Beauty and the Beast
There are many archetypes that have come down to us through the ages through our stories, but only a few directly talk in a meaningful way about the relationship between men and women through the lens of society and it's effects on personal behavior. Fortunately, the nearly complete and universal archetype is given us in the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast. It is an honest and open vision of the relationship between men and women and what has to happen to make it work, and how social forces can cripple this ability in a woman's heart.
To study this, I want to use Villeneuve's version as he is the first one that wrote the story out, and he includes several details that are important to the story. I do, however, want to dismiss the mercantilist parts of the story since they only set up the important parts but add no important measures otherwise. The rest is all about us boys and girls. The story itself is much older according to Wikipedia and goes back as far as early civilization.
To study this, I want to use Villeneuve's version as he is the first one that wrote the story out, and he includes several details that are important to the story. I do, however, want to dismiss the mercantilist parts of the story since they only set up the important parts but add no important measures otherwise. The rest is all about us boys and girls. The story itself is much older according to Wikipedia and goes back as far as early civilization.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauty_and_the_Beast
I want to begin with the origin story of Beast, as it is recounted near the end of the tale. The story of Beast is the story of a young man growing into the world. Interestingly enough, the first female other than his mother he has conscious contact with is the Hollow Woman who hails from the Wicked culture. She is low quality and is only interested in fulfilling her lusts, and she lusts for Beast. When he refuses her advances, she turns him into a monster....just as women do to men publicly today. In our feminized world, every young man begins his journey to adulthood as a monster just as Beast does. Amazingly enough, the more moral the young man is the more he will be smeared, just as happened in the Bible between the young man Joseph and Potiphar's wife.
I want to begin with the origin story of Beast, as it is recounted near the end of the tale. The story of Beast is the story of a young man growing into the world. Interestingly enough, the first female other than his mother he has conscious contact with is the Hollow Woman who hails from the Wicked culture. She is low quality and is only interested in fulfilling her lusts, and she lusts for Beast. When he refuses her advances, she turns him into a monster....just as women do to men publicly today. In our feminized world, every young man begins his journey to adulthood as a monster just as Beast does. Amazingly enough, the more moral the young man is the more he will be smeared, just as happened in the Bible between the young man Joseph and Potiphar's wife.
The Hollow Woman, unable to satisfy herself at his expense, casts a spell on him. Spells are very real things in a sociological framework; they are the stories passed through society to explain the way life is, or parts of life individually. So the spell told by the Hollow Woman is no different than the modern womanist propaganda. And it has the same effect of poisoning the heart of the hearer. And in that, you have the complete description of where we are today in the life of the average person in the Western Matriarchies.
As both the Beauty and the Beast meet in the world every day as regular men and women, you have to think in general terms. The way Beauty is described differs very little from the way many females are described by society today, and archetypal of the Young Maiden. Yet here we can still see the powerful spell of the wicked Hollow Woman has reached even to the "good" Beauty, who has this poison in her heart, for it is only in her heart she sees Beast as being hideous. Female prejudice has a powerful role in women's lives, twisting the way they see men and damaging the relationship between the parties.
And the descriptions created by a society is not like posters hanging on a building in the 1930's. In the modern world, the spell is repeated incessantly through the media in all it's forms. Radio, TV, internet, everywhere there is communication the spell is present. The spell is believed and repeated by most people or at least certainly not debunked. It is akin to standing in the shower all day, the water pouring down on you through your entire waking existence.
Of course the Beast is not a monster; he is just a young man growing into adulthood. But he is different. He is strong and active and powerful and intense. Beauty has been taught all her life that these attributes are base and disgusting. This is what the spell taught by most of society wants her to believe. But there is no truth to this, he is only ugly in the heart of Beauty. Women respond to this internalized ugliness in two ways. They either reject Beast, as Beauty does in this story, or they attempt to fashion themselves into superior men, and make young men such as Beast into a second-class citizen as you see happening in Westernized civilizations. Men become feminized as a response, wearing makeup and female clothes in the attempt to mask the form they are told they must despise. Their own.
Of course the Beast is not a monster; he is just a young man growing into adulthood. But he is different. He is strong and active and powerful and intense. Beauty has been taught all her life that these attributes are base and disgusting. This is what the spell taught by most of society wants her to believe. But there is no truth to this, he is only ugly in the heart of Beauty. Women respond to this internalized ugliness in two ways. They either reject Beast, as Beauty does in this story, or they attempt to fashion themselves into superior men, and make young men such as Beast into a second-class citizen as you see happening in Westernized civilizations. Men become feminized as a response, wearing makeup and female clothes in the attempt to mask the form they are told they must despise. Their own.
