#beauty a retelling of the story of beauty and the beast

[rumbelle-scream]

taking notes rn 🤭

Things From Beauty I wish I Could Put in Rumbelle Fic

Beauty, by Robin McKinley is one of my top-three best Beauty and the Beast adaptations and probably my favorite novel version of the story. I recently re-read it and had some thoughts. Thoughts which I have compiled into a numbered list.

1 The whole thing about Beauty being ugly

So in this book, Beauty has two older sisters who are both great beauties. Since the book starts when Beauty is twelve or so, she has acne and she hates her appearance and she just kind of nopes out of the whole idea of trying to be pretty. Over the course of the story, Beauty grows up and starts getting outside more. She even talks about how farm work almost turns her into more of a boy than a girl and she finds that liberating. Once she gets to the castle, she gets put in clothes and jewels fit for a princess, which she thinks is absurd. She doesn’t realize how beautiful she actually is because her self-concept has frozen in place. Say what you will about the “ugly duckling” narrative, but I think it’s valuable to show that who you are at twelve is not the same person you are at nineteen. Beauty ends up looking like her mom. 

2 Beauty having a family that we see and a father that we believe she would give her life for

In the show, we never really get an idea of who Belle is actually saving. Personally, I feel comfortable giving her an extended family and girlhood friendships that we don’t see on the show. But I feel like adding in siblings would be too much change, unless that was the central conceit of the fic–if it was a fic about Belle’s relationship with her sisters. How good of a father Maurice is varies from fic to fic, but we very rarely get the idea that Belle would give up everything just to save him. 

3 The castle being cursed as well as the Beast

I love Imp Rumple as much as the next person, but you never get the feeling that life as the Dark One is that much worse than it was before his curse. That’s why he isn’t looking for love, why he chose power over love. In Beauty, the Beast is isolated in his castle, he’s a prisoner there and he has been for 200 years. The book also makes it a point that nothing else lives in the castle or on the grounds. There aren’t even birds or butterflies in the garden.  

4 Beauty weakening the curse even before she breaks it, just by dint of being her

Beauty makes the Beast’s life better, even before she starts to love him. She doesn’t like the lifeless loneliness of the place, so she asks for something to feed birds–even though the curse doesn’t allow there to be birds. But the sheer force of Beauty’s stubbornness and specialness brings birds to her windowsill.  

5 A library full of books that don’t exist yet

Honestly, this is one of the weaker parts of the book, but it’s still fun. Quite a few versions of “Beauty and the Beast” have the heroine being bookish, but we don’t always go into what she likes to read. Beauty corrects this by making her a classics nerd, translating the Greek and Latin books that are in her bedroom library. But in the Beast’s library, there are books that haven’t been written yet. Anachronistic authors like Browning and Ruyard Kipling. (Beauty is disappointed in herself when she admits that she’s never heard of these writers who haven’t been born yet.) Just, imagine Belle reading The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and tell me you don’t want that in a fic.   

6 The portrait of the Beast when he was still a man, and him asking her opinion of it. 

This is the moment that made me want to write this list. It’s such a great part of the book. On a rainy day, the Beast takes Beauty to a portrait gallery in the castle. He shows her a series of paintings that are all of one family. The last painting is the image of a breathtakingly handsome young man. For a minute, Beauty is intimidated by his good looks and the haunted fire in his eyes–she doesn’t like this man. But then she gathers herself. She knows that that Beast is beside her, and she trusts him and likes him much more than a painting–no matter how handsome and haughty the young man in the painting is. 

Like, this is such a good moment. Cuz Beauty doesn’t know who she’s looking at, but we know, and the Beast knows and it’s just so full of unspoken meaning…

 …And it just wouldn’t work in a Rumbelle fic. At least, not one that has very much to do with canon. Imp Rumple isn’t that unrecognizable from his spinner self. And when would Spinner Rumple have a picture painted? And the meaning would be different. I can’t see Belle expressing attraction to the image of Spinner Rumple, and any sympathy she might express for him would just come off as pity. Rumple is contemptuous of himself at any stage of his life. It wouldn’t signify anything for their relationship if Belle chose the imp over the coward.

 But if only we could have a moment like that!

7 The Beast watching and caring for Beauty’s family 

Going back to the idea of Belle’s family actually being worth talking about after she goes to the castle. In Beauty the Beast is able to observe Beauty’s family while she’s gone from them. He tells Beauty that he has come to care for them. He sends her father dreams to let them know that Beauty is alright. He gives them gifts and luxuries that make their provincial life more like the riches they were once accustomed to. This is partially out of guilt (because having jewels is less important than having the youngest daughter around) but also out of love. (I really love the moment when the Beast gives fancy gowns to Beauty’s infant niece and nephew. Her sister admits that she wanted to dress the babies up in something nice, but it’s so impractical when they grow so fast.)

