Angela Carter retells the story of Beauty and the Beast in her stories “The
Courtship of Mr. Lyon” and “The Tiger’s ride”. Both stories are based upon the
traditional fairytale and concern a heroine (Beauty) who finds herself united with a
beastly creature in order to help her father and family. Carter, however, offers two
distinct stories. “The Courtship of Mr. Lyon” [CML] more closely resembles the
traditional tale of Beauty and the Beast, with a heroine who is able to see beyond the ugly
appearance of the Beast and is rewarded with his conversion into a handsome prince.
“The Tiger’s Bride” [TB] is less traditional and finds Beauty rejecting her father and
choosing the Beast but rather than be rewarded with a handsome prince Beauty herself is
changed into a beast. The similarities between the two stories address issues of the
superficiality of appearance and the inhibiting restraints caused by worldly desires. The
differences between the two stories question traditional notions of humanity and savagery
while building a new myth centered on a powerful heroine. CML teaches a tired notion
of humanity and female figures, while TB offers a dynamic heroine unafraid of her
beastliness.
It is the character of the father in both of these stories that immediately establishes
a difference between them. CML begins not far from the traditional tale of Beauty and
the Beast. A father struggles to recreate his destroyed fortune and finds himself battling
cold, cruel roads in an attempt to return to his children. He encounters a castle and enters
inside to find a beautiful palace equipped with food and warmth for his consumption.
There is no known host, and the following morning he attempts to leave the palace in
order to return to his children. He sees on the castle wall a rose bush, and he recalls his
daughter’s request for a rose upon his return. He picks the rose, at which point the
castle’s beastly master appears and questions the father’s gratitude for his generous
supply of food and shelter. The beast asks for the man’s daughter in exchange for his
selfishness. TB begins quite differently. In this story, Beauty’s father loses her to the
beast in a card game. She is forced to leave her father and live with the Beast. Both
stories portray a father character central to Beauty’s placement into the potentially
perilous world of the Beast.
The difference between the two fathers is critical to the development of the two
tales. CML shows a good, honest, and hardworking father. His honest fortune was
“ruined” (41) by others, and he disturbs the beast’s grounds by picking the rose because
of a blissful ignorance motivated by wanting to make his daughter happy and bring her a
rose. Beauty responds to such a father figure with duty and love and accepts her fate to
stay with the Beast. Describing Beauty’s allegiance to her father, the narrator explains:
“Do not think she had no will of her own; only, she was possessed by a sense of
obligation to an unusual degree and, besides, she would gladly have gone to the ends of
the earth for her father, whom she loved dearly” (45-6). Beauty does not lack the will to
make her own choices. It is her sense of obligation and duty she falls prey to. CML’s
Beauty is a slave to the kindness of her father. She is powerless in front of this kindness
and the loyalty it must deserve.
TB deviates from such a traditional notion of power and separates Beauty from
her father with more vulgar than sweet prose. Beauty depicts a questionable father figure
through her “furious cynicism” (52). This beauty’s father is not unfortunate; he is
careless. He is a drunk and loses his daughter to the Beast in a card game. “Gambling is
a sickness. My father said he loved me yet he staked his daughter on a hand of cards”
(54). Here Beauty is aware of her father’s shortcomings. His flaws are not masked by
her sense of duty towards her father. She is clear; she is going to live with the Beast
because her father is foolish.
The distinction between the two father figures is important in the interpretation of
the two stories. CML suggests a weaker Beauty. She cannot escape her sense of
obligation towards her father and is ultimately betrayed by her own loyalty into the house
of the Beast. Additionally, her downtrodden yet well-intentioned father is nearly
punished because of her own desire for a rose. His peril would be her fault.
Alternatively, TB presents a character who is aware of her father’s weaknesses. The
Beast’s house is not something she foolishly (however reluctantly) agrees to enter, but
rather her idiotic father’s displaced punishment.
Beauty’s ability to see through such appearances is depicted differently in the two
stories as well. One issue of departure between the two stories concerns the Beast
himself and a competing notion of humanity/freedom. In CML Beauty is saddened at the
sight of her dying friend (the Beast) and kisses him. At that moment, the Beast
transforms from an animal-like creature to a handsome man. They marry and stay
together forever. In contrast to such a union, TB suggests an alternative ending. In TB,
Beauty is so moved by a naked Beast that she responds by shedding her own clothes.
The Beast then agrees that she can return to her father. Rather than return, however,
Beauty decides to stay with the Beast. She runs through the palace hallways, stripping
herself of her clothing. She, finally, unites with the Beast, and she herself changes into a
creature similar to the Beast.
These plot deviations within the two stories are essential to their respective
portrayals of humanity. CML depicts a man, trapped inside a beastly body. Only
through Beauty’s ability to “pierce appearances and see your soul” (44) is the true nature
of the Beat able to come out. This, as before, depicts a weak beauty. She is never really
able to see the truth. It is withheld from her either because she hasn’t the clarity to see or
because it is a reward that must be attained through a display of loyalty to the Beast (as to
her father). Beauty is a hero for her uncompromising vision, faith, and commitment to
what is good.
The story of TB, however, depicts no man. The Beast is a beast from the
beginning, and demands no such elevation of perception above appearances. Instead,
Beauty can be happy with the Beast only when she denies her own humanity. As she
considered returning to her father, Beauty recalls, “When I looked at the mirror again, my
father had disappeared and all I saw was a pale, hollow-eyed girl whom I scarcely
recognized” (65). She then chooses to go to the Beast and become like him. This is a
powerful Beauty. She is never deceived by his beastliness, only reluctant to accept it.
Additionally, her discovery, the climax of the story, is a discovery of self, not of a man.
In this story Beauty is a hero for her wise rejection of her father (who would assuredly
sell her again) and her embracement of an animal savagery that offered her complete
freedom.
Such a freedom is the essence of both heroines, and determines them as weak and
powerful. There is a moment in CML where Beauty experiences freedom. After she has
left the Beast and returned to her father, she sends the Beast white roses similar to the
ones he gave her: “…she experienced a sudden sense of perfect freedom, as if she had
just escaped from an unknown danger, had been grazed by the possibility of some change
but finally, left intact. Yet, with this exhilaration, a desolating emptiness” (48). Beauty
feels freedom because she is momentarily free of her obligations to return to the Beast.
The flowers will serve in her absence, and she is no longer constrained by another’s will.
The story, however, maintains her weakness. Her willfulness is empty, void of
meaning. Not until she returns to the Beast can she truly see of her own accord. The
palace, for example, is no longer beautiful and ornate but plain and modest. “There was
an air of exhaustion, of despair in the house and, worse, a kind of physical disillusion, as
if its glamour had been sustained by a cheap conjuring trick and now the conjurer, having
failed to pull the crowds, had departed to try his luck elsewhere” (50). She can see that
her perceptions of the house and Beast were illusions, but she is unable to dismiss them.
The Beast must first be revealed, and it is only because of his generosity that she is
granted vision (how many chances does she get?).
Beauty in TB, however, experiences a different kind of freedom. After she
disrobes in front of the Beast she says, “I felt I was at liberty for the first time in my life”
(64). She experiences freedom in her nakedness. What brings her closer to the animals
simultaneously distinguishes her from men. Embracing nakedness embraces the
savagery of the Beast, and Beauty accepts this. This story, unlike CML, maintains
Beauty’s strength. Rather than discover her own disillusionment, Beauty experiences
self-discovery. The end finds the birth of a new Beauty. “And each stroke of his tongue
ripped off skin after successive skin, all the skins of a life in the world, and left behind a
nascent patina of shining hairs” (67). There is no skin left, there is no old world left,
there is only fur and a transformed version of what existed before.
These two stories are powerful manipulations of a fairy tale that has, for
generations offered an image of women, power, and passion. With two distinct
retellings, Carter offers audiences and alternative to the traditional myth. The search for
a truly liberating myth, however, is also truly a challenge. It is – after all – a myth.
While CML attempts to advocate a less superficial humanity, one where beastliness is
acceptable and loveable, TB questions humanity. For women and her traditionally
powerless roles in fairy tales, these two myths offer her two different possibilities. One
(CML) offers her a worth based on her obligation to a sense of morality. The other (TB),
one more powerful, offers her a chance to shed her status (sinful or not) of woman and
join a new family where naked truth is valued above perception.