Beauty finds herself dreaming of the Ideal Man, an archetype that is very loaded with meaning. He is Hero and King and Lowly Servant and Perfect Lover all at once. Beauty is torn; one stream contains the poison of conformity to female psychosis, and the other one to the hope and longing for a man who is not ugly. Beauty believes with all her heart she understands men, and can differentiate between them. She believes in the daydream of fairy tale that the Ideal Man really exists.
She lives in Beasts castle as was agreed upon, eating his food and amusing herself with his luxury until she grows homesick. So she negotiates with Beast to allow for some time at home with her family. She is lonely because she has no heart attachment to Beast. Instead, she tries to imitate a real marriage through rules and to-do lists and bartering. But bartering is for the marketplace; it is not how one treats a lover.
So Beauty asks to return home, where she is "safe". This is how women have been conditioned to respond to manhood - to hide safely away from it. Comfort is king in the hearts and minds of most modern women, though this is clearly not a new phenomenon. Throughout history, women with the resources to do so have hidden themselves in high towers. Today, they have their own little town home and cheap BMW and do not "need a man". Little has changed over the centuries. Just like modern women, Beauty loves nothing more than her own comfort.
So Beauty returns home, where the only unrealistic part of the story takes place. Her heart, safely hidden away in the tomb that she calls her father's house, is dying from isolation and lack of real use. In reality, no attachment to pets or fantasy can take the place of a real human connection for long. Fortunately for her, there is one small strand of her heart left, one last little healthy circuit that makes a momentous decision; "I do not want to die this way".
So Beauty returns home, where the only unrealistic part of the story takes place. Her heart, safely hidden away in the tomb that she calls her father's house, is dying from isolation and lack of real use. In reality, no attachment to pets or fantasy can take the place of a real human connection for long. Fortunately for her, there is one small strand of her heart left, one last little healthy circuit that makes a momentous decision; "I do not want to die this way".
So her heart concocts a plan; it decides to try to jump-start Beauty's real nature. It causes Beauty to have a dream that Beast is dying. Beauty panics, as the shock of the situation overpowers the poison of the spell. Beauty then returns to find Beast just as she foresaw, and saves him, not through negotiation but through nurturing. She can only save his life by returning to the central core of her own nature, stripped of the prejudices and presumptions from society that had blinded her. My friends in parts of Asia shared a meme widely a few years back; along with the picture of a queen from a chess set was a caption that read, "A queen protects her king, and sacrifices everything for him." It is a lesson Beauty learns just in the nick of time.
She then confesses her love, and Beast is transformed back into a real man, maybe not perfect but a far better version of himself that he was in the beginning. Here's the thing; he doesn't actually transform physically. His real transformation takes place IN HER HEART. He is the exact same man he always was - the one she was not able to see. No man is ever changed by his love for a woman, he is only ever changed by her love for him. Transformation starts in her heart, not his. And he cannot change until she does.
Every love story in the whole world contains this one characteristic, the ability of the woman to allow her heart to see rightly and love a man for real. Nothing in the world can compel this transformation, and NO relationship can ever be more than simply going through the motions until it occurs in her heart. It is the reason we are faltering as a species, and our civilization on the verge of collapse; Beauty cannot respond rightly to the nature of a man until she sees the beauty in it. There can be no real love in a relationship of any importance until the woman adores her man. In our modern society this concept is simple - no woman is ever whole until she learns to love someone more than her own comfort.
And with that I have drawn the curtains back a little on the meaning of the story of Beauty and the Beast, I hope you will take the time to reflect and meditate on it. Your own future happiness depends on finding the real magic that God designed to undo the negative influences of the Wicked society on our lives.
Long live the Beast and his Beauty.
She then confesses her love, and Beast is transformed back into a real man, maybe not perfect but a far better version of himself that he was in the beginning. Here's the thing; he doesn't actually transform physically. His real transformation takes place IN HER HEART. He is the exact same man he always was - the one she was not able to see. No man is ever changed by his love for a woman, he is only ever changed by her love for him. Transformation starts in her heart, not his. And he cannot change until she does.
Every love story in the whole world contains this one characteristic, the ability of the woman to allow her heart to see rightly and love a man for real. Nothing in the world can compel this transformation, and NO relationship can ever be more than simply going through the motions until it occurs in her heart. It is the reason we are faltering as a species, and our civilization on the verge of collapse; Beauty cannot respond rightly to the nature of a man until she sees the beauty in it. There can be no real love in a relationship of any importance until the woman adores her man. In our modern society this concept is simple - no woman is ever whole until she learns to love someone more than her own comfort.
And with that I have drawn the curtains back a little on the meaning of the story of Beauty and the Beast, I hope you will take the time to reflect and meditate on it. Your own future happiness depends on finding the real magic that God designed to undo the negative influences of the Wicked society on our lives.
Long live the Beast and his Beauty.
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