It’s Called Beguile

              Ever since I was assigned to this project, my hair started turning white and my nails began to get shorter because questions such as “Do children today still experience the sad truth behind fairy tales?” drifted slowly and annoyingly around my consciousness. I couldn’t sleep nor could I stop feeling biased (but my opinion doesn’t matter right now, facts do). For a second I thought, “You know what? This is hard because I’m overthinking.” After finishing my research project I gave this conjecture a bombastic side-eye. If you’ve been on TikTok lately then you would know the side-eye reference I’m talking about. Yes, mentioning TikTok is very Gen Z of me. What can I say? I’m only nineteen. And it is precisely the fact that while I’m here looking at funny videos on the internet there was once upon a time a girl called Beauty. And, unless you’ve lived under a rock all your life, you should know the magical story of La Belle et La Bête. After reading the original version, I realized that children are misled by fairytales because they depict bad parenting as an opportunity to achieve a happy ending. 

             This is for everyone, especially parents, so raise your ears because I’m going to give you some tea. There’s a rumor going around. People say that French novelist Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve romanticized a true crime, wrote a fairytale about it, and then became famous all around the world for centuries. You want to feel magical? Let me give you some pixie dust. Pedro Gonzalez was a man who suffered from congenital hypertrichosis. He was taken from his home as a child and given to King Henry II as a gift for his coronation because he was viewed as an exotic smart pet. He might have been the Beast. The king died, but his widow didn’t. To satisfy Catherine de Medici’s curiosity as to if Pedro’s children would be as hairy as him, she decided to marry him with the daughter of a royal court servant whose name was also Catherine. This could be the truth behind our beloved Beauty. They were expected to have many children with particular characteristics so as to further the noble’s research. Here’s your not so happily ever after. 

      In the original La Belle et La Bête by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, the merchant (Beauty’s father) gives his word to the Beast that he will bring one of his daughters to the castle in exchange for his survival since he stole a rose from the Beast’s garden. Rising blood pressure and all, I kept reading only to stumble upon these words “The good man, although moved at their affliction, forbad them to commit violence, telling them, that as he has given his word, he would kill himself rather than to fail to keep it.” which clearly places male social status higher than a girl’s well-being. While reading the original story I clenched my fists so tight that I thought my precious Iphone was going to pay the price of male toxicity at its finest, yet it didn’t. Because Beauty did. You see, the merchant had a chance to die for his beloved daughter — or at least keep his mouth shut — but he didn’t. Instead, he returned home with a miserable flower to guilt trip his seventeen year old child. The truth is that if my dad ever does something like that my mom would skin him alive. Unfortunately, Beauty didn’t have a mother to back her up. But hey! Her mother’s excuse is that she’s dead. 

             Nevertheless, even breathing mothers were written to be sinister puppets by the hand of male authors. Grimm W; Grimm J. (2016) The Complete Folk & Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: Rapunzel. Sweden: Wisehouse Classics. 

The Grimm brothers depict the relationship between parents and their baby girl (Rapunzel) as a fragil linkage that was broken by a greedy desire (because the mom wanted someone else’s property) and cowardice (because the father traded his firstborn to satisfy his wife’s wishes). 

I swear my eyesight became worse after long hours of researching a non-disgusting fairytale. But, guess what? I found another set of unreliable parents. Grimm W; Grimm J. (2016) The Complete Folk & Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: Hansel and Grethel. Sweden: Wisehouse Classics. 

This story portrays a woodcutter, his tyrannical wife, and their two children; Hansel and Grethel. In view of the family’s severe lack of food, the mother proposes to the father to leave their children inside of a forest so that both adults would have more to eat. The father thinks about disagreeing with his wife… but he ‘painfully’ lets her be.

At this point in my research I’m convinced that spending a couple of years in jail would be worth it if I beat the heck out of the old ass pricks that incite children to walk by themselves and talk to strangers. For instance, the fairytale below. Grimm W; Grimm J. (2016) The Complete Folk & Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: Little Red Cap. Sweden: Wisehouse Classics. 

In this book, a mother orders her four year old daughter to bring (by herself) something to her grandmother who lives in the forest. The mother warns Little Red Cap to be careful of being eaten by the wolf who lurks around. Sadly, she gets eaten by the wolf. 

So far, we have evidence that a baby was traded off in exchange for a flower that her mother REALLY wanted; two children suffering from extreme starvation were abandoned in a forest because their mother was REALLY hungry; and a four year-old got raped because her mother was too lazy to carry on with filial piety to a sick grandmother. Why is this meaningful? Well, all of these three sources support the initial claim of this research project that was reached after a careful analysis of the original fairytale La Belle et La Bête. The reason why author’s made parents failed their main responsibility — to put their children’s safety over everything else — allows their targeted audience (children) to normalize mistreatment, starvation, sexual assault, and guilt trip with the premise that they will find a happy ending in the end. A happily ever after is like beautifully decorating a cake made of dirty crimes and then freezing it forever.   

          In conclusion, children today still face the crimes listed above because bad parenting has become normalized thanks to some parents being misled by fairytales when they were still young. Just think about it, before today, did you ever think that Beauty’s father committed a mistake by letting his daughter replace him in the Beast’s dungeon? If you never did, then please go to a parenting class because ‘falling in love’ with a beast whilst your captive it’s called Stockholm syndrome… not happily ever after.