The Role of Parents

It seems that the parent tends to serve as a catalyst through which the beauty is forced to meet the beast. Tatar writes, “Yet what many of these tales seem to endorse in one cultural inflection after another is a reinscription of patriarchal norms, the subordination of female desire to male desire, and a glorification of filial duty and self-sacrifice” (Tatar 27). This quote is particularly applicable to de Beaumont’s “Beauty and the Beast” and Straparola’s “The Pig King”.

In “Beauty and the Beast”, the father is the bridge that connects Beauty to the Beast in the first place. Beauty and her father have a close relationship, which is the basis of her strong filial obligation. Beauty is unable to marry her many suitors because of this responsibility- at least until the Beast enters the picture. It is Beauty’s father who makes the fateful decision to pluck the rose that was his favorite daughter’s only request. This action binds him under the Beast’s power, and thus he is forced to comply with the Beast’s wishes or suffer the consequences. Beauty originally believes that the beast intends to kill her father, so she takes his place and saves his life by sacrificing her own. After she arrives at the castle, she soon realizes that the Beast has a kind heart and actually intends to marry her.

In “The Pig King”, the parent also connects the beauty to the beast. “The Pig King” shows the female figure, the pig’s mother, succumbing to the wishes and demands of her son. Once he is old enough to be married, the pig demands that his mother find him a bride. However, he kills his first two wives because they were apparently plotting to kill him. The pig becomes more domineering as “…he persisted in his purpose, and threatened to ruin everything in the place if he could not have her as wife” (Tatar 45). A few lines later, the pig “became more insistent than ever, and in the end began to threaten the queen’s life in violent and bloodthirsty words, unless he should have given to him the young girl [Meldina] for his wife” (Tatar 45). Even after consulting her husband (the king, who is mentioned in the story but does not hold any power over his son), the mother, who dearly loves her son despite his cruelty, continually gives in to the pig’s desires. Without the mother’s cooperation in granting all of her cruel son’s demands, this beast would never have met his beauty.