Beauty and the Beast (1991 film)/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Why did Belle have such a hard time realising the Beast in human form? She already saw what he looked like when she went into the forbidden room and fixed up that torn painting of his.
    • She didn't know that was him though, and even then she only saw the eyes which were the thing that made her realize it was him in the first place.
      • Plus, she didn't have time when she was in the forbidden room. Just as she was about to flatten the torn piece down, she gets distracted by the glowing magic rose.
  • Belle is meant to be an avid reader, which kept her apart from the other townsfolk. Fine but we only ever see her reading one book and that was a standard fairytale book! How were the viewers supposed to see her as this major bookworm when this was the only book she was seen reading?

Belle "Aaah... isn't this amazing! It's my favorite part because... you see/Here's where she meets Prince Charming/But she won't discover that it's him.../Till Chapter three..."

      • Umm because she walks through the town reading a book in a way that suggests that she does it all the time, the villagers sing about her constantly reading in their song about her and it wouldn't make sense to show her reading in any other part of the film because that's when the action is going on? She also mentions reading Jack and the Beanstalk in the beginning and reads Romeo and Juliet in the extended edition. It's just the limitations of filmmaking.
      • We probably could have picked it up from her being absolutely ecstatic to see the Beast's library, given that they make a point of making a whole scene out of it. Besides that, the whole point of it was to set up that she's an intelligent, thinking woman, which is what really separates her from the rest of the people in town only interested in kissing Gaston's ass.
        • I think they wanted her to talk about reading in a way kids could relate to- thus, she reads fairy tales, which would be familiar to kids and contain elements they find exciting, like magic and giants.
    • Er... Just because that's the only one we directly see her read doesn't mean that's actually the only one she reads, it's just her favorite one. It's implied that she visits the bookstore a lot so she probably reads plenty of other books off-screen.
      • Not to mention, it would've really slowed the film down if they threw in a bunch of scenes of her reading other books.
  • So... Belle is basically tired of living the "same old life", but she has no problems reading the same old book? Yeah, that makes sense.
    • There's a big difference between rereading your favorite story over and over again, and having a life of monotonous routine with no end in sight.
    • Yeah, it was a book about an adventure. Her regular life doesn't have any adventures.
    • Even excluding the adventures, keep in mind that Belle essentially admitted to not having any real life friends. That fictional prince is starting look pretty good, no?
    • Not to mention it's made pretty obvious that books are expenses most people couldn't afford even if they wanted to, and it seems like only the bookseller's kindness lets Belle read at all (excepting maybe mechanical texts her father might own). Considering that not every book could be relevant to her interests and Maurice's 'profession' clearly limits their funds, it's not surprising that she's thrilled to have the book given to her; plus, "You've already read it twice!" isn't exactly "You've never read anything else!"
      • Belle also asks the bookseller if he's got any new books, which I took to mean that she's read every book in the place, some of them twice.
  • When the mob attacks the Beast's castle, they don't appear to have any guns. Yet in the tavern during Gaston's song earlier, he shoots a gun. Plus, in the mob's song, they mentioned guns. So where did they go?

Villagers: Bring your guns, bring your knives, save your children and your wives...

    • Maybe no one but Gaston actually owns any guns, and their inclusion in the song lyrics was just poetic bravado on the part of the villagers. Gaston himself didn't bring any guns because he wanted to make his hunt of the Beast more challenging (and, probably, sadistic).
    • At the time, too, guns were really expensive and usually not effective as weapons unless you had a very large number of them (or used a blunderbuss like Gaston). Bullets took a while to make, as well, and gunpowder wouldn't fire if wet (they were in the snow and it was raining). Bows were more accurate, longer-ranged, and faster to fire. Although the animators probably weren't thinking of any of that and were merely considering what would make an interesting fight scene. The guns in Beauty and the Beast can fire at least three shots rapidly without loading, so it wouldn't be very fair to those in the castle who didn't have them. Either way, it makes more sense for the villagers to be using their tools like pitchforks and axes rather than guns. The song included them likely for recognition. If someone calls for guns, now people know that things are getting serious. "Brings your bows" might not have the same effect.
  • It bugs this troper that current book adaptations completely edit out the battle in the castle between Gaston and the Beast. On one page Gaston is rallying villagers to storm the castle, then on the next page it says Belle arrived at the castle and finds the Beast wounded. Did Disney not realize that making this huge of an edit makes it look like Gaston and the villagers went in, attacked the Beast, then left, and became karma houdinis?
  • In Belle's town, why does the sign above the baker's say Boulangerie (as you would expect), but the sign above the bookstore says Bookstore?
    • Translation Convention for the viewers, maybe?
    • If they wanted to communicate that it was a bookstore, then a sign saying Librairie may have been too confusing.
    • Maybe the owner also sells books in English.
    • Or he could have just wanted an exotic sounding name.
    • It may have just been an oversight on the part of whoever was drawing the scenes.
    • If the bookstore really is a "bookstore", then why does Belle constantly go back to return her books and borrow new ones? Wouldn't she be technically going to a library instead (or a "bibliotheque")?
      • It's a village out in the middle of nowhere back before libraries were anything but vast stockpiles of manuscripts meant for universities and palaces, not the common person. Bookstores were the equivalent of the modern local library because there was nothing else, unless a private citizen with a large book collection was affable enough to let their neighbors borrow them. Borrowing books from a bookshop wasn't a standard by any means-it depended on the owner. If he was motivated solely by profit, then he wouldn't. If he was interested in education, then he would allow children or the poor to borrow them.
  • If the Beast was originally a selfish prince, where are his parents, the king and queen? Also, what is he ruling over?
    • It could also have been that his parents died when he was young and he inherited the throne (this troper is fairly certain that a prince doesn't necessarily become King when his father dies, but then laws of succession aren't her specialty). After the prince was cursed, either the people he ruled over got freaked out and left or thought he died (when he stopped showing up) and left. Or, they left because he didn't do a good job ruling.
    • Maybe he's the ruling monarch of a principality and there are no king and queen.
      • Given that the setting is late 18th/early 19th century France, this is almost certain.
    • He probably killed them in Beast form. Or they came home after a business trip or a meeting with other rulers and they ran away after seeing what happened to their son and servants.
    • In 17th/18th century France a 'Prince' didn't have to be the son of the King and Queen. He only needed to be related very vaguely to royalty to be called a Prince. It often just meant "Somebody who could inherit the throne if enough people died". Grandchildren and nephews and relatives removed who didn't have a hope would often take the title. It's less common now (sticking with Lords and Ladies a great deal) but still happens.
  • Where do the residents of the castle get all the food that they feed Belle during "Be Our Guest" and subsequent scenes? Assuming that magically enchanted furniture doesn't need to eat, the Beast is the only one there who would need real food since the curse, and he doesn't seem like the type to be requesting gourmet meals. They could have a small farm area worked by enchanted gardening equipment that we just never see, but that couldn't account for the sheer variety of food that we see, not to mention items like chocolate that simply don't grow in that climate. And I doubt they have the facilities for processing grain into the flour needed for all those pastries we see...
    • They're magic stoves and appliances. Perhaps they can somehow generate their own food. Or, perhaps the spell somehow preserved everything they had pre-transformation and it just stayed untouched.
    • The Castle obviously has greenhouses and farmlands which the subject take care of (some of which may have been turned into farming tools). As for chocolate that was an offhand suggestion by Cogsworth who may or may not have been entirely serious. Meals are rarely prepared at the castle, as by the point Belle arrives the Beast has taken to a diet almost entirely of meat, which he procures for himself. This is why the Chef is so upset, someone woke his ass up, told him to make the best meal of his life and no one ate it. Belle stayed in her room while the Beast most likely went out hunting.
  • Did anyone else notice that, during the scene in which "Gaston" takes place, the town is covered in a thick blanket of snow, where, just that afternoon (assumed by the film's progression), the weather was fine and sunny? Not to mention that that evening, just at sunset - where Belle sings about wanting "adventure in the Great Wide somewhere"- it was still sunny, meaning that there must have been one hell of a snow storm between scenes.
    • Gaston is the bad guy, therefore everything is cold, lifeless, heartless like he is. With Belle it's all sunshine. Of course, that doesn't explain why it's a snowstorm in the scenes where we don't see him.
    • This troper always chalked it up to the weird timeline. The best explanation she heard is that the "adventure in the Great Wide somewhere" thing happens in late fall, which is unusually warm and sunny, and that there were a number of days that passed between her staying at the castle and the "Gaston" scene (incidentally, it's also snowing when she is attacked by the wolves).
      • But if that is the case, then why would Gaston be talking about her - "Who does that girl think she is?!" - days after. I highly doubt he'd wait a few days before bitching about her to his friends in the tavern, and he's too proud to be in a grump over her for that long. This troper thinks it simply a dodgy timeline on Disney's part.
    • When Maurice sets out for the fair, it's a warm autumn. It would probably take him several days to get there, so there's about a fortnight between him leaving and Belle being proposed to by Gaston. Belle finds out he's gone and sets out to find him, which would also take a little while, which explains why he's sick when she finds him. When Maurice finally gets back to the village Gaston may have been grumping for a couple of days, and when Maurice is thrown out of the tavern, it seems it's only just starting to snow heavily. Without a horse Maurice could have been searching hopelessly in the woods for weeks. It's canon that Belle spends Christmas in the castle.
  • How exactly is giving a man an extra hundred pounds, a thick coat of fur, claws, teeth, and a tripled testosterone count supposed to make him become more compassionate? Not quite the prerequisites for an altruistic.
    • The idea was to make the Prince so that he had no choice but to improve his personality if he wanted someone to love him and thus be turned back. Notice that he's not nearly as scary when he's kinder later in the movie. What was either missed or ignored by the Enchantress was that the Beast would be forced to spend quite a while locked up in the castle almost entirely alone and in a strange body, which undoubtedly would make him crazy and even less sociable than before. However it's quite likely that the Enchantress either just wasn't thinking that far ahead or simply didn't care. Incidentally, the injuring of Belle is sort of touched on in the musical. It's also possible that the Enchantress assumed the prince would remain.
  • Why does the Enchantress turn the servants into talking furniture? What's the point? I thought it was the Prince she was angry at.
    • It's probably because the servants would have left him, being a monster and all. And the Beast will have a hard time getting by without them.
    • In the play, they discussed that very thing. They were partly responsible for making him the way he was, spoiled, selfish, and mean, by nature of giving him everything he wanted and never standing up to him.
    • It's also been theorized that the Enchantress just used an unfair curse, because she was pissed and didn't really care about collateral damage. (And depending on how her magic words, perhaps she didn't have a Beast-specific spell up her sleeve.)
  • At the beginning, it's stated that the rose will bloom until 'his 21st year', and the Beast is clearly not yet 21 yet in the film as the rose is still blooming. In the song Be Our Guest, Lumiere says '10 years we've been rusting'. Does this mean that the Beast was only 11 when he was cursed by the enchantress? Because that just sounds a little odd to me. I mean, sure, he may have been a selfish, spoiled little brat, but a lot of 11 year olds are! He would have had a lot of growing up to do and it seems overly mean to put such a curse on such a small child... or am I missing something here?
    • I believe the favored explanation is that Lumiere was exaggerating as per his over-the-top personality. The real reason, of course, is that Writers Cannot Do Math.
      • The only thing I can think of to justify is that his '21st year' is the 21st year of his reign...though this would make him quite the old guy.
      • 21st year of the curse is how I read it. Judging by the appearance of the Prince in his portrait and in the prologue, he was probably in his early twenties. The cursed characters don't age (The Prince at the end looks exactly like his pre-curse portrait, Chip is younger than 21 or even 10, but clearly wasn't born as a teacup...) Probably, earlier on in the curse, the servants tried to bring in other people (probably trying to find a spell-breaker), but it didn't go so well.
        • The English version very clearly says "HIS 21st year" - I can't help but read that as his 21st birthday.
    • In some dubs they never mention how much time has passed.
      • The Swedish dub has Lumiere's line as "Twelve years we've been rusting..."
    • I actually came up with a theory that might clear things up. The curse would last for 21 years with everyone in either suspended or extremely slowed aging and it was 10 years ago when the Beast fully gave into his new life leaving the staff to rust and be unused. For the first 11 years he tried to keep going but despair finally set in. Also a 21 year timeframe makes sense since the curse is rather severe and this allows plenty of time to deal with depression and move on (which he finally did).
    • Honestly, if he was eleven years old when he was cursed, it would explain a lot about the Beast. The nobility married and ruled at younger ages than that. Take a (presumably parentless) eleven-year-old boy, make him the ruler of a principality, and see how long he stays well-adjusted and humble. Then turn him into a hairy monster for ten years, and watch him throw tantrums, break furniture, almost completely forget his table manners and his lessons in reading and writing, and generally remain an emotional child until Belle shows up to give him a reason to straighten out and behave like a sensible twenty-one-year-old.
    • I always assumed the Enchantress simple made both the prince and the people of the castle to stop aging. It's not that uncommon in fairy tales. Remember The sleeping beauty one, for example (not the Disney version though). In the original tale, Sleeping Beauty is enchanted to sleep until a prince comes to awake her, and since no one knows when that's going to happen, the fairies made her and all her reign sleeps until the prince comes, and in most versions, the princess awakes one hundred years later I think.
  • When Gaston makes his Think of the Children argument, we see horrified mothers clutching their children. These people thought it was a good idea to bring their little kids along to see Maurice get lynched.
    • I'm pretty sure hangings used to be family events, practically holidays. People would bring picnics. (Or at least, this being so is common in literature, which is excuse enough for it being true in other media.)
    • Absolutely. In those days families would bring their kids along to all these kinds of things in a "Look what'll happen to you" thing. Even corpses were on public display. Heck, children would often clamour to attend public hangings and witch-trials as a treat; they'd demand to visit the stocks to laugh at the village idiot. Taking them to an event like dragging some crazy old guy to the Asylum would be, for kids in that time period, totally awesome. It was practically a "Family Day Out".
  • What else surprises me about that is that Belle doesn't even tell Beast that "I'll come back to visit" or something.
    • Maybe she thought it was implied? And remember that she was in a hurry; her father was dying in the wilderness somewhere.
    • Yes she thought it went without saying that she would return. After all she loved him.
      • Reminding you that the Beast had only days left on the rose - what did it matter if she came back in a few days, if he could never be human and all his servants would have turned into household objects forever?
        • Did she know that though? Did The Beast ever really explain to her what that magical rose signified? When she was on good terms with him, it makes sense if she never asked the Beast about it. He reacted badly that one time she wandered into the West Wing out of curiosity.
  • Okay, okay, even if we don't take it that Beast was 11 when he was cursed, he was probably still pretty young when he was cursed. Why was he expected to let a strange creepy old woman? And on that note, if she's really a witch and not an old woman then why is she even trying to get into the house in the first place? It sounds like she's trying to scam royals.
    • Hospitality was a literal matter of life or death in that time period. The prince basically abandoned an old woman to freeze to death.
    • Also, in myth and fairy tales, typically if you were hospitable to such a person, when she revealed herself as a powerful being, she'd reward you instead. It was a test: If the boy is hospitable and treats her well, he gets a reward--probably some service provided by her magic, or the rose. If the boy kicks her out, he's punished.
      • Both of the above resulted in the curse: The Prince didn't display the care a 'proper' ruler should have for his subjects, even if it's just letting the servants let her in to sit by a fire in the kitchen; and he didn't display even the kindness one would expect to show a helpless old woman, especially someone with resources as considerable as a prince's.
    • It's not like the movie says she was justified in cursing him.
  • Does the Beast have a name? The servants all call him "Master", the townspeople and Belle all call him "Beast", and after he transforms at the end he simply says "It's me."
    • Presumably he has a name and they just didn't mention it. Maybe they thought it would be odd for the Beast to say "By the way, my name is Bob" or whatever.
    • Maybe his actual name is "Beast", or "Beeste" or something similar, and that's what inspired the Enchantress in the first place.
      • According to the tie-in game, his name is Prince Adam.
  • The whole story is set in France. So why does only Lumiere have a thick french accent?
  • When Maurice and Belle stumble upon the castle, it seems new and mysterious to them. The Beast isn't even that old, so how does an entire castle seem to drop off the face of the earth to the rest of society?
    • The film was set in France sometime around the late 18th and early 19th century, which would imply the Beast was cursed around the time of The French Revolution, noted for political instability.
    • Also, as someone guessed above, it's always possible that, while he's a prince, he's not literally the next in line for the French throne. Thus, maybe it's possible that the castle he lives in isn't the actual king's palace, and if so that would make sense that people didn't recognize it very well.
  • So, the reprise of Belle's song has her longing for "...adventure in the great wide somewhere", yet the story has her trapped in the same building for most of it, and the happy ending is living in the same palace, which is incidentally within a short ride of her home? Even the sequel is still in the palace. Some "great wide somewhere".
    • I take it to be somewhat ironic. Belle does end up "somewhere," just a place she least expected.
    • Who's to say she and her prince didn't travel and adventure to any great wide somewheres after the story?
    • Yeah... This kind of bugs me to this day. I guess technically she is is having an adventure of a sort and she is out of that poor provincial town...
  • Why do human servants have names like Lumiere, Cogsworth, and Mrs. Potts? And they just happened to turn into a candlestick, a clock, and a teapot?
    • Lumiere and Mrs. Potts aren't terribly strange names. As for their transformed states, the enchantress had a dark sense of humor.
  • There's one scene where Mrs. Potts tells chip to go to bed with his brothers and sisters in the cupboard, and you can see at least 10 or 20 other teacups. You also see 6 teacups when Gaston is in Beast's mansion. However, when everybody turns back into humans, Chip is the only child there. Where's everyone else?
    • Correction: There are only six other cups in the cupboard with Chip. And that number doesn't fluctuate; those six cups are seen dancing with Mrs. Potts in Be Our Guest. Chip just has six siblings (or three, and the other three are in-laws that his siblings married).
  • Why did Belle take her father back to their house instead of the Beast's castle after she saw him freezing in the mirror? She finally trusted the Beast, who had a full staff to take care of Maurice (and probably a personal physician, at that), whereas it was just her at their house in the village. She probably didn't have any medical training and it looked like she didn't seek out help from anyone in the village.
    • Maybe the village was just closer.
    • Yeah, Belle knew the Beast wasn't such a bad guy, but Maurice didn't know that. He was willing to go wandering around in the woods in winter to go get her back from the Beast's castle, but Belle probably figured that Maurice would be more comfortable waking up at home rather than in the castle of the guy who'd locked him up earlier.
    • They do explain that Maurice is still fearful of the Beast after being revived in his house, although very briefly, because it's before the townsfolk come to commit him to the asylum.
  • While Cogsworth is giving Belle a tour of the castle, they walk down a corridor filled with suits of armor that all turn to look at Belle as they walk by. So, where were these during the battle scene? I'm sure they'd be much better suited for scaring off the villagers than assorted furniture, Rule of Funny notwithstanding.
    • Perhaps the battle was actually bigger than it looked, and the armor suits were fighting off at least a few of the villagers and we just didn't get to see it.
  • Why did Gaston waste so much time, and energy (and ultimately his life) chasing Belle? Fine, she's pretty, but why chase after a woman who is clearly a bad match for you (not to mention doesn't like you), when you've got hot blonde TRIPLETS fawning over you?
    • I think initially, he wanted her because she was the only one he considered to be attractive enough to be worth him, but then she rejected him. That rejection was a huge blow to his massive ego and his ego is basically his entire identity. He needed to avenge himself to back up his own self image and the way other people looked at him. Plus there's always that 'you want what you can't have' thing.
    • Besides of what above troper says, I'll just point out that Gaston, if you remember, is a hunter. Maybe he sees Belle as some hard to get prey.
    • Plus, being Gaston, he was probably getting some action from all the women in town on the side anyway.
  • What exactly did Belle think was going to happen with the Beast? Seriously the best she could have hoped for was being locked in her Father's cell and being an attractive young woman rather than a old man she should have been expecting a much worse fate. She couldn't possibly have known she'd be some combination of outright neglected and courted unless she's already read the story!
    • Belle wasn't really thinking about herself there; she was just trying to save her dad. Even if it did occur to her that the Beast might have something more... sinister... in mind, she probably didn't care as long as he let Maurice go.
  • Why is Belle so accepting of a sheep eating a page from her favorite book that has recently been given to her? I'd be upset. Furthermore, a stray sheep in the town square? How'd that happen? That's one incredibly inept shepherd.
    • It looked like the shepherd was leading his sheep through the town at that moment. Also, Belle has a kind, patient personality. She wouldn't scream at a dumb sheep for eating her book.
  • Just how blind, sadistic and stupid are the townsfolk anyway? Despite Gaston being the town hero, good looking, strong, courageous till the climax and charismatic, surely the really obviously evil actions must have been where they would have drawn the line. They are all aware that sending Maurice to a mental asylum was just a ploy by Gaston to blackmail Belle into marriage, they immediately ignore Belle's attempts to convince them the Beast is truly a kind heart after Gaston's attempt to threaten her into wedlock despite how after all this time the Beast has been transformed, not one child has gone missing (that we know of) and how even though Maurice was considered an oddball, no one found it peculiar how around the time he was begging for a rescue attempt, Belle was missing. These people just borderline between really stupid and really sick.
    • You're basically making the mistake of assuming that the villagers are watching the same movie that you're watching. You know, the movie they exist in. That's their lives. They have absolutely no way of knowing that Gaston is trying to have Marice committed purely for selfish reasons, because they weren't privy to the scene where he says that's what he's doing. To them it's one of their community leaders, a strong, good-looking, charismatic, likely very wealthy man who brings a lot of meat and a lot of business to their town saying that they need to lock up the local crackpot who's ranting about nonsense and seems to have misplaced his beautiful young daughter somewhere. And why would they automatically listen to Belle over Gaston? It's been established that Belle is seen as nearly as much of a kook as her father. (And frankly she seems to have a rather arrogant, condescending attitude towards them as well. "I want so much more than this poor, provincial town!" It's entirely possible they're aware that she thinks she's too good for them, but usually give her a pass because she's beautiful and mostly polite.) If you saw some roaring, slavering creature with massive teeth who had previously kidnapped two members of your community, would you listen to some slip of a girl saying "No, no, seriously, all he needs is a hug!"? Again, keeping in mind that you don't know you're living in a Disney movie, in this situation.
  • This is rather minor, but the entire premise of the best-known musical number of the show is completely off-base. Why on earth would Lumiere insist that Belle's not their prisoner when that's clearly EXACTLY what she is?
    • He's being nice. It's the same reason that in Game of Thrones (and the historical cases it's referencing) when you'd take a rival lord's child away to raise so that the rival lord would behave themselves, you might choose to call the child your "ward" rather than explicitly referring to them as a "hostage". Yes, that's effectively what they are, but why remind them of it constantly when you're trying to instill some nominal amount of goodwill? Lumierre's basically saying "Yes, you can't leave, but we're going to treat you extremely well so please try to think of yourself as a guest instead of a prisoner."
  • Could somebody explain the whole angel scene while Belle and the Beast are dancing? The camera pans upward to the ceiling where some angels are painted on. You watch as some shift out of the clouds, then we go back to the pair dancing. Are the angels supposed to be watching Belle and the Beast dancing too? Or is there some hidden meaning?
    • It's just romance and pretty choreography, don't look too deeply for hidden meanings.
  • So the curse is lifted at the end, the Beast is back to being a prince, his servants are back to being human...but what (besides Gaston being dead, plain old fear and being freaked out by the magical light show) is stopping the villagers from coming back and trying a second time to kill the Beast, or anyone they can find?
    • Well, Gaston led them there in the first place, and he had a Magic Mirror. Him being dead is what stops them mostly - but also the prince isn't a beast any more. Nothing to be afraid of there.
    • Yeah, without Gaston to stir them up and, y'know, instill them with the idea that they can win, they're not likely to try again. Also considering that this time they're less likely to be dealing with, say, an empty suit of armor hopping around and much more likely to be dealing with an actual knight with a sword who's pissed that they're threatening his lord. Plus now that the Prince isn't all beastified he's likely to be going to the town to spend money, including buying new books for Belle, so that will probably make them much better-disposed towards him as well.
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