Beauty and the Parents

In all of the stories following the Beauty and the Beast pattern the parents of Beauty play an extremely important role. Many of these stories, especially Jeanne-Marie LePrince de Beaumont's salon style version, serve as allegories for a young girl's learning to deal with arranged marriages. In these stories, it is always the Father figure's fault because in 17th and 18th century French society the male head of the family always had control over each and every daughter. In these arranged marriages, when the Father meets a suitable match in social position, wealth, or family he makes arrangements without input of the particular daughter. In de Beaumont's story, as well as the Cocteau film, this is represented by the Father's meeting with the Beast. The Beast specifically asks for daughters, and when the Father agrees he is agreeing to a symbolic arranged marriage. Naturally, he is sad to see his young Beauty go, but he must send her nonetheless.

The figure (or lack thereof) of the Mother in these stories seems far more interesting than that of the Father. Only one of the stories has a mother figure: the Pig King; however, that particular incarnation of Beauty and the Beast has far more of a focus on the development of the Beast character than of the child characters. It seems as though the lack of a mother figure in stories like Disney, de Beaumont, and Cocteau only serves to show the utter unimportance of the child's mother in determining arranged marriages. Although the mother would have had a large impact on delivering virtues espoused in the tale, she does not have any power in the marriages that these tales symbolize.