The Story of the Beauty and the Beast by Madame de Villeneuve

 

Title: The Story of the Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la Bete)
Author: Madame Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve (1695-1755)
Originally published: 1740 (Originally written in French)
Dates read: 4/7/18-4/13/18
Back to the Classics category: Classic in Translation
Find out more about the Back to the Classics 2018 reading challenge HERE.
Read my other book reviews from the challenge HERE.

Favorite quotes:
"This rose has cost me dear. It is not in money, however, and would to Heaven that I might have purchased it with all I am yet worth in the world."

"How do we know, perhaps the dreadful fate which appears to wait me conceals another as happy as this seems terrible?"

"You should not take counsel from your eyes alone. You should let yourself be guided by gratitude. By doing so, you are assured you will be happy."

"How many girls are compelled to marry rich brutes, much more brutish than the Beast, who is only one in form, and not in his feelings or his actions?"

"I knew not how much I loved you. The fear of losing you has proved to me that I was attached to you by stronger ties than those of gratitude. I vow to you that I had determined to die if I had failed in restoring you to life."

"Generous Fairy! For mercy's sake, do not allow Beauty to depart! Make me, rather, again the Beast that I was, for then I shall be her husband. She pledged her word to the Beast, and I prefer that happiness to all those she has restored me to, if I must purchase them so dearly!"

Review:
Madame de Villeneuve's tale is credited as the oldest known version of Beauty and the Beast. This translation is an easy and quick read. With it originally written in 1740, I expected it to have old style English, but it's very modern. It doesn't actually have names for any of the characters. They all just have nicknames or titles: The Merchant/Old Man; Beauty; Beast; Good Fairy; Old Fairy; etc. This sometimes got confusing because some characters had the same/similar titles (there were multiple characters titled 'Queen') and other characters weren't just called by one nickname (ie Beast/Prince).

What's interesting is that Disney's Beauty and the Beast is actually only the first half of the book. The second half of the book tells the backstory of the parents of both Beauty and the Beast and how they came to be in the situation they were in. Basically, the Beast becomes human and reunites with his mom and the Good Fairy. He tells Beauty his perspective of growing up and how/why he became the Beast. Then Beaty's father shows up and the Good fairy tells everyone about what happened to the parents that led to the whole "Beauty and the Beast" situation.

This got confusing due to no one having names and because it was unchronological. It was also disappointing because the backgrounds were told as summed up pasts and not as full stories, like the first half of the book was. The idea of "show don't tell" was not followed at all in the second half of the book. I wish that the book was in order and told all in the form of a story with much more details. I would have loved to hear more about the Faries and both sets of parents. There was so much great potential and it just seemed to be tagged on to the end of the Beauty and the Beast part of the tale as an afterthought.

Disney's Beauty and the Beast was one of my favorites growing up and I was excited to read this. I was expecting more of a Grimm fairy tale, but this actually does have a positive ending. The basic premise of the story was there, but many things were different as well - which I expected.

The enchanted rose the Beast was offered at the beginning of the movie that he refused? Was actually a marriage proposal by an ugly, old, mean Fairy (that wasn't a beautiful enchantress in disguise). He refused and since she believed it was only because she was ugly, she turned him into a dumb Beast (he is "stupid" not "ferocious"). The only way he would change back is if a young lady married him out of true love, of her own free will.

Beauty's father isn't an inventor, but a rich Merchant who then loses all his wealth and moves to the country with his 6 sons and 6 daughters. His sons seem like generally good people, but his daughters are very vain and needy. All except the youngest daughter, Beauty, who is kind, generous, and optimistic. When the Merchant leaves to try to regain some of his wealth, his daughters ask for all sorts of lavish gifts, except Beauty who only asks for a simple rose.

The Merchant gets lost on his way home, accidentally discovers a palace, and eats a lavish meal set out for him. He tries to find the owner to thank him, but it is in vain. On his way out he notices rose bushes and decides to pick some to give to Beauty. The Beast confronts him saying that he fed the poor man and the Merchant has repaid his kindness by stealing from him. The Beast tells the Merchant he will go home and one of his daughters must volunteer to come live with him forever. After some trickery, the Merchant agrees and heads out. Upon hearing her father's story, Beauty volunteers since it was because he was picking her a rose that he got into this situation. The rose in the story had more to do with Beauty - the Beast did not have an enchanted rose.

