「미녀와 야수」 다시 쓰기: 변형들과 그 함의

Rewriting “ Beauty and the Beast ” :Revisions and Their Implications

“Beauty and the Beast” within the category of ‘The Monster or Animal as Bridegroom’ or ‘Search for a Lost Husband’ is one of the successful fairy tales, whose countless versions and adaptations prove that the original theme, penetrating the deceptive appearances and finding the true inner beauty, achieved universal appeal to the general audience. Unlike the fairy tales that began as folklore, “Beauty and the Beast” has its specific author and birth date. Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve’s original version is a full length novel or a romance rather than a fairy tale. Almost the latter half of Villeneuve’s is a long ‘story within a story’ of main characters’ separate backgrounds, revealing Beauty’s genealogy and the Prince’s transformation into the Beast. Villeneuve’s version is likely to be considered as “a redundant kind of monster, with its multiple, overlapping stories and impressive length.” Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont’s widely disseminated “Beauty and the Beast” shortened the 362-page version of Villeneuve’s, cutting the long ‘story within a story’ for educational purpose for her young female students. Andrew Lang’s translated version also excised the latter half and omitted the appended story concerning Beauty’s genealogy and the Beast’s enchantment. Apart from editing out Beauty and the Beast’s separate genealogies, both Beaumont and Lang revised the too-long protracted ending after the return of Beauty to the Beast’s castle in the original version and condensed the delayed ending into a single dynamic and dramatic moment of happy marriage. The significant signal of the protractive ‘anti-climatic’ ending and the lengthy appended ‘story within a story’ is the Queen’s question of Beauty’s family background and her shocked response: “What! You are only a merchant’s daughter?” While analysing Beaumont’ and Lang’s revisions and their implications, this paper examines the realistic moments and tensions including the Queen’s intervention in Villeneuve’s version and compares them with the condensed dramatic endings of Beaumont’s and Lang’s. And this paper tries to reveal that while Villeneuve’s version delays the dynamic and climatic ending unlike the later versions, it places the Beauty and the Beast’s relationship in a larger context beyond the two individuals and extends and redefines their roles in relation to the whole society and kingdom.