Fastpass to History ~ La Belle et la Bête

As you may have guessed with a blog called "Adventures in the Great Wide Somewhere", I am a big fan of Beauty and the Beast! Belle reigned as my favorite Disney princess for years and Beauty and the Beast the Musical goes down as one of the musicals I regret not being able to perform back in my musical theatre days. I always wondered about where this lovely story came from and after a bit of digging, and some fun with google translate, I am pleased to announce a brief history of the classic tale, La Belle et la Bête.
So brush up your French and pull up a chair for the origins of this Disney classic!

The fairytale storybook in the queue for
Enchanted Tales with Belle is the French version of
Cinderella, not Beauty and the Beast

Once upon a time, in the eighteenth century a former school teacher and governess by the name of France Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont set aside her writing of popular moralistic novels to publish magazine collections of educational and moral stories, poems and fairy tales for children.


illustration by Eleanor Vere Boyle

During publication of these works, she revised and abridged a story by her contemporary Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve. Written in 1740, La Belle et la Bête is the oldest known version of the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast. This 1740 version drew from Cupid and Psyche and other fairy tales which preceded it with the idea of beastly husbands. The beast truly was a monster in the original and the fairytale focused on his transformative process through the magic of love. He remained a Beast in this original until after the wedding to his Beauty.
France Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont version removed the adult and political elements of the over a hundred page original and shifted the emphasis to Beauty and her ability to learn to see beyond skin deep.

In the centuries that followed the publication of these original versions, dozens of adaptations, from stage to screen to television and back to books retold the classic tale. Among my favorites, Rose Daughter by Robin McKinley, a beautiful fantasy novel rich in language and character Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tales Beauty and the Beast from 1984 and of course Walt Disney's lush and soulful Beauty and the Beast  movie and Broadway musical adaptations. If you've never had the pleasure, I highly recommend listening to "Home" and "If I Can't Love Her" but bring the Kleenex.
Yes this tale as old as time is definitely worth retelling.
And they still are retelling it! Currently I eagerly await Sunday's season premiere of ABC's Once Upon a Time so I can catch up with Belle and her own Beast, Rumplestiltskin.

For further reading on the literary and early film history of Beauty and the Beast, I highly recommend the essay Beauty and the Beast by Terry Windling.