Comparing Beauty In Jane Eyre And Beauty And A Beast

Improved Essays
In Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Jeanne-Marie LePrince de Beaumont’s Beauty and a Beast, both Jane and Beauty face the challenges of looking beyond the superficial to find true love, respectively. In Beauty and a Beast, Jeanne-Marie authors minimal conversation between the Beast and Beauty throughout the story. In doing so, the Beast is characterized with low intellect: a “monster”, “terrible”, and “ugly.” Conversely, Beaumont characterizes Beauty as “extremely handsome,” “better than others,” and also shows Beauty’s “high intellect” through the amount of books she reads daily. Outwardly, Beauty and the Beast are polar opposites. While away, Beauty reflects on how much the Beast means to her. After returning to the Beast from visiting …show more content…
The true love found in Beauty and a Beast is due to both Beauty and the Beast seeing themselves in each other, creating a stronger bond than if Beauty had married a gentleman like her sisters bragged about marrying. The amount of love, virtue, and kindness that the Beast and Beauty have in their heart, connects the characters on a metaphysical level. Additionally, neither character could cause the other uneasiness or discomfort due to the kindness and love that they have for each other because doing so would kill them. Drawing parallels from Beauty and the Beast, Charlotte Brontë creates Jane and Mr. Rochester’s relationship from aspects of Beauty and the Beasts’ relationship. However, Brontë purposefully emphasizes the high intellect of both characters unlike Beaumont. Charlotte characterizes Jane as “plain” and “not handsome” unlike Beauty, but similarly characterizes Mr. Rochester like the ugly Beast. When Jane dines with Mr. Rochester, he says “you examine me, Miss Eyre, do you think me handsome?” (Brontë 161). The passing of this friendly banter between Jane and Mr. Rochester reveals more about their specific characters than their outward appearance. Jane responds with equal wit to each of Mr. Rochester’s

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Gender Roles In Jane Eyre

    • 211 Words
    • 1 Pages

    19th century critics portray Jane Eyre both as a feminist and Chartist manifesto. Through the heroine’s character, Brontë expresses how feminine power and independence are important, and they are seen especially during the moment when Rochester and Jane are married, and she becomes “her own mistress” (Brontë 246). She claims at that moment that she will not depend on him. If we look at the end of the novel, the gender roles are somewhat reversed, by Rochester depending on Jane to be his eyes and his hands. At a time when the simple word feminism was never heard, through Jane’s character Brontë expresses the notion that “women feel just as men do” (Brontë 77), and the fact that women cannot live a life that is forged into “stagnation” and “rigid…

    • 211 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    After learining of his aspects, beauty exclaims, “I am completely please with your good heart. When I think of it, you no longer seem ugly to me." (38) Following the normality of this conservative society, Beauty see’s past all the cosmetic features of the Beast to find his underlying personality of which she is pleasantly pleased with. Beauty says "I like you better, even with your looks, than men who hide false, corrupt, and ungrateful hearts behind charming manners."…

    • 2261 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In a tale of love and despair, the use of archetypes in “Beauty and the Beast”, written in 1756, helps to portray the theme and enables it to be applicable to real life. The tale is about a beautiful woman named Beauty who is forced to live with a Beast and eventually learns to see past his appearance and learn to love him. Thus, in the story, the theme portrays that there is more to a person than their outward appearance. This is exemplified with the Beast, who is included in multiple archetypes and is usually judged based on his looks, and with Beauty, who is the heroine of the story. Other similar texts are “Zelinda and the Monster” and “the Bear Prince” however both have their differences and similarities to the original fairytale.…

    • 1393 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In Charlotte Bronte’s, Jane Eyre, her unexamined, culturally conditioned definitions of ‘success’ and ‘happiness’; shape the narrative through their contradicting definitions. According to Bronte, women have the same capacity for success and Independence as men. However, her subconscious cultural belief that a woman’s success is to be married is a contradiction of her first definition of success. This results in a struggle between these two beliefs in Jane Eyre. Furthermore, the culture expectations of women deeply embedded in Bronte’s novel create a parallel between the story lines of Cinderella and Jane Eyre.…

    • 1203 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, a young orphan girl named Jane Eyre is unfairly and unequally treated by Mrs. Reed. Jane feels inferior compared to Mrs.Reed’s children and is spoken to as if she is a misfit child. This chapter of the novel has imagery and dialogue that expresses how Jane is being constrained and imprisoned by Mrs.Reed. Jane introduces this chapter with an imagery that describes her emotions. She describes that particular day with “the cold winter wind ...with its clouds so somber and rain so penetrating…”, which expresses her inner feelings of loneliness and helplessness.…

    • 214 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    His concern for Beauty and his offerings in his palace made Beast, not so beastly after all. He was passionate, loving, and compromising when it came to caring for her. As the male figure in this story, he was the one who needed her. The importance of options between Beast and Beauty is evident when he gives her the choice to marry him or not. He patiently waited for her as she left the palace to visit her father and decided to return a few days after Beast had asked her to.…

