Beauty and the Beast Frankenstein free essay sample

Victoria Moran, a famous author, once said, â€Å"As a society, we need to get lots more flexible about what constitutes beauty. It isn’t a particular hair color or a particular body type; it’s the person who grew the hair and lives in the body. Keeping this in mind can only make things better. † A big problem in our society today is the importance of beauty. Victoria Moran is talking about how it shouldn’t matter how you look but how you are inside. The book Frankenstein by Mary Shelley compares to the movie Beauty and the Beast in that both contain the theme of the importance of beauty in society. These two works show the effect one’s looks have on the way a person fits into society. The movie Beauty and the Beast is a very good example of how beauty is very important in the eyes of society. In the beginning of the movie, an enchantress disguised as an old beggar woman comes to the prince’s castle. She asks to stay the night to get out of the storm and offers a single rose in return. The beast turns her away due to how ugly she is. The beggar woman turns into an enchantress and transforms the prince into a beast. According to the spell, â€Å"If he could learn to love another, and earn her love in return by the time the last petal fell, then the spell would be broken. If not, he would be doomed to remain a beast for all time. † The narrator continues, â€Å"As the years passed, he fell into despair and lost all hope. For who could ever learn to love a beast? † This beginning scene of the movie shows the role beauty plays. A prince turns down an old woman because of her looks, but when he realizes that she is really beautiful, it is too late. Also, the last line says, â€Å"For who could ever learn to love a beast,† which also shows that people just generally do not fall in love with hideous creatures. Later, when the beast captures an old man, the man’s daughter comes searching for him. The girl takes the place of her father and says she will stay with the beast forever. The girl is, of course, very beautiful; the most desired man in her town is in love with her, but though he is handsome on the outside, inside he is a terrible person. The beast automatically assumes that a woman as beautiful as Belle could never love someone as hideous as he. In the end Belle sees the real side of the beast and falls in love with him because of his personality and not his looks. The movie Beauty and the Beast is a very good example of how important beauty is to people, but in this case, it can be overlooked to see the true person. A book that illustrates this same point is Frankenstein. The first mention of beauty in the book comes when Victor’s â€Å"sister† Elizabeth is adopted. Victor’s mother visits a cottage and sees a beautiful girl among a bunch of homelier girls. The other girls are not necessarily ugly, but the young girl, Elizabeth, stands out because of her beauty and she is adopted because of her appearance. This scene is the first example of the role of beauty in the book. Later Victor creates a monster out of dead body parts and uses electricity to bring it back to life. The monster’s ugliness is so apparent that he cannot even function in society. When people see him, they throw rocks and sticks at him and shoot at him. At one point the monster asks Victor for a female companion, and Victor is afraid that if he makes a woman for the monster, the woman will be scared of the monster and run away. The ugliness of the monster is one of the most important aspects of the theme of ugliness, though Victor could be said to be ugly as well. Although Victor is beautiful on the outside, one might say that Victor is ugly inside because of the way he rejects and treats his creation. When the monster meets Victor and tells him all that has happened to him, he says to Victor, â€Å"Hateful day when I received life! Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? †(119) This quote shows the sad reality that even the creator of the monster turns from him because of his ugliness. Not only does the monster have no one in society to go to because he is lonely, but his own creator doesn’t want to be anywhere near him. Both Beauty and the Beast and Frankenstein deal with the theme of beauty in society. Although both are very similar in the idea, they are different as well. In Beauty and the Beast, a beautiful woman does learn to love the beast, whereas in Frankenstein, no one ever accepts the monster or loves him. In both Beauty and the Beast and Frankenstein, the women, Belle and Elizabeth, are beautiful. It can be argued that the beast never really does rove that he can look passed the outside characteristics; Belle is the one who looks into his true personality. Also, in Beauty and the Beast, the beast was once handsome and loved by many, but has made a mistake in judging by looks and has been turned ugly, even though in the end he becomes handsome again. The monster never has a say in the way he is created. He has no reason to be punished. The beast is being punished for cruelty based on looks; the monster is just created by a crazy scientist wanting to help the world. Finally, both works do a good job arguing the theme in different ways. In Beauty and the Beast, the theme of beauty is shown through the beast when he judges on looks, but has learned to love a beautiful woman and have her love him in return. In Frankenstein, the monster is born ugly and is rejected his whole life based on his looks. In Frankenstein the creature never has a happy ending. Also, another major difference between the two is that the beast expects people to be mean to him based on his looks, so he is mean to them, whereas the creature tries to reach out to the people and show compassion, but everyone is mean to him. The theme is greatly displayed in both, not one better than the other. Both Beauty and the Beast and Frankenstein show their own portrayals of beauty in society. Unfortunately, in the generation we live in, so much of how we fit in and are accepted relies on how we look. Beauty and the Beast and Frankenstein both show this idea very well and give different views on the same idea. Looking at the way people are treated, even if it is just fiction, opens eyes to how people should be treated in society. Although it would be very hard, or almost impossible, to get everyone to stop judging, more people should make an effort to see passed looks to enjoy the real person inside.