Comparative Analysis Of Angela Carter’s “The Tiger’s Bride” & Beaumont’s “Beauty & The Beast”

Throughout the decades, it is common for literature, especially children’s literature to have several different versions. This can be due to the fact that the meaning of the story changes to meet the current needs or messages of a culture. For instance, the classic fairytale “Beauty and the Beast” has multiple accounts, Madame de Beaumont’s being one of the more popular ones. It is in Angela Carter’s “The Tiger’s Bride” where readers are able to experience an interesting shift in the story.

The purpose of this paper is to look at Carter’s telling of Beauty and the Beast and how it compares and contrasts with other telling’s of this classic tale. First, we will examine the relationship between Beauty and her father. Secondly, this paper will also explore the agency that Beauty portrays in Carter’s “The Tiger’s Bride” and how it differs from the submissive behaviour readers see in Beaumont’s “Beauty and the Beast”.

In Beaumont’s portrayal of Beauty and the Beast, readers witness what a close bond Beauty shares with her father. She loves him so dearly that when the time comes for him to give the Beast a daughter, she accepts her fate without a complaint, in fact, Beauty even says “I feel fortunate to be able to sacrifice myself for him” (Beaumont, 41). This line here shows that she cares a great deal about her father is willing to go to the Beast. On the other hand, in Carter’s “The Tiger’s Bride”, there is a shift in the father and daughter relationship.

In this portrayal, Beauty’s father is a gambler, and has lost all his money, so her father decides he can barter his daughter away to the Beast. While the father may appear to be heartbroken that his has sealed his daughter’s fate with the beast, Beauty is given a mirror which shows her father is anything but sad. Unlike the father in Beaumont’s story, this father was all too pleased to be able to exchange Beauty for money, as she had witnessed in the mirror. Therefore, it is important to note that this may be the reason that Beauty is not portrayed to be the submissive naïve girl that we see in Beaumont’s “Beauty and the Beast”.

In many classic fairytales, the female is depicted as a weak, naïve girl who submits to all authority figures, especially the male ones. Unlike in Beaumont’s story, Beauty is not portrayed to be submissive, in fact, throughout “The Tiger’s Bride”, Beauty shows agency as she refuses time and time again to submit to only what the Beast wants. Instead, Beauty negotiates and give the Beast her own terms. As mentioned above, the fact that Beauty does not submit to the Beast could be due to the fact that she does not have the same relationship with her father as she does in Beaumont’s story. It could be her way of rebelling against the patriarchy, as her father only regarded her as a materialistic object that could be bartered, and she refuses to allow another male to treat her as that object again.

It is important to note that Angela Carter’s story was written in the 1990s which is also around the time of third wave feminism, which looked and gender and sexuality. This brings up the interesting twist that occurs in Carter’s story, in that, instead of the Beast turning into a prince, it is Beauty who turns into a Beast. The idea of Beauty becoming a beast is quite an interesting way to end the story. This could mean that Beauty is finally giving into her animalistic nature, which is something women are repeatedly told to repress. This is a complete role reversal from what readers see in Beaumont’s portrayal of the story. While Beauty accepts her fate, she really is not content and happy until the Beast turns into a handsome prince. The Beast becoming handsome is Beauty’s prize for being a good girl and sacrificing herself to save others.

On the other hand, in “The Tiger’s Bride”, we continually see Beauty take charge of her future and do things on her own terms and in turn, her reward is her freedom. She no longer has to stifle who she truly is. She embraces her animalistic self and is no longer tied down to the ideals of the patriarchy, that she should be submissive and obedient, instead she is finally free to make her own choices, and she has in the form of becoming a tiger.

To conclude, Angela Carter’s “The Tiger’s Bride” takes a classic tale of a submissive girl in a patriarchal world and turns it into a feminist tale of a woman finally taking charge of her life and making her own choices. Her portrayal of Beauty shows that women no longer have to submit to the patriarchal ideals of how a woman should behave, to accept their desires and give into their true self. This is quite a different message from Beaumont’s story, where female readers are taught that if you submit, and sacrifice yourself, you will be rewarded with a handsome male. Instead, Carter shows that a reward does not have to be in the form of a handsome prince, but in the freedom that you get when you are assertive and an agent taking charge, which is the more important message that one should portray in all stories, especially when young girls are reading it.