Beauty And The Beast
The way we live today has been followed by the history for centuries. Culture, value and beliefs have changed as time goes by. Fairy tales, a social function of history representation, give strong messages for children. It is often to do with adolescence, puberty, and the achieving of adulthood, which shows the changing of the characters through the time. Although fairy tales do not have a first-person perspective, or rarely give any insights into the actual point-of-view of the characters, the story of Beauty and the Beast can be read as being from the eyes of the Beauty. “Cupid and Psyche,” written in C.E. 150 by Apuleius, Psyche played the role of Beauty, who wins back Cupid’s love by overcoming many obstacles which was given by Venus and become immortal. Different versions of the story appeared since Apuleius’ time. The eighteenth century governess and author, Marie Leprince de Beaumont, rewrote a lengthy seventeenth century version of Beauty and the beast. In this story Bell played the role of beauty as who sacrifice herself to the beast for saving her father. For beauty the challenge is to move from the superficial to the real, to see though the loathsome outward appearance to the goodness within. “Tiger’s Bride” shows another strong women who was seen as beauty at that time. What we are reading about Beauty and the Beast is also ourselves; our strength, our weakness, our painful progress towards self-knowledge. All these social issues have been changing through the time, so do the value of Beauty.
“Cupid and Psyche,” Psyche lost her love and then she learns to see differently and performs labors to save or recover her lost loved ones, the denouement reveals the power of love, which ends in marriage and the reestablishment of domestic fruition.
The best-known version of beauty and the Beast, popularized as usual through Disney, is Madame de Beaumont’s version. In this story, a young girl named Beauty volunteers to become a...
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