In both Gabrielle-Suzanne De Villeneuve’s La Belle et la Bête (1740), and Disney’s Beauty and the Beast film (1991), the female heroine character is known as Beauty or Belle, both named after their looks. She is a common girl who saves her father’s life by taking his place in the captivity of a beast. She then ends up falling in love with the beast, looking past his appearance. Belle’s story in the Disney film shows that:
“external ugliness means nothing. In this outrageous turn around, it is Beast who is advertised to be the possessor of ‘beauty’ and Belle/Beauty must learn its nature, and Beast (actually the student of Belle’s improving influence) is positioned as moral instructor; Belle’s fate is his. It is Belle – robbed of her traditional Beauty – who is being instructed in how to elicit beauty from beastliness. ‘It is Belle and not the Beast who must learn to love ugliness and literally embrace the bestial’” (Craven, 2002: 133).
Her love for the beast transforms him to the handsome prince he once was, and it is revealed that he had been under a curse. They live happily ever after, with Belle having saved not one, but two men with her love. When De Villeneuve was writing La Belle et la Bête, the social norm at the time was that “women’s future husbands were typically chosen by their fathers and the daughters “had to ‘learn to love’ the men they were bequeathed to”(Kulišťáková, 2018: 20). Learning to love those around you as well as looking past outwardly appearances are the two ideas that both the Belle characters from Disney and De Villeneuve’s story signify.
In the Disney film, Belle is known for being smart -always having her head in a book, she is quick to speak and react, she is known as being a weird because she goes against the cultural norms and societal expectations her village has for women. Belle is also known for her beauty, one scenario from the film that expresses this best is when a villager proclaims, “now, it’s no wonder that her name means ‘beauty’. Her looks have got no parallel” (Beauty and the Beast, 6:16).
De Villeneuve’s Belle is similar to Disney’s in many ways, such as her beauty and wit. She is also known as being cheerful and determination, shown when she makes the best out of the unfortunate circumstances that left her and her family with nothing. Additionally to this, De Villeneuve “describes her as “a perfectly beautiful young creature” with a generous heart that can be seen in anything she does. Beauty […] outstood “all other women as far in the qualities of mind as [she did] in beauty.”” (Kulišťáková, 2018: 26).
Both story versions exhibit the constructed feminine when it comes to Belle, but she is not hyper-feminine since –not being portrayed as overly sexual and is not the hyper-feminine character that would be expected of a princess story. However, in the Disney film, there are hyper-feminine characters who are women with high voices, are obsessed with their appearance, whose only goal is to marry a man, and swoon all over the Gaston, the hyper-masculine ‘bad boy’ of the film.
Each version of Belle and her attributes demonstrate the constructed feminine. One way this is seen is that both Belle are as being a “good daughter” because of her love and loyalty when she sacrifices herself for her family (Kulišťáková, 2018: 26). This is a very common gender construct of the feminine person. Adding to her ‘good daughter’ character, Belle is cheerful and always looks on the positive side of things, for example when the family has to work hard to survive and when she becomes captured by the Beast; these are typically attributes that highly expected of females in today’s day and especially in the 18th century.
“We can also see the concept of ideal femininity in Belle’s docile behaviour. Not only is she compliant by going to the Beast’s castle, but she has a submissive attitude towards the Beast as well: […] ‘My life is in your hands, and I shall submit myself blindly to the fate that you’ve determined for me.’[…]” (McGarth, 2013: 163).
It is a common expectation for women to need to be dominated. Belle is a wild card, and in both stories it can be seen that the Beast steps in to tame her into a person who can be married and become a princess. By the end of the two stories Belle becomes more soft and beautiful in character and appearance, being adorned in the prince’s riches, and both stories end with the ‘perfect couple’.
This change in Belle’s character as well as appearance is due to the development, whether positive or negative, of Belle’s character. She grows as a person as she is met with different challenges and experiences. Ultimately, the largest change in her appearance and character can be seen when she agrees to marry the Beast, this might be explained by her achieving the ‘peak feminine character’ that is heavily pushed in the 18th century society and is expected in today’s.
The attributes of Belle foster the expectation that women do need to be dominated by a man. That women need to be beautiful and respectable, being immensely loving and loyal, sacrificing themselves for the men in their lives and for their families. This can be very damaging to women, as these might not be attributes they exhibit. It is unrealistic for all women to act in the expected ways, and can cause insecurities in women. The psychological impact of this way of expecting women to act entirely like this can be quite damaging to women and their societies.
Felix W.
Lara’s analysis of the character Belle/Beauty is both in depth and insightful, with an interesting perspective on how the character has been constructed over the span of centuries. She’s right to compare the two versions and point out that they share many of the same attributes, such as beauty, wit and their role in fulfilling the expectations that society both then and now place on women, specifically daughters. Likewise, Lara shows a deep understanding of how in both times women are expected to “learn to love” their partner, and that their role in a relationship is to serve and submit.
Lara also used her sources effectively. With one, she investigated the traditional beauty roles in the Disney adaptation, where Belle must find beauty in the Beast character. Another source is used to provide the historical context of the 18th century and what was expected of women at that time. Finally, Belle’s “docile” behaviour and submissive attitude are backed up by use of another source, further enforcing how her femininity has been constructed.
If there is one thing to improve upon, it might have been to use images of how the Belle is interacting with the Beast. This may have been hard or, in the case of the historical one impossible, to find. If they do exist though, the visual of how Belle and her body language displays her subservience to the Beast would further enforce the points Lara makes about how she is exemplifying the constructed feminine. Nevertheless, both images clearly show Belle’s beauty, which is one of the main driving points of the story.