An enlightened beauty and a natural beast. A dialogue of epochs in a fairy-tale dimension

Abstract

The article analyses the dialogue happening between two historical periods inside the fairy-tale context of Beauty and the Beast: a story with its origins in the late days of the ‘gallant’ age and on the cusp of the Age of Enlightenment. A product of the conflict between the two, the fairy-tale provides ample inspiration for contemporary re-tellers of classical stories. The original work by Madame de Villeneuve centres on the idea of assimilation of a territory, its colonization and its integration into the political and economic context of the inhabited world. The same idea is taken up and reinforced by the American author M. Lackey, who considered the French original and its origination period through the concept of a national idea, in particular, the notion of the ‘hearth’. The article demonstrates how this idea, reaching its peak during the American Enlightenment, helped Lackey to transform the original’s colonization motifs and endow the classical plot with new prospects. In her ‘domestication’ of the fairy-tale world, Lackey delivers it a paradoxical blow at the end of the story, and turns de Villeneuve’s triumph of civilization into a more relevant ideal of freedom and unlimited opportunities, where the female protagonist enjoys emancipation and is invested with her rights.