Heck, the worst part of the Disney movie for me was to discover that the Beast was actually Fabio all along. (Pretty boys suck! Fangs rule!)
Then, I chanced across this particular excerpt from G.K. Chesterton's "Orthodoxy", in the chapter "The Ethics of Elfland":
My first and last philosophy, that which I believe in with unbroken certainty, I learnt in the nursery. I generally learnt it from a nurse; that is, from the solemn and star-appointed priestess at once of democracy and tradition. The things I believed most then, the things I believe most now, are the things called fairy tales. They seem to me to be the entirely reasonable things. They are not fantasies: compared with them other things are fantastic. Compared with them religion and rationalism are both abnormal, though religion is abnormally right and rationalism abnormally wrong. Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense. It is not earth that judges heaven, but heaven that judges earth; so for me at least it was not earth that criticised elfland, but elfland that criticised the earth. I knew the magic beanstalk before I had tasted beans; I was sure of the Man in the Moon before I was certain of the moon. This was at one with all popular tradition. Modern minor poets are naturalists, and talk about the bush or the brook; but the singers of the old epics and fables were supernaturalists, and talked about the gods of brook and bush. That is what the moderns mean when they say that the ancients did not "appreciate Nature," because they said that Nature was divine. Old nurses do not tell children about the grass, but about the fairies that dance on the grass; and the old Greeks could not see the trees for the dryads.
But I deal here with what ethic and philosophy come from being fed on fairy tales. If I were describing them in detail I could note many noble and healthy principles that arise from them. There is the chivalrous lesson of "Jack the Giant Killer"; that giants should be killed because they are gigantic. It is a manly mutiny against pride as such. For the rebel is older than all the kingdoms, and the Jacobin has more tradition than the Jacobite. There is the lesson of "Cinderella," which is the same as that of the Magnificat -- exaltavit humiles. There is the great lesson of "Beauty and the Beast"; that a thing must be loved before it is loveable. There is the terrible allegory of the "Sleeping Beauty," which tells how the human creature was blessed with all birthday gifts, yet cursed with death; and how death also may perhaps be softened to a sleep. But I am not concerned with any of the separate statutes of elfand, but with the whole spirit of its law, which I learnt before I could speak, and shall retain when I cannot write. I am concerned with a certain way of looking at life, which was created in me by the fairy tales, but has since been meekly ratified by the mere facts.
It is Chesterton at his best. An exposition on this excerpt probably warrants a post on its own.
But back, to "Beauty and the Beast", the particular passage I highlighted once more reinforced why it is my favorite fairy tale.
A thing must be loved before it is lovable.
That particular insight hit me like a falling house. I couldn't sleep thinking about it. I was all, "why hadn't I thought of that before?" It was such a simple lesson, and yet with so many profound consequences about the way we normally think of love.
When we think of love nowadays, we usually formulate it backwards. A thing is loved because it is lovable. This makes love an irresistible force of nature, something that exists outside of us wherein we have no control. All we can do is let love happen and let love draw us to the lovable.
This particular misconception of love, I think, is the reason that we forgot a very important aspect about the nature of love: love is not an emotion, it is an act of the will. Infatuation, passion, attraction, these may all be emotional and irrational. But love in itself is an act of the will. Love is not a matter of the heart, but a matter of mind and heart in perfect accord. We forget this, which is why we cannot bring ourselves to believe that even love can be corrupted by our fallen natures. After all, how can our fallen natures corrupt something it cannot control? But our human will plays an active role in whether or not we love, therefore love (human love, anyway) can be corrupted. I have no doubt in my mind, for example, that Hitler did love his German fatherland. Love, unguided, can lead us down some very dark roads.
The misconception that we love what is lovable is the cornerstone argument for every surrender to the base appetites of man Western society has rationalized for years: from pre-marital sex to no-fault divorce to gay pride. If a thing is lovable to us by virtue of the favor of our appetites (which we mistakenly conflate with out hearts), then we have the obligation to let love and nature take its course and love what we find lovable.
But love at its best is the exact opposite. For something that is not loved, to be loved is a transformation. I think that if we followed the misconception, then we will never understand, for example, divine love. Man is probably that most destructive, evil force in all of temporal creation, second in all actual creation only to the rebellious angels. There is absolutely nothing lovable about Man in his own condition. We are, as Agent Smith said, a virus upon the Earth. But what makes Man lovable in the eyes of God? It is the fact that God loved him first, even in his lowest, most bestial state.
The very high divorce rate in the West is proof of how much we imbibed the misconception. Spouses tell each other "I don't love you anymore" on the basis that they believe they cannot love what is or has become unlovable. Like a force of nature, "they can't help it". So, why fight it? The best marriages are the ones that, even unconsciously, follow the dictum that it is love that makes a person lovable. The husband may be an irascible dumb-ass. The wife may be a nagging harpy. But if either of them will themselves to love the unlovable other, then they will find that they can stay weather any storm, because there is some mysterious force inside every soul that responds to being loved. Even the animals instinctively exhibit it. The best way to tame a wolf, or any wild, vicious animal, for example, is to unilaterally begin feeding them. The more you feed them, the more attached they become. The wolf becomes a playful dog only after centuries of being fed and cared for, with no expectation of return, by humans. When some wives joke of "taming" their husbands, they're probably not as far from the truth as you might think.
I could only wish that this proper concept of love make its way into more of our arts and more media. But then again, its why some of us turned to writing. I, personally, am quite tired of the repetitive, hollow and disjointed vision of love the entertainment industry in this country keeps pushing on me.
And to think that to realize all this, it took for me what some would call myth and what most would call a fairy story. Maybe there is an elf land after all.
amen :)
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