Beauty and her father go to the palace together and they do get a chance to say goodbye before her father leaves. There are inanimate, though lifelike, statues everywhere. You find out much later that all the staff was turned into statues until the curse was broken. There is a big library, as well as a room full of instruments she could play. There was a large aviary of rare birds that would sing to her, monkeys that attended to her needs and performed plays, and parrots that she could have conversations with. She was allowed anywhere in the palace - there were no "off limit" places.

There also isn't a magic mirror, but there's a room in the palace with several different windows that open onto different stages around the world and she could watch the performances. She would have dinner with the Beast every night. He would ask basic questions like, "How did you spend your day today?" and "Is there anything I give to make you happier?" He always ended the night asking Beauty to mary him, she would say no, and he would leave until dinner the next night.

There is no Gaston, but when she leaves the Beast to visit her family, all her sisters' suitors dump them to pursue Beauty. Her father tries to convince Beauty to marry the Beast since he isn't as mean as they thought he was. While she is at the palace, Beauty has dreams about the handsome Unknown, which is actually the Beast in his human form - but she doesn't know that. She falls in love with her dream, which is why she hesitates in marrying the Beast. One night, in a dream, the Unknown goes to kill the Beast and she gets in the way to protect him. This, as well as seeing the Beast almost die in actuality, leads her to agree to marry the Beast.

I'm not going to get into the second half of the story much because it's confusing and this is already a long blog post. You find out that the Merchant isn't actually Beauty's father, but that she is the daughter of the King of Fortunate Island. Beauty is not only royalty by birth, but is half fairy... and cousin to the Beast/Prince. You find out that, as an infant, Beauty was cursed to become the bride of a beast. She was cursed years before the Prince by the same Old Fairy that proposed to him. Beauty was cursed because she was the offspring of an illegal marriage between a fairy and a human. It was viewed that, just as the Fairy married beneath her kind to marry a human, their daughter would also mary beneath herself to marry a beast.

It's a good book, I just wish it was in chronological order, and much longer so we could have an expanded backstory to The Beauty and the Beast. Now I'm off to read another book... but since a review should be more about the author of the book than about the writer of the blog, I will let Madame Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve have the last words:

"The Queen, mother of the Prince, caused this marvelous history to be recorded in the archives of her Kingdom and those of the Fortunate Islands, that it might be handed down to posterity. They also disseminated copies of it throughout the Universe, so that the world at large might never cease to talk of the wonderful adventures of Beauty and the Beast."

Votes for Women by Elizabeth Robins

  

Title: Votes for Women: A Play in 3 Acts
Originally published: 1909 (First performed 1907)
Dates read: 4/3/18-4/6/18
Back to the Classics category: Female Author
Find out more about the Back to the Classics 2018 reading challenge HERE.
Read my other book reviews from the challenge HERE.

Author: Elizabeth Robins
Elizabeth Robins was born in 1862 and died in 1952, at the age of 90. Elizabeth's mother, an opera singer, was committed to an insane asylum when she was a child. Her father was an insurance broker and banker. Elizabeth was sent to study medicine in college, but at eighteen she ran away to become an actress. In 1885, Elizabeth Robins married the actor George Richmond Parks. In 1887, he committed suicide by jumping into the Charles River wearing a suit of theatrical armor. She never remarried and turned down offers of marriage from many men, including the playwright George Bernard Shaw and the publisher William Heinemann.

In 1888, Elizabeth traveled to London where she introduced British audiences to the work of Henrik Ibsen. Elizabeth produced and acted in several plays written by Ibsen including Hedda in Hedda Gabler and Nora in A Doll's House. These plays were a great success and for the next few years, Elizabeth Robins was one of the most popular actresses on the West End stage. In the 1890s her incipient feminism had been fuelled by witnessing the exploitation of actresses by actor-managers and by Ibsen's depiction of strong-minded women. Elizabeth became a strong feminist and was a member of various women groups including the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, Women’s Social and Political Union, Women Writers Suffrage League, and Actresses’ Franchise League.

Robins used her 15th-century farmhouse as a retreat for suffragettes recovering from hunger strike. It was also rumored that the house was used as a hiding place for suffragettes on the run from the police. She wrote a large number of speeches defending militant suffragettes between 1906 and 1912. However, Elizabeth herself never took part in these activities and so never experienced arrest or imprisonment. After women gained the vote, Robins took a growing interest in women's health care. Elizabeth persuaded many of her wealthy friends to give money and eventually the New Sussex Hospital for Women was opened. During the Second World War Elizabeth Robins went back to the United States. However, at the age of 88, she returned to London and passed 2 years later. (source)

Plot summary:
England; June 1905; Sunday noon-6pm. Accredited as the first Suffrage play.

Jean, young and naive, is engaged to the politician Stonor, who is up for election for Cabinet Minister. At her aunt's house, she meets the mysterious Miss Levering, an independent lady who has lived through a great deal in her past and is now fighting for women's rights.

When Jean hears Miss Levering talk about the horrible situation of young, poor and homeless women in England, she is shocked. Slowly she gets interested in the suffragette's movement, something her fiancé did not expect to be so strong. But then Jean learns that Stonor's annoyance about her involvement in the matter and her interest in Miss Levering has other reasons that dive into his past.

Favorite quotes:
"You'll never know how many things are hidden from women in good clothes. The bold, free look of a man at a woman he believes to be destitute - you must FEEL that look on you before you can understand a good half of history."

"Why does any woman take less wages than a man for the same work? Only because we can't get anything better. Do you really think we take them there low wages because we got a liking for low wages? No. We're just like you. We want as much as ever we can get. When we get our rights, employers won't be able to get rich on keeping you out of work and sweating us. If you men only could see it, we got the SAME cause, and if you helped us, you'd be helping yourselves."

"Men say if we persist in competing with them for the bigger prizes, they're dreadfully afraid we'd lose their beautiful protecting chivalry. Well, the beautiful chivalry of the employers of women doesn't prevent them from paying tenpence a day for sorting coal and loading and unloading carts - doesn't prevent them from forcing women to earn bread in ways worse still. So we won't talk about chivalry. It's being over-sarcastic. We'll just let this poor ghost of chivalry go - in exchange for a little plain justice."

"We've come to a place where we find there's a value in women apart from the value men see in them."

Review:
The play is a quick read and, if I read it on the weekend, could be finished in a single sitting. Act I was mostly about introducing the main characters and what their political stances were. Act II was outside at a Suffrage rally (my favorite part of the play). Act III brought information learned in the first 2 Acts together to create a climaxed ending.

The First Act was a little slow, but I think that was because I was expecting the fiery speeches found at a rally. The more I think about it, though, the Suffrage movement didn't just happen in the streets amongst passionate strangers, but also happened in the homes of friends and family having normal conversations.

The Second Act was wonderful, because it was at a rally that had multiple fiery speeches. The Third Act brought you back into the home to deal with more "domestic" life... but really also connects with the Suffrage movement. The ending is a bit predictable, but satisfying nonetheless. It was a good read and I highly suggest it to anyone at all interested in the history of Women.

Now I'm off to read another book... but since a review should be more about the author of the book than about the writer of the blog, I will let Elizabeth Robins have the last words:

"I'm no longer merely a woman who has stumbled along the way. I'm one who has got up bruised and bleeding, wiped the dust from her hands and the tears from her face, and said to herself not merely, 'Here's one luckless woman!' but - 'Here is a stone of stumbling to many. Let's see if it can't be moved out other women's way.' And she calls people to come and help. No mortal man, let alone a woman BY HERSELF, can move that rock of offense. But if many help, the thing can be done."

The Mummy! by Jane Webb Loudon

         

Title: The Mummy! (A Victorian Tale of the 22nd Century)
Originally published: 1827
Dates read: 3/1/18-3/30/18
Back to the Classics category: 19th Century Classic
Find out more about the Back to the Classics 2018 reading challenge HERE.
Read my other book reviews from the challenge HERE.

