In each of the tales in the "Beauty and the Beast" genre, parents play a fairly large role in the progression of events. However, unlike other groupings of tales, the parents' behavior is not always the cause of problems. In the Twelve Brothers stories, it was always the parents who were wishing their sons to be turned to birds or plotting to kill them. They were almost always responsible for the negative outcomes. However, with the Beauty and the Beast stories, this doesn't always seem to be the case.
In Madame de Beaumont's story, the father is responsible for Beauty being sent away only in the sense that he unfortunately wandered into an enchanted castle when he was on the brink of death. The father loves Beauty dearly though, and would never do anything to endanger her. Beauty is only allowed to go to the castle because her father recognizes that she is so devoted to him and so concerned about his well being that she could never be convinced otherwise. In this version, the father seems to be neutral in his role. We encounter what we would now define as a positive parent role in The Frog King. The king has no fault in bringing the beast/king into his daughter's life. Even though he probably doesn't desire for his daughter to marry a frog, he encourages her to keep her promises and to remain true to her word. In my opinion, this is the best example of a parent acting how they should. The traditional irresponsible parent in the style of the Twelve Brothers can be found in The Tiger's Bride. This tale does not even make an effort to gracefully explain the father's mistakes. The first sentence of the story reads: "My father lost me to The Beast at cards." It is obvious that the father does not hold the same reverence for his daughter as Beauty's father does.
The role of parents is interesting in these stories. There isn't an identifiable theme, as parents can be positive, neutral, or negative. This truly proves how dynamic fairy tales can be.
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I really like your observation that parents can be good, bad or neutral but they still affect the future of their daughter. I also agree that the father in the Frog King demonstrated the best parenting when he told his daughter to keep her promises, but I wonder if he would have made the same point if the King was in the form of something more dangerous like a bear. A frog is very non-threatening so it was probably easy in this case for the father to invite the frog in and advise his daughter to keep her promise.
ReplyDeleteI really agree with your analysis of the stories. The connection that the parents have with their daughters leads the daughters to something that first appears to not be beneficial for them but then turns out to be one of the best things for them in terms of teaching their daughters morality and leading them to a prince.
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