Reading Notes: Lions Beauties and Basilisks

Photo by Sasukekun22 Source: Wikimedia

The two stories I was drawn to was the retelling of Beauty and the Beast and the stories of the lions. I liked the morals of the different lion stories, but found the last one in which the lion wants to marry particularly interesting. As for the Beauty and the Beast story, that is my favorite fairy tale. However, I found this version devoid of many of the elements that make the story special. Particularly love and kindness. Here are my notes:

The Lion in Love

• Why didn't the parents want to give their daughter to the lion? Considering this is a fable, I'm barring the normal reasons one wouldn't want their daughter to marry a lion. 
• How did the daughter feel about all this?
• Once he was declawed and detoothed (that's a word now) was he not harmless?
• The parents seem particularly terrible, laughing at the lion. 
• It seems that if the lion were open-minded enough to fall in love and ask permission, he must have been fairly kind before he was "tamed".

Beauty and the Basilisk

• Mary doesn't seem phased by being sent to live with a basilisk. I would be terrified.
• At the end of the story, the characters "had" to do everything. He had to marry her, and she had to marry him. Everyone had to show up and be merry. 
• There is no reason for the mother to send her daughter him. He doesn't know where she lives and only threatens to kill the mother. The mother didn't seem willing to save her daughter. If anything, the gender reversal (father to mother) weakens the story. Perhaps the story made sense when the father was the family's caretaker and the family would have starved without them. However, in this version, women obviously have the opportunity to work and be the sole family provider. Therefore, without the mother, the daughters could have worked to support themselves. I think the mother would have died before allow her daughter to be taken by a basilisk and possibly killed. 
• There seems to be a lack of any affection between Mary and the basilisk. So rather than the story being "she loved him despite his appearance/rough first impression", it's that the basilisk tricked her into turning her human.