Beauty and the Beast AND more Cups

[hazelwillow.livejournal.com]

I know we have talked about this before, but I was reading Beauty and the Beast the other day and was struck again by how similar QoA is, but with various things inverted.  Even up to the point where Beauty only realizes her love for the Beast when she thinks he's died, and she agrees to marry him then.  Just as Attolia realized her love for Gen when she thinks he's died... Although In the Gen/Attolia relationship, I usually see the Beast as Irene and Gen as Beauty, it's just occurred to me that it really goes both ways, doesn't it?

ANYWAY, my question is this: Beauty agreed to marry the Beast when she realized that she loved him despite his exterior.  It was before his transformation, though.  But does Irene realize she loves Gen despite his exterior?  She has agreed to marry him earlier than this. Now she knows she loves him.  But his transformation still hasn't taken place, if we're following the progression of Beauty and the Beast.  So, so, so. What transformation does he go through?  I have ideas, but I want to hear yours.  :-)

Also, is there a similar moment from Gen's perspective, where he worries Attolia might have died and decides to marry her then?  Or is that looking for things too literally?

p.s.
ALSO, She thinks her new bridegroom has been poisoned unintentionally, just as she poisoned her first...  AND OMG WHAT IS IT it's another cup.  Which has tipped over.  And cracked on the floor.  In the cups=countries symbolism that elvenjaneite brought up a while ago, that's another instance, maybe?

Comments

[stubefied-by-gd.livejournal.com]

Even though with Gen as our protagonist and the more initially sympathetic character he ought to be Beauty, if you use the Something There That Wasn't There Before song, I can see him in the role of Beast:

There is a line about being kind! And mean (small!) and goatfooted! And his "paw!" And she is definitely the one who'd be saying, "New and a bit alarming." He was already there. Also, "True that he's no Prince Charming," like her other suitor.

However, to be honest, I think most interesting relationships are two-way Beautys and Beasts.



You know, I never even liked the transformation part of Beauty and the Beast. Visually, I found it uncomfortably trippy, and he came out a bit feminine-looking, and I liked him better before. And wasn't the point that it didn't matter what he looked like anyway? Apparently, the point was, "Lo, the transforming power of love."

But I'll start a list of potential "transformative" Gen moments:
1. Gets maimed. Nope. Clearly not it. Doesn't know she loves him.
2. Returns to steal Magus. Also not it, same reason, among other things.
3. When she sees him sword-fighting with his dad. Mebbe.
4. After he converses with the gods.
5. When he gets down and calls her his Queen.
6. When he convinces the Guard he is a King.

Irene's got a lot more times, it seems, when her mask is lifted.

As for when Gen worries that Attolia has died and decides to marry her, do you think the parallel there is when she chops off his arm and what appears to the Eddisians to be her downward spiral thereafter? Because if not dead, she appears to be on the verge of being lost as a human being. Like, when he hears those threats, he's terrified not just for himself, but for her, and it's sort of like a now-or-never, I've got to save her before there's nothing left to save thing? I don't think I'd say that unless we were looking for parallels, though.

He does, of course, realize he loves her only because someone else is proposing, but it's not like there was, at that moment, real danger of losing her to Dite.

Ooh, I have cup thoughts! I re-read two of the books while stuck in airports/bedridden and have notes and stuff! I just need to make sense of them. Going back a bit to where in the first book the god Eugenides's life was going to be tainted with bitterness as his cup was, and Gen filling Costis's cup and stuff like that. Not cups=countries specifically. More like responsibilities? Paths/destinies?

[lylassandra.livejournal.com]

But let's not forget that he was in a lot more danger of losing her to Nahuseresh.

[hazelwillow.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I'd forgotten about God-Eugenides and Costis's cups!
It's a conspiracy! A conspiracy of... cups. :)

I think I need to watch Beauty and the Beast just to hear this song... :) I'm hopelessly behind on kids movies because I wasn't allowed to watch tv as a kid. I will probably be thinking about Gen and Irene the whole time, though... ;)

"As for when Gen worries that Attolia has died and decides to marry her, do you think the parallel there is when she chops off his arm and what appears to the Eddisians to be her downward spiral thereafter?"
That was what I came up with too, but I agree I wouldn't notice it unless I was looking for parallels.

