Beauty and the Beast - Lessons in Love, Part I

There are many Beauty and the Beast type stories throughout the world. Here I will review three:  Mountain Dweller, Bluebeard, and Cupid and Psyche. By comparing the actions of each heroine throughout each story’s progression, we can understand a little more about our own life choices. These stories provide ancient wisdom if we let them.

Part 1: How the Heroine Came to be in the Arms of a Monster

In Mountain Dweller, a young girl is told by her mother she should marry the mountain dweller because she is a glutton and he is known for being a great hunter, thereby providing her all the food she needs - practical advice but not meant as a compliment. In anger, she and her young sister run away to find the mountain dweller, who is almost impossible to find, as a means of besting her mother. 

In Cupid and Psyche, Venus is in a rage because people worship princess Pysche's beauty over her own. She begs her son Cupid to use his arrow to make Psyche fall in love with a vile creature. The Oracle of Delphi relays this message to the king. He is told to place his daughter on a cliff. The wind will carry Psyche to her monsterous future husband – Cupid. Upon taking aim, Cupid scratched himself with the arrow and fell in love with the princess. He altered his mother's plans and arranged the winds to carry Psyche to his home, rather than the monster's.  

In Bluebeard, a wealthy man who was cursed with an ugly blue beard fell in love with his neighbor's daughter. However she would not have him because of his atrocious facial hair... and several wives that seemed to disappear. To change her mind, he invited the daughter’s family to his place. Bluebeard wined, dined and charmed the family until the daughter consented whole heartily to marriage.

Although similar in idea, the tales begin from different perspectives. The gluttonous girl is full of rebellion and action.  She takes her mother’s criticism as a challenge, a quest or hero’s journey. The gluttonous girl actively chases down the mountain dweller for marriage despite challenges that lay ahead.

The daughter who consents to marry Bluebeard on the other hand is somewhere between active and passive. At the start, she refuses Bluebeard for specific reasons - ugly beard and missing wives. However, she allows herself to be caught up in his world of privilege. A veil descends over her intuitive eye changing her from thinking, active heroine to passive. She allows herself to be married to Bluebeard even though her original reasons for refusal still stand.

Psyche is neither active nor passive. Passivity implies that she allows something to happen to her. Psyche instead comes off as an object, a chess piece, to be moved around by everyone else. As an object, Psyche does not have the capacity to allow - so others decide her destiny. 

In comparing the starts of these stories, we can begin to understand how we end up in certain predicaments. If you’re always fighting an uphill battle, perhaps it’s because you’re too rebellious, hot-headed, and ready to disprove whatever criticism comes your way. You rush into relationships without thinking. It's like someone dared you the relationship couldn’t be done. Will it all work out in the end? How would you know? You never took the time to think about it.

Then again you could be the type of woman who over-thinks an issue until bad is good. So, if you ALWAYS date the wrong guy –someone who at first appears to be wonderful only to reveal himself as a jerk- maybe you are looking through a veil like Bluebeard’s fiancé.  Handsome looks, money, and swagger blind you to clues, present from the beginning, that the man you’re falling for is no good.

You could also be the type of woman who finds herself stuck in ho-hum relationships. Do you wonder how you got there? Think back to the beginning… Perhaps, like Psyche, you let yourself be moved around without ever thinking about and expressing your disinterest. You showed up to the cliff – I mean, date – as required. A decision was made that you and the other person would be a couple. You never provided input one way or the other. Like an object you were moved based on another’s desire. A place for you and you in its place.  

Next up we'll look at our heroines' married lives. Will they be a success? What will they have to overcome? Does how they start the story have any bearing on how the story moves along and eventually ends? What does that say about how we should conduct our lives?