Wait. Are You Guys Together?
In the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, a wealthy merchant with 3 sons and 3 daughters. The eldest daughter’s took their wealth in vain and went to all the balls and only associated themselves with people of high rank. However, the youngest daughter was the most beautiful of all, as well as the sweetest and most behaved. One day, the father lost all of his wealth and the family was forced to move out of town. Beauty worked as hard as she could to help her family stay afloat financially, whilst her sisters wallowed at the fact that no man wanted to marry nasty women without any fortune. One day, the merchant had a shipment coming in and the eldest sisters asked him to get them dresses, and jewels. But Beauty only asked for a single rose. The father ended up getting caught in a storm and stumbled across a castle where the Beast lived. After the father took one of his roses, he was livid and demanded that he return in 3 days, or one of his daughters. Next thing leads to the next and Beauty and the Beast fall in love.
A modern-day retelling of this story is Shrek. We see a lot of similarities between Beauty and the Beast’s relationship, and Shrek and Fiona’s relationship. What is so unique about this type of fairy tale is the couple falls in love with each other not from their looks, but from the virtues and personalities, which is an underrated quality even in today’s world. In Shrek however, when princess Fiona falls in love with the ogre, Shrek, she turns into an ogre herself. This is different from Beauty and the Beast, since she turns him into a handsome prince afterwards. But in both versions, we see the importance of love that doesn’t prioritize looks, unlike most fairy tales.
We can see in both the stories mentioned above the aspect of “socially unacceptable couples”. Where both couples are in love with each other, but from an outside perspective, no one can wrap their head around a beautiful princess falling in love with an ugly, gross “beast”. One connection that I made that is very prevalent in today’s world is inter-racial couples. Although many people have come a long way in becoming more accepting of these couples, there is still plenty of prejudice going around. For instance, just last year there was a white girl and her black boyfriend who received death threats because “they weren’t supposed to be together.” Not only the ignorance of people, but there has been prejudice against these couples even in our own government. I feel like this is a great connection between the 2 stories mentioned above because they all share the same theme, that true love is more than just looks. It doesn’t matter what people think, if you are in love with someone, even if they are different, you should be just as happy as anyone and treated that way.
