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A Marxist Comment on Love

Beauty and the Beast has gone through many transformations over the years. The story is primarily french and is very deeply rooted in the culture of the time. Even the earlier versions are very different from each other but all have a strong marxist leaning. The Beast’s background itself is a great example of this. He is overall, in several versions, being punished for abusing his social standing. He took advantage of his good fortune and was often not very kind so a witch or some other catalyst turns him into this ‘monster’. Perhaps this was a way for authors at the time to comment on the upper class and what can happen if they abuse their ‘power’.

In both Madame de Beaumont and Madame de Villeneuve Beauty is the daughter of a wealthy merchant. The family loses their money and then have to live a humbler life. This also could be a lesson that it could all be taken away at anytime.

It is interesting to see how the same ending can come from very different beginnings. In East of the Sun West of the Moon the Beauty starts off quite poor and is actually sold to the beast but they still end up falling in ‘love’. In other versions Beauty starts in similar humble beginnings and chooses to go to the Beast and to stay with him.

Maybe the fact that all of these versions start completely differently but end in similar ways is a comment on how love doesn’t know the bounds of social class, although that might not be completely true.

This video is an interesting take on the beloved story

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Childhood Favorite

“Then again, as some critics have suggested, the tales may tell us something about the mentality and outlook of central-european peasants. Can we perhaps take them as mirrors of late-medieval customs and values, especially since the social structures of the tales resemble the hierarchies of that era?” This proposition by Maria Tarter in her essay “Fact and Fantasy: The Art of Reading Fairy Tales” brought up an interesting idea. Since fairy tales can be so rooted in the time they were created, why are they so impactful on a modern day audience?

The first story that comes to mind for me personally, when I think of tales that directly impacted my childhood, is Disney’s Peter Pan.  I watched it constantly as a kid. It is one of the first movies I remember watching and I still have my very worn out copy on VHS. Because the Disney movie was released in the nineteen fifties it brings with it that kind of energy and it reflective of that period. The story also has many elements from its original publication in the early nineteen hundreds. These are time periods that I obviously have no experience with, so why was the story stop important to me as a child?

There seem to be a few universal struggles across mankind. Something that people can and do experience across culture, religion, and time. A couple of these are expressed in Peter pan: the need for adventure and being pressured to grow up to fast. 

 I guess what I liked so much about the movie was that it was a fun adventure story. I think the story appealed to me as a child because Wendy and her brother’s got to leave their real world problems behind and go to a magical land with a new friend. Every kid dreams about going on a great adventure to a magical place, even more so if they have problems in their actual life. The Disney version of Peter Pan shows a mostly close knit group of kids who are living how they want to. I think this idea of being free to live how you choose is appealing to many adults and kids alike.

For me personally I was very obsessed with adventure stories when I was younger and I credit Peter Pan for being one of the first that I was introduced to. I had always wanted to go on some great adventure so I found comfort in the story. Wendy is being pressured by her parents to grow up and take care of her brothers. Although I didn’t feel that pressure for the same reason I could definitely relate to her struggle.

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Fairy tales are a very important to our society. They’re some of the first stories that we learn as children and they are often used to teach valuable lessons. Donald Hasse says that, “Tampering with the classic texts of Perrault or the Brothers Grimm is considered by some to be tantamount to sacrilege, similar to revising the text of the Holy Scriptures.” in his essay “Yours, Mine, or Ours?”.  I would agree that because specific versions of these tales are so well known, you have to be careful with how you chose to adapt them. People have such personal feelings and experiences with these stories that they might be offended by how someone else chooses to interpret them. A good example of this is Little Red Riding Hood. 

Charles Perrault's “Le Petit Chaperon Rouge” could be considered the base for all future version of Little Red. Charles wrote his version to warn young ladies away from pre-marital sex least they die socially or otherwise. Unlike other versions, Perrault's Little Red has no chance for redemption.

There is a great irony that perrault's message that has evolved over the years. The versions following “Le Petit Chaperon Rouge” changed the meaning ever so slightly and consistency over the years that has lead to the complete opposite as seen in the ad above. Little Red was once a cautionary tale about pre-maretial sex. It then turned into a warning to all children about being good and obedient and staying on the path set before them. Due to the hyer sexualization of todays society Perraults ‘original’ message is now long gone. In fact, even though most people know the Grimms version in which Red is a little girl around ten, the character and story are unbelievably sexualized.

Perrault would definitely be disgusted  by the events of today. From Halloween costumes to ads like this one Red has a whole new life in the modern world. What Perrault feared in his time is larger than ever, although the hypothetical societal death is no longer a threat in most circles. Even still, modern day society has in a sense tried to get back to the stories roots by bringing back the adult content just with a completly different meaning, if there is a meaning behind it at all.