Courtship of Mr Lyon:
Beauty and the Beast tale
Father’s car breaks down and steals rose from Mr Lyon, ask him to supper with Beauty. Beauty stays
and has idle time with Lyon. She leaves, he is dying, she returns, kisses him and he becomes human.
Hints of Alice in Wonderland in a liminal world of the imagination, of possibilities.
Otherness
Predator/ prey
Helen Simpson “passivity is not an intrinsically virtuous state – especially not in women”
“lovely girl”
“mean kitchen” domestic entrapment
“beauty, his girl-chid, his pet” juvenile and possessive paternal description
“he loved his daughter, Beauty’s father stole the rose” link to how Victor loved his mother so he
usurped the power to create.
“there is always dignity about great bulk” link to creature
“captured a look of absolute sweetness and absolute gravity”
Carter “to be the object of desire is to be defined in the passive case”
“instinctual shudder of fear”
“for a lion is a lion, and a man is a man” a monster is a monster or man?
“a constant human presence would remind him too bitterly of his otherness” link to creature and the
human family
“she found his bewildering difference to her almost intolerable” link to Victor and creature
“Miss Lamb, spotless and sacrificial”
“loneliness of the beast” link to creature
“she discovered she was bored”
“voice that seemed created to inspire terror”
“in awe of the girl who looked like she had been carved out of a single pearl”
“an idle time”
“all the natural laws of the world were held in suspension”
“his strangeness made her shiver”
Fred Botting “otherness takes centre stage”
“he was so different from herself” otherness , abject
“so monstrous”
Beauty and the Beast tale
Father’s car breaks down and steals rose from Mr Lyon, ask him to supper with Beauty. Beauty stays
and has idle time with Lyon. She leaves, he is dying, she returns, kisses him and he becomes human.
Hints of Alice in Wonderland in a liminal world of the imagination, of possibilities.
Otherness
Predator/ prey
Helen Simpson “passivity is not an intrinsically virtuous state – especially not in women”
“lovely girl”
“mean kitchen” domestic entrapment
“beauty, his girl-chid, his pet” juvenile and possessive paternal description
“he loved his daughter, Beauty’s father stole the rose” link to how Victor loved his mother so he
usurped the power to create.
“there is always dignity about great bulk” link to creature
“captured a look of absolute sweetness and absolute gravity”
Carter “to be the object of desire is to be defined in the passive case”
“instinctual shudder of fear”
“for a lion is a lion, and a man is a man” a monster is a monster or man?
“a constant human presence would remind him too bitterly of his otherness” link to creature and the
human family
“she found his bewildering difference to her almost intolerable” link to Victor and creature
“Miss Lamb, spotless and sacrificial”
“loneliness of the beast” link to creature
“she discovered she was bored”
“voice that seemed created to inspire terror”
“in awe of the girl who looked like she had been carved out of a single pearl”
“an idle time”
“all the natural laws of the world were held in suspension”
“his strangeness made her shiver”
Fred Botting “otherness takes centre stage”
“he was so different from herself” otherness , abject
“so monstrous”
