Tale As Old As Time

Hardly new but amazing nonetheless, the age old story of Beauty and the Beast.

The Disney tale was initially released in 1991 and revamped decades later into a live-action film mixed with CGI effects in order to make the colorful cartoon we all know and love into something far darker.

Aside from some of the most well-known songs in Disney's career, some of the other aspects that I really loved in the film were the witty banter between the objects and how their personality and job scope in the castle seemed to match perfectly, a feat that is practically unheard of from regular life. Just imagine how wonderful it would be for you, who loved to cook, to be a chef. Or to be a personal designer after your love of fashion. or even to fulfill your calling of 'setting the mood' by being the one in charge of lighting. 

But that is a topic for another day, what I wanted to discuss with you reader, is the form of romance that was and is still being told to young females in our society. 

Granted that the main female character has more say and character that the Disney princesses before her, but the ending of the story remained the same...her life was magically better with the inclusion of a husband. 

If you listen to the plight of the young girl in the beginning of the film, what she wanted more than anything was an adventure and a life away from what was simple and expected of her in her village. And although one could definitely state that being prisoner in an enchanted castle would for sure be counted as an adventure, we later come to see that the biggest adventure here is, getting over the beast's hot temper and trying to decide which book to read in the library given to her. 

In fact, Belle ended up in a better state than any of her predecessors. 

She married royalty, and therefore would never need to work a day in her life.

A house full of servants that actually WANT to wait on you hand and foot. 

And a Beast-man, a person solely devoted to your happiness and wanted to hear what was on your mind.

Hell even if he never did turn human, any woman would say that she was living the high-life. 

But none of that really equates to adventure. Belle just got better books and a nicer cage, but her adventure would come to a sudden halt the second she had given into the romance of her tale. 

The notion we are telling to our young ladies is that truly a woman's place should be beside that of a man and that if the woman wishes hard enough; perhaps in a Snow White or Ariel fashion, then a man would magically appear and whisk her away from her trivial life. The idea that a woman needs someone in order to be fulfilled...

And sadly those of us who grew up on such stories, we put men on a very high pedestal. In fact it's less a pedestal as it is a throne...we want our guy to behave in a way that we want, forgetting that they are people too who have as many faults as we have ourselves.
I feel as though these old Disney tales tend to lend to many women being disappointed when their expectations of love and intimacy are not fulfilled, and although it might have seemed appropriate at the time, women today should not need to look to another person in order to feel complete in themselves.

Have a similar or opposing view?

Leave a comment below and let's discuss it over a cup of tea, maybe in an enchanted castle? 

Cause hey “If it's not Baroque, don't fix it.”