Beauty and the Beast

In Chapter 5, the merchant says, “Thou shouldst not take counsel from thine eyes alone” (91), meaning that what we see isn’t always the complete picture. Appearances play a significant role throughout Beauty and the Beast. The story’s tension for both the characters and plot relies on people or situations being different than they seem, and the characters must look past what’s obvious to understand what’s true. Through the specific appearances of the Beast/prince and Beauty, as well as the story arc, Beauty and the Beast explores how appearances can deceive.

The Beast and prince represent how appearances can literally hide the truth. The Beast’s ugliness is the result of a curse, and while he’s ugly on the outside, his personality doesn’t change with his looks. Before the curse, the prince was kind and handsome, and as the Beast, that kindness and handsomeness show through in how he treats Beauty. The Beast’s appearance is deceiving because the outward gruffness doesn’t match the softness beneath. In her dreams, Beauty sees the prince as he really is, but even this true appearance is deceiving. Based on her interactions with the Beast, Beauty doesn’t even consider that the two could be the same person because they seem nothing alike. The prince’s eloquence and caring deceive Beauty because she wants to be deceived. She wishes to have a tender, handsome man in her life, and the prince fulfills this desire, so she doesn’t look past the surface to what might be beneath. The prince’s attractiveness is as deceiving as the Beast’s ugliness, in another way.

While the Beast and prince show how appearances, attractive or not, can be deceiving, Beauty represents how appearances may not hide anything. Beauty is as lovely on the outside as she is on the inside, and everyone who meets her is swayed by her, including the prince’s mother—even though accepting Beauty goes against everything she believes about status. Beauty is the standard against which all other deceptions in the book are measured, and she represents the idea that while our eyes often deceive us, this is not always the case. The book heavily focuses on how appearances hide truths, but through Beauty’s character, Barbot De Villeneuve conveys that no advice applies in every situation. Our eyes may deceive us more often than not but sometimes show us the truth.

The characters aren’t the only appearances that deceive throughout the book. At the palace, Beauty encounters wonder after wonder, including people-like animals and magical objects. The final chapters reveal that the animals were fashioned by magic and invisible spirits that manifested to offer Beauty the comforts of royalty. The appearance of these creatures is an illusion, but that illusion is used to show something real: what Beauty might expect from a life in the castle. The backstory in the latter chapters is full of deceptions. The fairies lie to misrepresent themselves and their motives, each insisting that their actions are pure. The fairy who tells the events does so in a way that makes the actions of herself and Beauty’s mother seem noble, but if the story were told by either the fairy who cursed the prince or the fairy who was jealous of Beauty, the story would have been different. Either way, the tale is deceiving because it casts events in the framework of the teller. Since Beauty, the prince, and the others listening to the story weren’t there, they don’t know how events really occurred, so they must either believe the story or seek the truth about the appearance of the events.

Appearances may deceive us either because they are truly deceiving or because we wish to believe them. The characters and situations of Beauty and the Beast show how both outside and internal influences can trick us. Neither type of deception is more powerful, but they present different challenges. Ascertaining the truth about external deceptions is difficult because we must rely on the judgment of others. Deceptions that come from inside us offer all the information we need to see through them, but our own perceptions can be the most difficult to combat.