I just love the whole idea that the Beast isn’t beastly in any way except his appearance. I love the idea that he wants his curse to break, he wants to join humanity again. And more than anything else, he wants Beauty to love him as much as he already loves her.     

I’m not saying you can’t have all this in Rumbelle fic, but these are parts of Beauty that I deeply love and wish I could see more of in other works. 

[bookshelf-in-progress]

A Father's Heart: A Beauty and the Beast Retelling

For the Four Loves Fairy Tale Challenge at @inklings-challenge

Let me tell you, I sure confused that Beast when I returned. Have you ever seen a cat pounce on its own tail? That was the look of confusion the Beast had when he saw me in his palace. Only this cat was enormous—standing seven feet tall on his hind legs—black as soot, with claws this long, and a mouth full of teeth like butcher knives.

"Where is your daughter?" he asked me. Yes, that's what he sounded like—all deep and raspy, like he was growling and purring beneath his words.

"At home," I said.

"You did not bring her?"

“You told me,” I told him, "that I could return to be devoured or send her to take my place. I returned.”

"She did not wish to save you?"

“I never told her. Do you think I could lay that kind of burden upon my own daughter? What sort of father do you take me for?”

He had taken me for a cowardly one, I guess, because it took me a long time to convince him that my daughters were all safely at home, and I didn't plan to fetch any of them. He didn't seem to know what to do with me after that. He wasn't as bloodthirsty as I'd have expected someone with that many teeth to be.

"You will be my guest," he said at last—and he didn't seem too glad about saying it. No doubt he'd have preferred a pretty young girl as a houseguest to a weathered old sailor. But he gave me run of the place—I could help myself to anything, go anywhere I pleased. I didn't understand it. He'd been ready to kill me for a rose, and now he was giving me everything in the house?

I wasn't about to complain, though, so I set about to enjoy the place. The Beast encouraged me to enjoy the luxuries of the palace, but I've always been a working man—I didn't fancy living the life of an idle aristocrat. Before the week was out, I was working in the gardens—the place was overgrown like you wouldn't believe. When I wanted a rest, I'd explore the castle, and boy, was there plenty to see. He had rooms upon rooms of treasures—paintings, silks, wines, musical instruments, even an entire room full of exotic birds! I'd made my living selling such things, and my head swam at the sight of it—a tenth of it would have been worth more than all the riches I could have transported in ten lifetimes.

I didn't make my fortune by having dull wits, and I didn't lose it for lack of courage, so it wasn't long before I began to piece together the truth of this place and confronted the Beast with it.

"How long have you been cursed, your highness?" I asked him one evening at supper.

That great big cat was so shocked he knocked a wine bottle off the table. "Who says I am cursed?"

"Blazes, man, I'm not blind! This palace is worth more than most of the kingdoms of the world put together. If there was a king out there this rich, you can bet every merchant in the world would know of him. He'd have destroyed the world's economy. Fairy magic's the only way you get a horde like this, but you, sir, are no fairy."

Now the Beast seemed intrigued. "How do you know that?"

"A fairy would never have let me live—if he promised to kill me, he'd have killed me. No mercy among their kind. Only a human could have changed his mind like that—for which I'm very grateful, by the way."

"You're welcome," he said, seeming dazed.

I went on, "You're definitely more than a dumb beast; you walk and talk and dress like a man, so it stands to reason you were a man once—that furry coat of yours is just some fairy shell. Same way all these riches are probably just dirt and ashes once you take away the magic. Which means you must have run afoul of a fairy sometime in your past, who decided to curse you with an animal body and then trap you in a palace full of false riches."

I looked at the furnishings, the food, the Beast's clothes—everything spoke of royalty. "Fairies always meddle with royals, so you must have been a prince. The seventh son of the king of Gher went missing just before I went on my last voyage, so I'd wager that he is you. Am I right?"

The Beast goggled. "I…can't say."

"Which means I'm right. No fairy worth his salt would let you say you were cursed. Which means all I have to do is figure out how to break it. Those fairies always give you a way out—the more improbable the better."

I came around to his side of the table so I could walk around him and examine him from all angles. "You were disappointed when I came—you wanted one of my daughters, not me. When I did come, you didn't seem too keen on killling me—which makes me think it was an empty threat, trying to convince me to send my daughter instead. Which means she must be the way to break the curse. What can she do that I can't? Easy—true love. No fairy would think a girl could love a hulking monster like you, so that would be their impossible way to break the curse. You needed, what—true love? Marriage?"

