TALE AS OLD AS TIME? Anthropologists believe that Beauty and the Beast may be 4,000 years old
Once upon a time, in a kingdom not too far away, a woman sat down at her desk to write. From her pen flowed the tale of a young girl named Belle, the daughter of a merchant who finds himself lost in the woods. He stumbles upon a palace and is welcomed by a hidden figure, who offers him a lavish feast and a bed for the night. The next day, the merchant plucks a rose from the garden to give to Belle, but is suddenly confronted by a terrifying beast. For taking his most prized possession, the beast tells him, he must give his life. After begging for mercy, the beast allows the merchant to leave – but only if his beloved daughter returns in his place.
The story was La Belle et le Bête – or Beauty and the Beast, as we know it in the English-speaking world – published in 1740 by French novelist Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve. In the years that followed, the shoots of the fairy tale were twisted and twined around the pens of many other storytellers; first by Jean-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, who published a much shorter version for children the following decade. The first movie adaptation, directed by Jean Cocteau in 1946, introduced talking mirrors and enchanted candelabras, as well as the character of Avenant, Beauty’s arrogant suitor. It was this version that would eventually form the bare branches of its most famous retelling – the 1991 Disney animation.