Analysis Of Brothers Grimm's Beauty And The Beast

It is true that for almost every adaptation of the children’s cherished tale, Beauty and the Beast, the moral of the story is relatively consistent: do not judge a book by its cover. Although, in the many alternatives to the classically told story, exactly how the reader comes to this conclusion through the narrative about the young protagonist varies immensely. Two extremely contrasting examples from a collection of unique twists on well-known fables titled The Classic Fairy Tales, and edited by Maria Tatar, are “Beauty and the Beast” by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont and “The Frog King” by Brothers Grimm. While the endings are rather similar by way of uncovering the man behind the beast, the differences in how each main character gets

Wherein, Beaumont’s story, Beauty is honored for her utterly kind and compassionate behaviorisms, some can argue that the young girl in Brothers Grimm’s story is rewarded for her sheer hopelessness in attempting to see past the physical appearances of the frog. In fact, there does not appear to be a single time in the story where the young girl, of whom the frog calls “princess,” happily obliges to pay the debt she owes to him for bringing her back her golden ball. Her promise to the frog, which is to let him be her companion and playmate, is only marginally followed through with when the king scolds his daughter for not keeping her vow. As she allows the frog to do as he pleases with her help, but not without protest of course, her resentment towards the creature only builds as it started – because of the forcing hand of her father. Everything she does with this frog is merely to please her father’s wishes, not her own or the frogs. In an act of anger and rage, she violently throws the frog against the wall of her room, but instead of seeing the aftermath of her lost temper, she glances upwards to see a handsome prince. While after this point in the story, she disappears from the narrative, one can still make the assumption that the ending for the youngest princess was cheerful as she rode off to a new kingdom alongside her prince. Although this does have the underlying constant theme of “don’t judge a book by its cover” because of how the youngest daughter mistook the prince for an ugly toad, it also goes to show that even when one treats others with disrespect good things will happen for them in the