"I can't say," the Beast said, but I knew by his face that I'd hit upon the right answer.

"That makes things simple. You let me out once before. Let me go home again and fetch one of my girls, tell her there's a prince waiting for her, and bring her back to join you in wedded bliss."

He seemed genuinely horrified by that. "I…can't say."

"Oh, of course. It won't count if she knows you're a prince. Well, I'll leave that part out. Tell her that the Beast who spared my life is in need of more company. With a bit of time and a bit of encouragement from her old dad, we'll have you back in human form by Christmas."

He thought it was worth a try, and something he could arrange with the conditions of his curse. So I went home to my children, convinced my sons not to follow me to slay the Beast, and made the castle sound intriguing enough that all three of my girls agreed to join me. I thought that maybe Hope would be the one to break the curse—she's always been the boldest of my girls—but it turned out that my quiet, gentle Beauty brought out the soft side of the Beast. It was the cutest thing you ever saw, the way they'd sit together reading in the rose gardens, that great big cat as shy as a schoolboy with her.

It wasn't three weeks before the Beast worked up the courage to propose—and my Beauty accepted without hesitation. Then there was blinding light and earthquakes, and when the dust cleared, the palace was gone. We were standing in a clearing in the woods—and a black-haired prince stood where the black-haired Beast had once been.

He's an excellent boy—I'll be proud to call him a son. He doesn't mind at all that his bride's the daughter of a failed merchant or that she once worked on a farm. We'll all be moving to his palace across the sea to live as honored members of the family.

Which is why we're moving out on such short notice—his highness doesn't want to be away from his kingdom any longer than he has to. I'm sure you'll find someone else to take the old place off your hands.

No, you don't have to believe me, but it's much better if you do. You'll look much less like a fool once it comes out that it's all true.

[divineandmajesticinone]

Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories; ‘The Tiger's Bride’

[princesssarisa]

I think I've noticed a slight trend in the evolution of feminist fairy tale retellings. In the '90s, 2000s, and earlier 20-teens, we had retellings which obviously had feminist themes, but weren't explicitly about "women's issues." The conflicts the heroines faced were relevant to feminism, but not exclusively caused by sexism. Yet more recent re-imaginings of the same stories have been much more explicitly (and a bit ham-fistedly) about battling sexism.

The movie Ever After is obviously a "feminist" Cinderella, with Danielle portrayed as a feisty and clever action heroine, and with a contrast between her tomboyish ways and the ladylike refinement of her stepmother and stepsisters. But the conflict Danielle faces revolves much more around social class than around gender.

Then there's Betsy Cornwell's 2015 YA novel Mechanica, a steampunk Cinderella where the heroine is an inventor. This is obviously a feminist retelling too, because Nick excels in a traditionally masculine field, because she uses her inventions to take herself to the ball without the need for a Fairy Godmother, and because she has a concrete goal of freeing herself from her stepfamily by opening her own shop. In this way, she's very much like the "girlboss Cinderella" of the 2021 Sony/Amazon musical. Yet if I remember correctly, her struggles have little to do with gender. She isn't blocked from achieving her business goal because she's a woman; the problem is simply that she's trapped in an abusive home with no money or resources of her own.

Yet the 2021 musical, with its Cinderella who similarly wants to go to the ball to find a patron and start her own business, makes the whole conflict ham-fistedly about sexism. To a slightly ridiculous degree, because this Cinderella isn't an inventor of mechanics, she's a dressmaker! Weren't most 19th century dressmaking shops run by women? Yet the entire conflict is framed as "Ella's goal of a career outside the home is frowned on because she's a woman."

Then there are the two screen versions of Disney's Beauty and the Beast: 1991 vs. 2017. In the original film, apart from Gaston's claim in passing that "It's not right for a woman to read!" Belle's misfit status is framed in a gender-neutral way. Her dreamy, adventurous spirit, of which her love of books is one aspect, sets her apart from the village's simple workaday culture. Of course there's a feminist element, since she wants more from life than what's expected of her and doesn't want to be the "little wife" of a man who doesn't respect her, but the villagers would still consider her odd if she were a man. Yet the 2017 remake had to explicitly add gender issues. Here, the villagers disapprove of women being educated; only boys go to school, Belle's neighbors dislike the fact that she even knows how to read, and they bully her for teaching a little girl to read too.

It's just a little trend I've noticed.

[shy-raccoon]

Reverse beauty and the beast where a beautiful but tyrannical human royal imprisons a beast in their castle. As they fall in love the royal slowly realizes that their peasents should have rights and stripping the enviroment of all it's resources is bad due to the beast's influence.

