Robin McKinley
Apr. 12th, 2004 08:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miss_pryssIs there a slasher out there who doesn't love her? I'm beginning to think not.
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jacquez posted an interesting little essay comparing McKinley's two retellings of Beauty and the Beast, in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
whileaway. It got me thinking. This is basically a repost of my reply to her.
Beauty made it onto my list of 10 most influential books. But Rose Daughter didn't... though now I'm not sure why. I loved it, and for a long time harboured dreams of somehow someday adapting it to film. There's something so cinematic about Rose Daughter... from her recurring nightmare/prophecy dreams to that amazing scene where the huge cabbage roses on her carpet start turning into hedgehogs...
But the thing about Rose Daughter that defines it for me is the end. Leave the Beast a Beast? What a move. The principle pull, the amazing twist of the tale of Beauty and the Beast is always (at least for me) the painful moment when the curse is lifted and Beauty looks at this stranger, and asks for her Beast back, please. She saves the person she loves, and he is taken away from her in the same moment. It can never truly be an uncomplicatedly happy ending.
So what to do, then, with the end of Rose Daughter? The Beast *stays* a beast. I love it, but it makes me uneasy... is it too easy? Is it an unfaithful inversion of the story, or is it a brilliant move, a rebellious and joyful assertion of a *really* happy ending for the lovers? I've never quite been able to make up my mind.
jacquez posted an interesting little essay comparing McKinley's two retellings of Beauty and the Beast, in whileaway. It got me thinking. This is basically a repost of my reply to her.Beauty made it onto my list of 10 most influential books. But Rose Daughter didn't... though now I'm not sure why. I loved it, and for a long time harboured dreams of somehow someday adapting it to film. There's something so cinematic about Rose Daughter... from her recurring nightmare/prophecy dreams to that amazing scene where the huge cabbage roses on her carpet start turning into hedgehogs...
But the thing about Rose Daughter that defines it for me is the end. Leave the Beast a Beast? What a move. The principle pull, the amazing twist of the tale of Beauty and the Beast is always (at least for me) the painful moment when the curse is lifted and Beauty looks at this stranger, and asks for her Beast back, please. She saves the person she loves, and he is taken away from her in the same moment. It can never truly be an uncomplicatedly happy ending.
So what to do, then, with the end of Rose Daughter? The Beast *stays* a beast. I love it, but it makes me uneasy... is it too easy? Is it an unfaithful inversion of the story, or is it a brilliant move, a rebellious and joyful assertion of a *really* happy ending for the lovers? I've never quite been able to make up my mind.
