Beauty & the Books

It was never about the beast.

It was always about books, for this is the bibliophile's ultimate fairy tale. 

Fairy tales were always a part of a storytelling culture and as they became part of literary culture, they obviously began to discuss literature, creating a delightful metatextual loop. Books appear in fairy tales as objects of entertainment and study. In Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy's "The White Cat" (1698), there are references to "amusing books" and the walls are delicately painted with instructive scenes from the "famous adventures of Peau d'Ane, Finette, the Orange-tree, Gracieuse, the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, Green Serpent, and a hundred others." By referencing newly published fairy tales by herself and her peers, she reinforced the literary status of "The White Cat." 

The bookish fairy tale most recognised today is Disney's Beauty and the Beast. The animated film in 1991 deliberately created this association, right from the moment Belle stepped out onto the street with her nose stuck in a book. Linda Woolverton, the script writer, explains that she sought to create a heroine for the 90s: "Belle is a strong, smart, courageous woman... She's a Disney hero who reads books." Of course, even in d'Aulnoy's seventeenth century, there were self-assured, wonderfully literate, and courageous fairy-tale women, but there was from the late 80s increasing insistence that Disney should represent its princesses as contemporary feminist role models. Belle's love of reading consequently works as a marker of her intelligence and curiosity about the world, allowing her to rise above the limits of her patriarchal society. She also became the first brunette princess, because, as we all know, brunettes are smart and read a lot. There's a reason Evie Carnahan, the great librarian of ancient Egyptian texts in The Mummy (1999), was a brunette, too. And yes, my tongue is firmly in cheek, as I'm also a brunette.

In developing Belle's appearance and personality, supervising animator, Mark Henn, along with Woolverton, drew on Hollywood's Golden Age actresses, influenced by smart, witty performances by Katharine Hepburn, Vivian Leigh, and others. Ironically, for a very 90s hero, she is based on the fierce women of 30s and 40s film. And so Belle became a notable turning point in the Disney Princess. She isn't ostensibly wishing for a prince or nice shoes.

She's looking for a good book.

The grand library at Admont Abbey Library in Austria is said to have served as inspiration for the iconic library scene in Beauty and the Beast. (Image: Getty Images)

When we meet Belle, she's in the midst of her somewhat snooty, self-titled 'I wish' song, "Belle." We learn that she wants so much more than a little town with little people - she wants books. She comes to town, heading straight to the bookseller. She's been reading fairy tales. She's read Jack and the Beanstalk in less than a day. She gushes over her favourite book as she floats happily across the bookshelves on a ladder. Thus began decades of memes in which girls - it's usually girls - long for rolling ladders on their bookshelves. The bookseller gifts the book to her since she's thumbed the pages so much already. Just as well, too, since it's about to be dropped in the mud by Gaston. This blue book is clearly also a fairy tale, after all, in contains magic and princes in disguise! Coincidentally or not, Andrew Lang's The Blue Fairy Book (1889), contains "Beauty and the Beast." Moreover, Belle's blue book foretells her own fairy-tale future, as the heroine meets the prince, but doesn't know it till chapter three. She points him out to the sheep, who seem to be the only ones willing to listen, and under the illustration we can read 'Le Prince Ch[armant].' Prince Charming, indeed.

When Belle meets Beast, she has no clue of his charm. But then she sees his library! And every bookworm can feel her catch her breath. Maybe the Beast isn't so bad? It's actually a bit like Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. Elizabeth sees Pemberley and decides that maybe she could marry Mr. Darcy. Books also play a role in their romance. Elizabeth, a guest at Netherfield while looking after her sister, mixes with Mr. Bingley and his sisters and brother-in-law, as well as Mr. Darcy. When Caroline Bingley teases her concerning her reading habits, Elizabeth pointedly responds, "I am not a great reader, and I have pleasure in many things." Miss Bingley thus turns to Mr. Darcy.

"What a delightful library you have at Pemberley, Mr. Darcy!”