[mdpthatsme]

BOOK COVER REVEAL!

Your Everything is the first book in a romantic fantasy duology with enemies-to-lovers & arranged marriage. Join Prince Zephyrus as he climbs the Vanishing Peaks to confront the beast of his nightmares.

Publishes September 3, 2024 Pre-order today: https://amazon.com/dp/B0D8KNC77X

Sign-up for an ARC: https://forms.gle/7ztJteCG4zRwqaZSA

[specificpollsaboutbooks]

Favorite Rewritings

Round 1

Beauty is a retelling of the Beauty and the Best fairy tale

In Cold Blood is "a "non-fiction novel" about 4 murders in Kansas, 1959

[t-the-ring-master]

Would anyone be interested in a beauty and the beast retelling? If so, I’ll probably do some polls for it to get down characters and stuff. But if so… let me know.

[simplyghosting]

I want fairytales and stories. Grimm’s fairytales. Hans Christian Andersen fairytales. I know those, but I want MORE. I want EVERY fairytale and story from EVERY culture. Common, uncommon, the whole shebang. I want to experience the wonder of woven words.

[chameli]

I'm reading a book where the love interest's name is Fardeen and all I can think of is

[bookshelf-in-progress]

It's a good sign I'm recovering from my creative slump that I was able to brainstorm a story that makes me laugh.

[not-so-secret-nerd]

Happy second birthday to my debut novel! I can't believe 2 years have gone by. 270 reviews. 800k+ KU reads, and endless love from around the world. I can't even begin to thank you all for helping my fledgling soar.

[princesssarisa]

24. What other character from another fandom of yours that reminds you of them?

for Jane Eyre

Honour "Beauty" Huston from Robin McKinley's novel Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast.

Maybe this is cheating, because Beauty was clearly influenced to some extent by Jane Eyre, and even alludes to it in one scene, when Beauty mentions that one of her sister Hope's former suitors turned out to have a wife in the attic.

Both books revolve around a homely and unassuming yet intelligent, well-read, strong-willed, staunchly honorable young woman, who at age 18 goes to live in a grand Gothic dwelling. There she has a gradual romance arc with the master: a physically unattractive, imposing older man, who turns out to be a kindred spirit and an intellectual match for her, yet who has a secret that she doesn't learn until later. (Of course no matter how homely Rochester supposedly is, he's presumably less ugly than the Beast.) At one point later in the story, she leaves him, but a mysterious psychic connection between them leads her back, and in the end they're joyfully married. At an earlier point, she also resists his attempts to provide her with lavish gowns and jewels in place of her usual plain clothing.

Of course there are some important differences between them – unlike Jane, for example, Beauty has a loving family – and I don't think Beauty is as richly characterized or unique as Jane. But that 1978 novel definitely brings the innate similarities between Beauty and the Beast and Jane Eyre to the forefront.

[maybemockingbird]

WELCOME BACK RECRUITS

Once upon a time, in the dusty wastelands of Mars, a brave climber dared to scale a tower. Little did he know that his actions would change the course of the galaxy... forever.

These aren't your mother's fairytales...

Welcome back, Recruits! My name is A.L. Davidson and my queer, sci-fi short story series R-PNZL: A Futuristic Fairytale is back on Kickstarter for parts II + III and you have ONE week left to back the campaign! R-PNZL is a tech-heavy, futuristic series that weaves together retellings of beloved fairytales with sci-fi action and horror elements, subverted expectations, and fresh spins on well-known characters!

For those of you who missed R-PNZL, never fear! We have tiers available that get you the entire trilogy in both PDF and print formats so you can get in on the adventure from the beginning. Featuring cover art by @jackarais - creator of the hit webcomic Bicycle Boy - and bite-sized adventures that will absolutely blow your mind, R-PNZL is a great series for fans of fairytale adaptations that shake up what we've come to expect! No damsels in distress or love at first sight tropes here! So, if you're on the hunt for a new series to dive into, please come check out R-PNZL on Kickstarter before it ends on the 15th of December!

[georgi-girl]

Here’s an Idea

A retelling of Beauty And The Beast in which the princes’ beast form is a mindless overly muscled hulk and his true form is a short effeminate nerd.

[cmrosens]

'Beauty and the Beast' in Gothic/Horror Stories

Breaking Down the Tale & Book Recommendations This is my first post of 2024, and the final BATB post! Let’s look at how this story can be Gothic, Horror, Dark Romance… and then some examples of this in books in these genres. The elements of the tale lend themselves especially to Gothic tropes, so let’s look at these more closely, and build a new Gothic version from them like a series of writing…