Marianna Mayer’s version of Beauty and the Beast

Beauty and beast is a classic tale written by Mariana Mayer with subtle symbols in its original form (Temple, 2018). The story shows a girl who falls in love with a beast thus transforming him into a handsome young prince. The story also reveals that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Well, the story begins with a wealthy merchant who had three daughters with the youngest who was most admired by many for her beauty.

Her older sisters were seen to be far proud than she was and was very clear that they will only be married by a duke or earl. However, when their father loses his fortune, the two older sisters have difficulties in trying to adjust to the life of poverty but the modest and loyal beauty sets about to find ways through which she will help her father around their home.

Soon after one year, their father receives a letter that a ship has arrived containing his goods, so as to set off to meet it. When he asks his daughters what gifts they wanted, the two older sisters request for jewels and expensive gowns while beauty requests for a simple rose. On his way, he gets lost in the woods and takes refuge in a great house that appears to have nothing.

The merchant remembers his promise to beauty and plucks a rose from the bush at which that same moment a fearsome beast appears. The beast declares that the merchant had insulted his hospitality by plucking a rose. The beast says he will kill the merchant but the merchant begs for mercy. The beast allows the merchant to live but as long as the merchant is willing to bring one of his daughters to be killed. Failure to that, the merchant would return after three months to face his fate.

The merchant returns homes and tells his children about the promise he made to the beast. When beauty hears this, she says she is willing to follow his father back to the beast since she would not allow the father to be killed because of her.  At the palace, the beast sees the father and the daughter and dismissed the father who despondently and reluctantly returns home. The beast treats beauty well and keeps on requesting for her to marry him.

Beauty admits that she finds the beast physically ugly but sees that she has a good heart (McKinley, 2014). On a day when the Beauty returns home, and his sisters are jealous of her since she had been given the finest clothes by the beast while they have been married to terrible husbands.  The conspire to rely on emotional blackmail to make beauty stay longer at home so that the beast will come enraged and devour beauty.

The beast becomes ill due to missing beauty. Beauty begins thinking about marrying beast who would make her happier as compared to her sisters who are cruel and selfish. She resolves to get back to the place and accepts to marry beast. No sooner had beauty said this, the beast is replaced by a very handsome young prince. He tells beauty that an evil spirit had cast a curse on him and could only be freed when a young girl accepts to marry him. A beautiful fairy then transforms her sisters into the places and turns them into stature to forever look at their younger happy sister (Hearne and DeVries, 1989).

This story of the beauty and beast shows that true love conquers all. Beauty finds the beast to be physically ugly but still loves her since she is treated well and is happier with the beast rather than his sisters. Ideally, love is the ultimate redeemer since in this case, beauty must love what is unlovable in order to make it lovable. The only true cure for the beast was love itself. As any other fairy tales, it is evident that true love is the toughest magic of all which does in life itself.

Despite the outward appearance of the beast, beauty ends up considering the inner beauty of the beast thus falling in love with him. She ends up getting back to the beast even after going back home. The fairy then appears and rewards beauty for her judicious choice through preferring virtue before beauty or wit and deserves to find a human being in which all the stated qualifications have been combined.

Reference

Hearne, B. G., & DeVries, L. (1989). Beauty and the Beast: Visions and revisions of an old tale (p. 11). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

McKinley, R. (2014). Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast. Open Road Media.

Temple, C., Ogle, D., Crawford, A., & Freepon, P. (2018). All Children Read (Loose Leaf) Text Only 5^th edition. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. ISBN-13: 978-0-13-451596-0 ISBN- 1O: 0-13-451596-X