Author: Jane Webb Loudon
Jane Webb Loudon was born in 1807 and died penniless in 1858, at 51 years old. Her mother died when she was 12 and she traveled with her father learning languages. He father died when she was 17 and, left an orphan, she began writing to support herself.

Her first major work, The Mummy!, was published anonymously when she was 20. It was published less than a decade after Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and is noted as the fist novel to feature a living mummy. The mention of a "steam mowing apparatus," "steam digging machine," and the use of electricity to draw rain from clouds to water crops, caught the attention of the horticulturist John Loudon. After seven months, they were married.

She knew very little of gardening, but she learned quickly from her husband. Most garden books of the day were very scientific and technical, and Loudon decided she was going to publish an everyday botanist book for women. She wrote and illustrated (she was a self-taught artist) multiple horticultural books that made gardening accessible to the general public. Her husband's work drove them to poverty and he died in 1843. She struggled to provide for herself and her daughter until Jane Webb Loudon passed in 1858. (source1, source2)

Plot summary:
The Egyptian mummy of King Cheops is brought back to life through scientific means in 2137. He takes over a hot air balloon and crash-lands in London. England's Queen dies in the crash and a new Queen is voted into service, but how long will she last? Cheops, though terrifying to those who behold him, offers advice to those who are willing to listen to him... and threatens destruction on those who do not heed his words.

Favorite quotes:
"If you once allow innovation to be dangerous, you instantly put a stop to all improvement - you absolutely shut and bolt the doors against it. Oh! It is horrible that such a doctrine should be broached in a civilized country."

"Nothing makes one so much disposed to be in a good humor with the world, as being in good humor with oneself."

"Ridicule is by no means the test of truth. Fools often - nay, generally, laugh at what they cannot understand."

"Instead of losing time in regretting past errors, it is the part of a wise man to endeavor to find means of remedying them and avoiding them in future."

Review:
This book drew me in right away with all the futuristic inventions. There were many steam-powered items, such as a plow.  One of the main forms of travel was by hot air balloon, but you could also fill your horse with a type of gas to make it float and travel that way. There was also a really interesting form of long-distance communication. Quick history lesson:

1990s - instant messaging and texting
1970s - email
mid 1800s - telephone
1830s/1840s - telegraph and Morse code
1827 - Jane Webb Loudon published in her fictional book, The Mummy!, how letters were sent by shooting hallowed canon balls to strategically located mail centers.

And, of course, the mummy was brought back to life. What's interesting is, once the mummy is reanimated, much of those science fiction inventions disappear for the sake of focussing on the story. It seems to me like they were meant to draw the reader in, but the focus was on the characters and plot - not the inventions. Which, for as much as I enjoy reading about futurist/science fiction inventions, a story is really bland if all it focuses on are the inventions. (She does pull the science fiction aspect back in at the end, though, with automaton surgeons and judges.)

Most of the book actually follows 2 separate story lines and, within those storylines, you get multiple people's perspective. Characters were quite manipulative and people were often not what they appeared to be. I went through the story changing who I supported and wanted to "win" depending on the information that was available to me at the time. It was a complicated story with many characters and a number of plot twists. Some of the twists I predicted... others were a complete surprise. I enjoyed the book because it always kept me second guessing my predictions.

One of the only things that I didn't really like was how often people fainted. It didn't take much for someone to get worked up about something and pass out (men fainted just about as much as women). Another thing that bothered me was that, when the mummy first came back to life, it was expressed to the reader that he only spoke Egyptian and didn't understand English... but then all of a sudden he spoke perfect English and was conversing with those around him. Maybe I missed something, but the language learning was never explained.

Overall, it was a good book. It had its serious moments and its funny moments. It had its slow spots, but, for the most part, it kept me wanting to know what happens next. (Side note: I haven't read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, so I can't compare the 2 books.)

Now I'm off to read another book... but since a review should be more about the author of the book than about the writer of the blog, I will let Jane Wedd Loudon have the last words:

"It is not in the nature of the human mind, to be contented: we must always either hope or fear; and things at a distance appear so much more beautiful than they do when we approach them, that we always fancy what we have not, infinitely more superior to any thing we have; and neglect enjoyment within our reach, to pursue others, which elude our grasp at the very moment when we hope we have attained them."