    • 746 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Adversity In Jane Eyre

    • 1643 Words
    • 7 Pages

    When Jane returns to Mr. Rochester, she faces the challenge of his various infirmities and decides to stay with him. When Mr. Rochester questions Jane’s return and wanting to continue her life with him, she replies, “He is not my husband, nor ever will be.” (Bronte, 279). Jane goes on to explain the cold and harsh nature surrounding Saint John and how she could never be happy with him. Jane insists she must remain with Rochester to be truly happy.…

    • 1643 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    The beast then saves her life, after he saves her life, and she thanks him and treats his wounds, they become more forgiving and humane of one another and manage to prepare a close friendship. To conclude, both Disney version and the original version shows the moral of inner beauty being more important than outer beauty, but the original story actually pushes harder on the issue of status. Belle is the only member of her family who is not bothered by their tumble off the social ladder, and is the one who ends up with a castle, riches and a wealthy husband. The prince doesn’t care about her lack of queenly birth either, and when this prevents them from marrying, he offers to go back to being a beast so they can be together, so he is clearly just as determine that class and social standing are irrelevant. Disney’s version is about inner beauty too, however, in this version, the Beast has to obtain his stripes also, as he must learn to control his temper and become less of a selfish and obnoxious beast.…

    • 1761 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    While many of Jane’s moments alone in Volume One reveal her desire to explore the unknown, similar moments in Volume Two reveal why she does not take that risk and often remains in the familiar. As she falls in love with Rochester, Jane becomes more and more critical of herself and her social standing. After she learns of the possible engagement between Rochester and Blanche, Jane is especially critical of herself in a moment alone, imagining what Blanche might look like. This private moment of harsh truth reveals her inner insecurities, but it becomes vital in allowing her to maintain her composure in public.…

    • 566 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Red Room Symbolism

    • 630 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In the second place, Rochester tells Jane much like a nervous and shy bird. He said “I see intervals the glance of a curious sort of bird through the close-set bars of a cage; a vivid, restless, resolute captive is there; were it but free, it would soar cloud-high. You are still bent on going” (Bronte 119). But, one side Rochester give her authority only to be a listener rather than narrator that means he also want her to be cage bird, and obeyed him. Furthermore, physically, Jane is again compared with bird by Rochester when he took her into his arms to kiss her.…

    • 630 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Jane Eyre: Fight or Flight In Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë, love seems to be a strong aspect of Jane’s life. Throughout the tale, we can see Jane and Mr. Rochester’s relationship building up. From the time Jane first sees him in front of Thornfield to their wedding ceremony. Yet, during that period of time we get to see Mr. Rochester’s true colors and different personas towards Jane.…

    • 1621 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In many book to movie adaptation, characters and scenes are added or left out to meet with time constraints or to keep the movie interesting. The 2011 movie adaptation of Jane Eyre directed by Cary Fukunaga is no different, it attempts to stay true to the five-hundred-page book in just under two hours. However, the director lacks fidelity in his movie adaptation. While, the movie stays true to the basic storyline of the novel, many scenes in the movie destroy the integrity of the main character Jane Eyre, altering her from an independent, observant, intellectual character, to one who is weak, controlled, and ultimately the walking symbol of the patriarchy. There is one particular scene that has been added to the movie that best portrays the weakening of Jane Eyre.…

    • 1425 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the book “Victorian Transformations: Fairy Tales, Adolescence and the novel of female development” several critics have seen Jane Eyre as a rewriting story of the Cinderella and the beginning of the book especially supports this view. To begin with, Robert K. Martin believes that the Cinderella’s theme is especially apparent in the first chapters of the novel, "as Jane Eyre emphasizes her own position as abandoned child, with evil aunt and two [sic] evil cousins, whose parentage is questioned, and who is made to feel “less than a servant” (p.92). It is noticeable that both Cinderella and Jane are parentless and victims of the envy and cruelty - Cinderella lives with a vicious stepmother and stepsisters, and Jane with her Aunt Reed. Her…

    • 825 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    barren window. She says “The windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls” (4). Here rings seems to be some type of game which is played by children. Like children women were also considered to be nonsensical, irrational whose mind is thought to be in knee. The rings in the window seems to be like the bars of the prison in which women are captivated so that women could not be able to escape.…

    • 450 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “A tale as old as time”—that infamous saying which refers to the inevitability of the beautiful falling in love with the beast, the inescapable revelation of seeing that which is good in the grotesque. Though the elements of this tale extend all the way back to the ancient story of Cupid and Psyche, not taking on many of the contemporary and recognizable aspects of the story till the 18th Century with Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve's “La Belle et la Bete” which then was shortened and rewritten by Jean-Marie Leprince de Beaumont; the latter version becoming a much more popular and base-line text for future adaptations”(Barchilon 23). The story has been adapted countless times in literature and is most modernly well-known…

    • 983 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays