Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast

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Robin McKinley's first published novel (1976), this is a retelling of Beauty and The Beast (in case you didn't catch it in the title). The plot follows the storyline of the original Fairy Tale fairly closely, with some exceptions: rather than being the more beautiful sister of two unpleasant siblings, Beauty is initially described as quite plain, and her sisters are both lovely and kind.

Honour "Beauty" Huston is the third of four daughters born to a successful sea merchant; her mother, the Lady Marguerite, died giving birth to Beauty's little sister Mercy, who also died. Her two elder sisters are the impossibly beautiful and good-natured Grace and Hope. Though ironically nicknamed for being the plainest of the sisters, Beauty is an excellent student with dreams of possibly being able to attend university.

When Beauty is in her mid-teens, a disaster at sea essentially destroys the family's fortunes. It's a double disaster for the family, because one of the sailors lost in the wreck is Robbie, who is betrothed to the heartbroken Grace. Hope, meanwhile, has fallen in love with a handsome blacksmith named Gervain Woodhouse, and he proposes that the entire family relocate with him to a faraway village, where he and the girls' father can both find work and they can start their lives afresh. They do, and Hope and Gervain marry and become the parents of twins; Beauty meanwhile attains some local fame through ownership of a massive horse called Greatheart, who is utilized to do difficult tasks such as uprooting large tree trunks.

When Beauty is close to twenty, her father hears that one of his ships has been recovered, and makes the journey to town to find out what might be salvaged of their old wealth. On the way home he gets lost in the forest and stays at what turns out to be the magical palace of the Beast. The Beast offers him gracious hospitality, but on his way out, the father picks a rose for Beauty, who had requested rose seeds. The Beast is enraged, but calms when he understands why the rose was picked, and demands one of Mr. Huston's daughters in exchange for his freedom, promising to treat her with every kindness. Beauty volunteers, feeling that she is to blame and also that she can be best spared from home. She and Greatheart take up residence in the Beast's palace, where she befriends the Beast and endeavors to solve the mysteries that surround her.

McKinley revisited the Beauty and the Beast story twenty years later with a new retelling, Rose Daughter.

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This work contains examples of the following tropes:

• All Girls Like Ponies
• Animorphism
• Babies Ever After: For Hope and Gervain, and also amusingly implied for Greatheart, who has probably sired a foal on the brown mare Cider.
• Baleful Polymorph
• Beautiful All Along: Handled subtly and well in the case of Beauty - convinced at an early age that she's homely, she avoids mirrors for most of her adolescence and is pleasantly surprised when she finally sees herself as a young adult.
• The Blacksmith: Gervain
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: As adults, Beauty and her sisters are this (in age order no less). Grace is blonde, Hope is brunette, and Beauty's hair is described as red-gold.
• Brainy Brunette: Before her hair changes to red-gold as she grows older, Beauty is this.
• Cool Horse: Greatheart
• Curse
• Curse Escape Clause
• Daddy's Girl: It's noted repeatedly that although he dotes on all of his daughters, Beauty is her father's favorite. The older sisters deliberately encourage this to make up for Beauty's low self esteem.
• Dead Guy, Junior: Beauty's niece is named Mercy, after her younger sister who died as an infant; her nephew is named Richard, after her brother-in-law's father.
• Death By Childbirth: Beauty's mother.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Many elements of this novel, including Beauty's horse and the Beast's magic mirror, are curiously echoed in Disney's Beauty and The Beast. It's unclear whether this is an odd coincidence or a deliberate callback.
  • Regardless of whether it was intentional or not, a later paperback cover for the book gave Beauty brown hair and a yellow ballroom gown as a Shout-Out.
• First Guy Wins: Grace's beloved Robbie, believed lost at sea, returns by some miracle. Beauty discovers his life through a magic mirror belonging to the Beast, and with his permission rushes home to warn Grace so that she won't accept the marriage proposal of the village minister, who has been trying to court her.
• Friend to All Living Things: Beauty has shades of this. Greatheart became her horse because she bottle-fed him when he was an orphaned baby, and she notes that as a general rule she's always been partial to horses. In the castle, she acquires a number of feathered friends when she turns the ledge of her bedroom window into a bird feeder.
• The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry: Violently averted. Grace and Hope are very different in personality and interests from their little sister Beauty, but the three are extremely close and love each other dearly.
• Happily Ever After
• Happily Married: Hope and Gervain. The ending implies that Grace and Robbie, Beauty and her Beast, and their father and Melinda will be like this too. Beauty also notes in her early narrative, when giving her family history, that her parents had been very happy together.
• Hair of Gold: Grace, along with big Blue Eyes.
• Heroes Want Redheads/Redheaded Hero: Beauty's hair at the end of the story is described as red-gold.
  • Beast's hair in human form is copper-colored, making him (previously) a Fiery Redhead.
• Impoverished Patrician
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: The Beast's family was extremely holier-than-thou about having this, and a local wizard decided to put a curse on them to cut them down a few notches. It didn't stick because they actually were as pure as they thought they were, and the wizard had to wait for a few generations until a member of the family finally stepped out of line a little.
• Invisibility: While the Beast himself took the brunt of the wizard's curse, the servants in the palace all got stuck with this.
• The Library of Babel: The Beast's library contains books which haven't been written yet.
• The Lost Woods: A rare non-video game example. To find the Beast's castle, you only need to become lost in the woods; once you lose your way, all paths lead to the castle gates. It's because of the rumors of enchantment that Gervain makes the family promise not to go in there.
• May-December Romance: Following his transformation back to his human state, the erstwhile Beast is physically about 20 years older than Beauty, owing to the 200 years he spent cursed.
  • Beauty's mother and father were like this too - when they married, her father was 40 and her mother was just 17.
• Meaningful Name: The girls' mother was kind of literal-minded about naming her children, who are called Grace, Hope, and Honour. The observant reader may pick up on the fact that all three of them live up to their names throughout the story.
• Meaningful Rename/Ironic Nickname/Only Known By Their Nickname: Honour, when the meaning of her Meaningful Name is explained to her as a child, replies that she'd rather be "Beauty," and the moniker sticks quite thoroughly, although she's a late bloomer who considers herself homely compared to her sisters.
• Missing Mom: Beauty's, thanks to Death By Childbirth.
• Nephewism: Melinda, the sassy widowed innkeeper who tells Gervain about the blacksmith job that leads to the Hustons relocating, is his aunt.
• No Name Given: The Beast. He even says at the end that he's been the Beast for so long, he's forgotten his real name.
  • Also, the girls' father. The family surname of Huston is mentioned in the narrative, but his first name is never revealed.
• Non-Human Sidekick: Greatheart
• Old Retainer: The Beast's servants.
• Pimped-Out Dress: Although Beauty resists it, much of the wardrobe provided for her in the castle fits this description. She also brings two such dresses home for Grace and Hope when the Beast lets her visit.
• Plucky Girl
• Psychic Powers: Beauty develops a minor form of clairvoyance during her time in the castle.
• Riches To Rags to Royalty
• Sacred Hospitality
• Servile Snarker
• She Is All Grown Up: At the end, Beauty discovers that her appearance has improved dramatically, and she now has the same features she described as belonging to her mother.
  • Although this could be partly attributed to the castle's magic, considering how Beauty's father is described as looking substantially better after his stay at the castle - who knows if some of that same magic rubbed off on Beauty during her long stay there? Then again, the Beast did say that Beauty matched her nickname well on her very first day at the castle...
• Shout-Out: Mostly in the enchanted library, to everything from Sherlock Holmes to The Once and Future King.
• Talking in Your Dreams
• Tomboy
  • Tomboy and Girly Girl: Beauty as compared to her sisters.
• Twice-Told Tale
• Unlucky Childhood Friend: Ferdy, Gervain's apprentice, who had a terrible crush on Beauty throughout her teens (to her distinct discomfort).
• The Voice: The two maidservants the Beast assigns to Beauty, who are invisible. She mostly hears them when she's falling asleep.
• Weddings for Everyone: When the curse is broken, Beauty is told by the beast-turned-prince that preparations are underway for a double wedding with them and Grace and Robbie. Oh, and her father and Melinda will be there too.
• Widow Woman: Melinda, Gervain's aunt, who falls in love with the girls' father.
• A Wizard Did It: Literally.
• Youngest Child Wins: A bit of a zigzag on the trope, since Beauty wasn't technically the youngest, but since she was the youngest to survive she still counts.