assassin's Creed.
Link: http://assassinscreed.wikia.com/wiki/Ezio_Auditore_da_Firenze
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[s] Guerrino's name.
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[t] Cienzo's name.
Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Merchant_%28fairy_tale%29
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[u] Venizia's name.
Link: http://www.thinkbabynames.com/meaning/0/Venizia
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[v] Marchetta's name.
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[w] Fiorita's name.
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[x] Flavio's name.
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Trigger Warnings
The following potentially triggering content is included in this novel:
Descriptions of violence, spilled blood, and animal-on-human attacks.
Allusion to the fear of potential rape in frightening situations.