Question A (Essay 1)
The subtle layers of evil; appearances against reality
Perhaps what brings to mind when we are reading fairytales are that the good always triumphs, and the villains suffer their just end by the conclusion of the story. However the evil nature of the villains is hardly ever studied beyond the surface level, and if we are to look closer at them we would discover the many layers beneath their seemingly evil or benign characters. Although it is obvious that the reader can usually identify the villains in a typical fairytale, efforts have been made by the authors in an attempt to disguise their evil nature. Often times than not, their evil nature is often hinted at instead of being blatantly pointed out. Of the texts that we have covered in this course, only the Beast from “Beauty and the Beast” has an overtly evil and horrifying exterior, yet Beaumont puts tantalizing hints in his actions and mannerisms, showing the reader that beneath the Beast’s looks, there is something else. Likewise for Perrault’s “Blue Beard”, Blue Beard shares the same horrifying exterior similar to the Beast but seems to hide a dark secret. The gradual unraveling of these secrets by the female protagonists that the Beast and Blue Beard keeps reveals to the reader the true nature of their characters.
There is a similarity between both the Beast and Blue Beard from the onset. In both stories, both of them possess wealth of immense proportions, beyond that of an ordinary person. The father of Beauty stumbles upon Beast’s castle when he got lost on his journey home. The fact that the castle was “totally illuminated” (pg 6) in the raging snowstorm lends it an even greater splendor. On the other hand, Blue Beard owns “fine town and country houses, gold and silver plates, embroidered furniture, and gilded coaches” (pg 14). While their wealth is immense, the appearances of their characters like their wealth, is immense in monstrosity. In “Beauty and the Beast”, the merchant...