Nice list! A lot of those fit, don't they... especially number 4 and 5? My thinking was that when Irene realizes she loves Gen, she still doesn't believe he loves her, and that must be frightening, so... the significant change from her pov would be when she finally trusts that he loves her too? I think from her point of view his "transformation" would be when she finally sees his truth, so I guess him without the hook.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON CUPS! :P

[stubefied-by-gd.livejournal.com]

A conspiracy of cups! Yes!

You can probably find the song on youtube, but you need to watch Beauty and the Beast just because. (I should warn you that it doesn't have the word "goatfoot" in it - it says "coarse and unrefined," but same difference. ((Another one of the Things I Want to Talk About is how close to accurate the stereotypes the lowlanders hold about the Eddisians are.)))

My thinking was that when Irene realizes she loves Gen, she still doesn't believe he loves her, and that must be frightening,

I agree.

so... the significant change from her pov would be when she finally trusts that he loves her too?

I'm not sure that fits in with the structure as well, but I really only know the Disney version of the story, so?

I think from her point of view his "transformation" would be when she finally sees his truth, so I guess him without the hook.

Except the transformation (much as it had the opposite effect on me in the movie) is supposed to be an improvement, and I'm not feeling like a hook is any uglier than a stump.

Cup thoughts are coming. My notes were pretty organized in the airports, but then I got sick and started scrawling nonsense everywhere, or just shoving scraps of paper into pages with no indication as to why.

[bluestalking.livejournal.com]

I think if you're going to read Gen and Attolia as a Beauty & the Beast story, you have to flip the roles around. No one is afraid of angry, jaded Gen in his castle--the beast is Irene.

[lylassandra.livejournal.com]

No one's afraid of him... maybe. But they probably should be. And I'd say he was certainly scary enough to Sophos while they were negotiating. And definitely to Irene while she was deciding whether to trust him and his love. (Also while negotiating. Possibly Gen needs help in that area.)

[elvenjaneite.livejournal.com]

AH, THE CUPS! They are everywhere!

I suppose that Gen's exterior which Irene has to get over is the hook. And her exterior that he has to get over is the ice queen persona. Because while I do see the elements of the story there, I also agree that they're both Beauty and both the Beast.

Mmmm...Gen's transformation. I think it may come earlier--when he decides to go scope out Ephrata and stop hiding in his room.

[lylassandra.livejournal.com]

I have to say, I love this post. Batb is my favorite story, and there are so many ways to look at it! =)

Interestingly, Robin McKinley said that the story wasn't about beauty so much as it was about honor-- keeping your word or not. And everyone in this series is under some sort of vow, particularly Gen. I'm a little too tired at this current time to go through and look for instances of broken vs kept ones, though, and map them all...

[stubefied-by-gd.livejournal.com]

That reminds me of how, in just about everyone's eyes except for the people who actually know what's going on, Gen looks like Beauty sacrificing herself for her father (kingdom) by promising to stay locked away forever in a distant castle with the terrible Beast.

[elvenjaneite.livejournal.com]

Robin McKinley said that the story wasn't about beauty so much as it was about honor

Aaaaahhhh, that explains so much about Beauty!

[reader-marie.livejournal.com]

Doesn't it, though? (Right down to the names, of course.)

And yes, promises are very big in these books. I know we've discussed the "moon promises" issue here before; there are also lots of other promises (and "speech acts" like vows--religious, marriage--and treaties) that play significant roles here. So if honor, i.e. keeping your word, is important--well, that puts a lot on Gen, who is famous in three countries for not keeping his. Hmmm.

[reader-marie.livejournal.com]

Forgot to say that in the story of Hespira and Horreon the idea of honor or honesty works both ways; Horreon has to bring Hespira back and disillusion her as to the time she's been spending with him, and Hespira ends up keeping her promise to stay.

It doesn't seem quite as important of a point now that I've written it down, but maybe it'll help.

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

I find the discussion of transformative moments interesting, but I also have to say--when discussing the Beauty and the Beast mythos in regards to Gen and Attolia, how can you leave out Hespira and Horreon?

:-)

[hazelwillow.livejournal.com]

Very true!!! :) And i love that story. I guess I just assumed the parallels there had been talked about before... afraid of rehashing. :P Basically, I've noticed the similarities between Attolia/Horreon/Beast and Gen/Hespira/Beauty before, but somehow missed the similarities running in the other direction!

