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There is something strangely unsettling about the monster. Our collective imagination is always drawn to the mystery and horror that surround the figure of the beast. From Dracula, to the quasi-human Frankenstein and Erik, the Phantom of the Opera, there has always been awe and discomfort surrounding these characters. What do we see when we look at a monster? Is it something mysterious? Or is it something familiar? It should be no small feat to distinguish between the two: human and monster. However, the human condition is never that simple. Sometimes, we suddenly find ourselves feeling pity, even compassion, for them. Why? Why do we tend to forgive them?
It is not a simple task to understand the large scope of what it means to be a monster. The Wolf, in Little Red Riding Hood, wears the mask of a nice and charming person despite being cruel and vicious. His punishment is death because his crimes are deemed irreconcilable with society. However, sometimes the punishment is being stripped of the mask, and forced to reveal the real person underneath. Generally speaking, what awaits on the other side of that mask ends up being a revelation of the true self.
Beauty and the Beast has a humble beginning. Disney, of all storytellers, understood something about this beast that is often overlooked. A vain and cruel prince faces the piercing wrath of a crone. She, the holder of truth and the pendulum of life and death, brings truth to the prince. His beautiful looks are replaced by the visage of a monster. His true character is now reflected in his looks. The Crone just lays upon him his well-deserved punishment.
In the fairy tale, the prince, now a Beast, has no means to escape his own fate. He has been a monster for a long time and now that has become his visible identity. He can no longer conceal it. His mask of good appearance and handsome features was shattered by the Crone. Buried in shame and anger, he lives isolated in the shadows of his palace. Even his servants are no longer human. Household objects have become their new bodies. They too were consumed by their master’s punishment, and lost their humanity along with him. Innocent lives, paying for a cruelty that was never theirs to begin with. It is an old truth, dressed in a new fairy tale: those with the least power are so often the first to pay for the sins of those who hold it.
And then, Beauty is forced into the environment of the Beast. In the Disney adaptation an important character appears. He is the true embodiment of what is still perceived as the tenet of true masculinity: Gaston. A very strong, muscled and handsome young man who is the source of heartbreaks and intense heart palpitations all over the town. Beauty, or Belle, should be in love with this man, the representation of the ideal man. But to his dismay, she pays no attention to his romantic advances. In the end, her affection is directed to the Beast. Rejected, Gaston’s own mask finally shatters – and we watch his descent into monstrosity, consumed by rage against the Beast.
Sometimes, the monster wears the fairest face in the room. And that was one of the greatest contributions of Disney. It showed clearly that the mask of perfection can be just that: a deceitfully handsome mask, worn by a true monster. Through the Beast’s redemption, Disney was able to show that behind a monstrous appearance there’s someone waiting to be seen and waiting for the chance at redemption.
Beauty’s actions made Gaston and the Beast look deeper into their hearts. Her presence sheds light into their souls. Slowly, we start to see the true men behind those masks. While Gaston falls into his rage and narcissistic impulses, the Beast is no longer the vain and cruel prince, cursed by the Crone. He went through a metamorphosis for he had to face his inner beast in order to become his true self.
We see this same struggle for humanity in another beloved story: Howl’s Moving Castle’s movie. Howl’s journey is also a testament to the struggle of defeating the beast within. Although he appears as a shallow and vain young man that’s just the surface of his true identity. The key scene that reveals his inner turmoil is the short episode where Sophie finds out he has been transformed into a flying dark beast, unable to return to his human self. In spite of that, she refuses to abandon him. It is simpler and easier to perceive these stories as cute romantic tales. When we start to observe the patterns we are able to find something closer to friendship: the kind that stays, even when there is nothing beautiful left to stay for. Beauty and Sophie don’t shy away from the Beasts. They don’t fear looking into the eyes of those monsters. This is what real love looks like, stripped of its more romantic disguise. Only through human connection are those monsters able to break free from their loneliness. They don’t need passion or rescue; they long for presence and for a refusal to leave.
Howl’s fixation on having good hair and appearing beautiful is a consequence of something he is trying to fight against. Every time he leaves to fight in the ongoing war, he returns less human. He knows he is becoming a beast. Even Calcifer warns him. So, he resorts to maintaining his appearance and that’s why he spends so much time dyeing his own hair. He is afraid of losing his beauty because he perceives it as losing his humanity. In both stories, the question is not what the monster looks like. The question is what he chooses to do while wearing the monster’s face. Is he willing to remain human?
Sometimes the monster has lived behind the mask for so long that he no longer believes there is a human being underneath it. In Gaston Léroux’s work, “The Phantom of the Opera”, a striking monster appears. Erik is a truly evil man, and he justifies it by claiming that he was never loved because of his appearance. Christine is the only person able to see the human being beneath the mask, beneath his terrible appearance. And so, he chooses to let her go. And yet, he dies of a broken heart. The monster won over the human in the end. Or perhaps the human being inside him could no longer believe he deserved to win. Ashamed and consumed by self-hatred, he believes he can never take off the mask and live as a human being. Christine’s goodness only sharpens every contradictory feeling inside him. He lets her go because her goodness reaches the bottom of his soul, in spite of the darkness. But he is not willing to abandon the darkness, or perhaps the darkness is not willing to be abandoned.
Christine does what no weapon, no mob, no blade could ever do. She tears down the house of cards he built: his false persona. His death is not a failure of will, but the result of the mask and the man colliding for the first time. A broken heart, quite literally, is the price of feeling goodness for the first time, and of that goodness threatening to undo everything the darkness had built.
Why do these stories make us believe in redemption? Maybe they are trying to convey, like mirrors, something we all know. Perhaps because we see ourselves in them. We know that, at some point, we too could have chosen their path. And so, without ignoring the harm they caused, we recognize a human being standing before us. And that human forces us to face what we spend our lives trying to ignore: that darkness lives in all of us, and it is our responsibility to keep it from becoming everything we are.
Perhaps to believe that the Beast can become human again is not to deny his monstrosity, but to refuse to believe that monstrosity has to be the end of the story.
To forgive the Beast may, perhaps, be a path toward forgiving ourselves.
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