Revisioning Madame Beaumont’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’ in Emma Donoghue’s ‘the tale of the rose’ and the 2017 Disney Version: A Queer Reading

Abstract

Madame Beaumont’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’ has become one of the most popular fairy tales to be appropriated in both text and screen over the years. This paper analyses how Donoghue’s reinterpretation of this classic tale in ‘The Tale of the Rose’ counters heteropatriarchal discourses about masculinity and femininity through a lesbian subject position. This paper attempts a queer reading of the 2017 Disney live action musical Beauty and the Beast and demonstrates how it challenges the heteronormative ideals of Madame Beaumont’s tale. The paper further interrogates how these later appropriations engage in activism by encouraging a dialogue about gender diversity in the mainstream. This will be done using lesbian feminism, queer theory, and adaptation of fairy tales as theoretical framework.