[stubefied-by-gd.livejournal.com]

Omg.

I was going to say, "Well, that's because Gen is kinda Beastly, but so very clearly not at all anything like Horreon. He's Hespira and Eddis is Hespira's mother." But I do like to be careful before I say people have nothing in common. So I thought. And I realized Gen and Horreon do have things in common, which I totally never saw before. They are men with stronger-than-average links to the gods, tendencies toward isolation, scars, and very specialized professions. And Eddis tries to set Gen up with Agape just like Horreon's mother was trying to find him a pretty girl. ("Who doesn't mind cripples!") And both men essentially trap their loves at some point while later clarifying that they only want to be together by mutual choice. And both have a very hard time believing anyone would ever choose them. ("For who could ever learn to love a Beast?")

[chubbyleng.livejournal.com]

Whaaaa???? You have given me an epiphany!!!!!

Honestly, I've never seen it that way before. I always thought that Attolia was Horreon, simply because she's isolated her self, the real Irene, into a place not easily accessible to regular people, and at the same time, dark and lonely. I thought those scars were metaphoric to all the sacrifices she has made for her country. And in the end when Horreon finds out that Hespira was tricked into coming there, Hespira needed to convince him that it was her own choice, much in the same way that Attolia needed the reassurance that Gen was choosing to marry her not because he had to, but because he wanted to.

I guess though that this is the usual explanation. I like yours too, because then it doesn't feel so... so... one dimensional, I guess? It doesn't feel as if Gen is a saint doing all the good work, and here comes the wretched witch who needs salvation.

[reader-marie.livejournal.com]

Wow! That's quite something--I hadn't thought about it quite that way before, but it's perfect.

Perhaps that's one thing that makes Gen and Attolia's story so compelling: while I love Beauty and the Beast (etc.), as tales, like the one Eddis tells, the characters just don't have room to be real people. But Gen and Attolia (and the rest of them) do, and they share characteristics of both Beauty/Hespira and the Beast/Horreon.

[etv13.livejournal.com]

And what happens if you take Beauty and the Beast and Cupid and Psyche to be (as I read once) variations on the same story?

[reader-marie.livejournal.com]

All sorts of interesting things, I think! I'm not as familiar with the Cupid and Psyche version, but I think there's potential there.

Also, the myth of Proserpina (or Proserpine, or however you spell it), who is "tricked" into living with Pluto in the underworld, has clear parallels to the Hespira/Horreon story. I think we've talked about some of these similarities before, but they bear consideration.

[valainistima.livejournal.com]

Ooo, yes, I love these parallels. Adds so much to think about in the books. I may have to reread them! (I was only introduced to them a few months ago.)

Have you read CS Lewis' retelling of Cupid & Psyche? ('Til We Have Faces.) I think the use of myth is part of what makes MWT's books so strong. They build on archetypes without being stereotypes, have built in history while being original. Brilliant.

Til We Have Faces

[etv13.livejournal.com]

I have it on my To-Be-Read shelf, because I have happy childhood memories of Lewis, and Cupid and Psyche is my favorite myth (and Beauty and the Beast my favorite fairy tale, maybe, except I also love The Twelve Dancing Princesses, especially in Robin McKinley's version), but as my To-Be-Read shelt is actually two shelves, three piles on the floor, and a couple dozen more piled on top of the piano, not to mention the dozen or two on the Kindle my husband gave me for Christmas . . . .

I've noticed that when something spends more than a few days on my To-Be-Read shelf, the odds of it ending up there for years increases dramatically, however appealing it was when I bought it. I've heard other people say the same thing. Why do you suppose that is?

Re: Til We Have Faces

[valainistima.livejournal.com]

My To-Be-Read books make up a depressingly large percentage of my library. But I am learning to make time again for reading. This inspiration was rather helped a few months ago when a friend lent me The Thief, a book which I hadn't read or known of before.

Twelve Dancing Princesses...one of my favorite illustrated books, but I can't remember the name of the particular illustrator! Beautiful, reminiscent of Maxfield Parrish if that helps.

Re: Til We Have Faces

[etv13.livejournal.com]

Kinuko Craft, maybe?