“It ought to be good,” he replied, “it has been the work of many generations.”

“And then you have added so much to it yourself - you are always buying books.”

“I cannot comprehend the neglect of a family library in such days as these.”

“Neglect! I am sure you neglect nothing that can add to the beauties of that noble place."

Although Elizabeth is never stated to admire the library of Pemberley, and is not a great reader, it may have played into her growing appreciation of that detestable, proud man. I must own, here, that I wrote an Honours paper about Pride and Prejudice being a "Beauty and the Beast" retelling. The parallels were too delicious.

And so, in the animated film, Belle is introduced to the delights of the Beast's library and as she reads to him, she begins to realise that while he might not be Prince Charming... well, actually he might be Prince Charming!

In the 2017 live-action film, Belle first visits the 'library' of her small provincial town, which is a small shelf in a large room. No library ladder here. Such a town was lucky to have a library at all, with most residents having, if anything, only basic literacy. Private subscription libraries for working men were becoming available, but the availability of novels and other fiction was still quite limited outside major towns. I mean, imagine trying to have a library in a town with an oick like Gaston blundering about, throwing books in the mud, and dismissing reading for women. In this version, though, Belle's enjoyment of Jack and the Beanstalk is replaced with Shakespeare. She does still go on to read her favourite, retaining the metafictional reference to meeting Prince Charming, but there's an implication that she's much more serious and intellectual than her animated self.

Efforts to again update Belle's feminism in 2017 did fall somewhat flat. She does attempt to teach a young girl to read, thus spreading education, but she surrenders the effort when her invented 'washing machine' is tossed away as a lesson to her (admittedly, she earlier strides across the well in muddy boots, forcing all the women to move their washing, so perhaps it is only fair after all). Making her an inventor didn't seem to go anywhere plot-wise, and her fashion choices were virtually insane in context of the film's eighteenth-century costuming. Wearing visible, translucent muslin drawers and riding to the rescue in one's underwear were rather impractical choices meant to disdain the rich fashion heritage of the period, dismissing corsets, skirts, and petticoats as restrictive. They weren't, but I'm writing about books here, so I won't delve into that discussion.

To sum up, the Disney films brought the famous tale of Beauty and the Beast into public consciousness as a feminist tale. While Belle is a beauty, she is particularly recognised for her love of reading. It would be oh so easy to dismiss her reading as a kind of superficial feminism - she's only reading fairy tales, after all - but for the heritage of the "Beauty and the Beast" tale in... wait for it... proto-feminist thinking. Fairy tales and women's literature generally has time and again proved its potential as transformative, a bulwark against imposed patriarchal limitations and misogyny. Belle reading fairy tales is a feminist act.

"Beauty and the Beast" as we know it was first written by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, published in 1740. She was widowed and left in financial strife in her younger years. She eventually moved to Paris and lived with poet and playwright Prosper Jolyot de Crebillon, becoming a prolific writer in her own right. Her most famous novel, La jardiniere de Vincennes, notably engages with the issues of women's status and, moreover, gave a quite positive portrayal of lower-class women - the little people Belle waves aside. Her version of "Beauty and the Beast" has tended to be neglected. It is a long, complicated tale.

Nonetheless, it reveals that Beauty was already a reader. Villeneuve writes that the Beast has "an immense library. She liked reading, and since her sojourn in the country she had been deprived of this pleasure. Her father, by the confusion of his affairs, had found himself obliged to sell his books. Her great taste for study could easily be satisfied in this place, and would guarantee her against the dullness consequent on solitude." Note, she isn't simply reading for idle pleasure. She studies her books.

Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont took up Villeneuve's tale sixteen years later, producing a version more friendly to youthful readers. She had had her marriage annulled after two years and began to write prolifically to independently support herself and her daughter. In very practical ways, these female authors understood the need for feminism, even before it was a concept. Her first novel in 1748, Le triomphe de la verite, was a feminist rebuttal of a misogynist satire by Abbe Coyer. She often leaned into the moral aspect of writing, appealing to her very specific audience, but like Villeneuve, she features a library in the Beast's castle. 

Beaumont writes that Beauty "could not help but admire [the castle's] beauty, and she was quite surprised when she found a door on which were written the words 'Beauty's Room.' She opened the door quickly, and she was dazed by the magnificence that radiated throughout the room. But what struck her most of all was a large library, a harpsichord, and numerous books of music. 'They don't want me to get bored,' she whispered to herself." Here, however, there's no specific acknowledgement of Beauty's enjoyment of reading. Nonetheless, she does "open" the library, indicating that rather than a room, the library - the collection of books itself - is contained in a piece of furniture, likely a cabinet of shelves and drawers with glass doors to display the books. These were quite popular at the time and their ornate appearance reflected the value placed upon books, even if they didn't fill a whole room. This collection is likely no where near as immense as that of Villeneuve's tale.

It's worth mentioning that one of Beaumont's other tales does feature a 'Prince Charming' hero whose attitude to books resembles Gaston's, rather than Belle's: "Oh, you bore me just as much as he does [...] I've got other things to do than to occupy myself with all that learning. I prefer a paddle or a ball than all the books in the world. Good-bye. I'm going to play some shuttlecock and battledore!" And in "Prince Fatal and Prince Fortune", she again depicts a man who scorns reading: "This Captain was not fond of reading ; but he had a large library, to make believe to those who came to his bouse that he was a clever man, for in that country they thought that an officer who did not read history could never be anything but a fool and an ignoramus." So, really, rather than portray Beauty as an avid reader, she highlights the ill-advised scorn men hold for reading. It's a gendered perspective that resonates even today. Charlotte Wilkes in 2025 reported for ABC News that in Australia, men, especially, were reading less than women. Many articles have argued the importance of getting boys to read, as though girls 'naturally' read and generally require no special encouragement.

Villeneuve and Beaumont were not the first to write the beauty and the beast type tale, however. The mother of fairy tale, as we might call her, Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy had already been playing with the narrative in tales such as The Green Serpent, The Ram, and The Blue Bird. D'Aulnoy herself has a marvellous, often so elaborated a history that it can be tricky to parce, but then she didn't treat the difference between fact and fiction as so important anyway. Married to a scoundrel, along with her mother she was implicated in a plot to have him condemned for treason, but survived to write another day. She is, I'd argue, the energy behind the golden era of late-seventeenth-century fairy tale, not Charles Perrault, whose offering was quite paltry really. D'Aulnoy is more prolific and complex. 

The Green Serpent of 1697 is particularly interesting here. The heroine is cursed with ugliness as a baby, even her family unable to bear her appearance. She is not a beauty. Yet, she is intelligent, cultured, graceful. In despair, she seeks to disappear from court, removing the pain caused by her looks, and is consequently hounded by a green serpent, really a cursed prince. She winds up stranded in his palace, with access to all sorts of entertainment, including "books of every description, serious, amusing, historical." But central to the tale, the heroine, Laidronette, reads a book relating the Pysche and Cupid myth and realises the parallels to her own story - not that she avoids making the same mistakes! D'Aulnoy explicitly links the Beauty and the Beast narrative to the ancient myth and, just as Belle reads the story of the prince in disguise, sees in her book her own fate. Only, Laidronette is all too aware, where Belle seems completely unknowing throughout, despite her reading. The key is that while Belle reads, she is not critically assessing her reading. Laidronette is. Laidronette is also telling us the very likely origin of the Western Beauty and the Beast.

The lesson from d'Aulnoy is that readers should not just yearn for libraries and then stick their nose in a book to escape small provincial towns. Readers should learn, critique, and apply their acquired knowledge to their own lives. That is the power of reading for women, by which we can create a fairer, more equal society.

Thomas, Bob. Disney's Art of Animation from Mickey Mouse to Beauty and the Beast, 1991.

Planché, J. R. Four and Twenty Fairy Tales, 1858.

Zipes, Jack. The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm, 2001.