Beauty and the Beast

by Jeanne-Marie Leprince De Beaumont

[Whitney @ First Impressions Reviews]

A merchant with three daughters loses all his fortune and after a return from a journey to try to reclaim some of his wealth, becomes lost in the forest and stumbles upon a palace which houses a beast within its walls. After innocently pick a rose from the master's garden is threatened with death or to return one of his daughters in his pace. Beauty, being the devoted daughter exchanges places with him and while she is first taken aback but his hideous appearance soon learns to love him for his inner beauty.

Beauty is given full reign of the house with the Beast's only request is that she join him for dinner every night in which he asks her to be his wife and every night she politely declines. Soon, it is reveled that her father is sick and asks to go to him with the condition that she returns in a week. Upon her arrival a trunk magically appears filled with fine clothes but when she suggests that they be given to her sisters as a gift they disappear as mysteriously as they arrived. Beauty exceeds the promised week returning to find the Beast dying from longing of her; where upon she declares that she loves him and will marry him as well. At these words the curse is broken and the Beast turns into a prince with the message of beauty being in the eye of the beholder.

This is a lovely fairy tale and while it has the storyline we all know and love is still quite different; with alterations of the ending having magic exceeding that of which is usually associated with the tale. Jeanne Marie Le Prince de Beaumont's enchanting story is eerily and dare I say it? Beautiful.