The Courtship of Mr Lyon

What happens?

1. Having wandered onto the estate of the Beast, Beauty’s father attempts to steal a single white rose for Beauty. The Beast allows him the rose in return for agreeing to introduce him to Beauty.

2. Beast offers to help Beauty’s father regain his wealth but only if Beauty stays with him while father’s away. Beauty spends her days with Beast and find herself more and more around the presence of the Beast, beginning to truly care for him.

3. When father’s fortune is restored, Beauty leaves the Beast, who is upset but keeps to the agreement. She has a spoilt time in London, forgetting about the Beast until she is visited by his sickly spaniel.

4. Beauty rushes back to Beat dying in his attic, unable to bring himself to feed since her departure. Begging him not to die, Beauty’s tears fall upon the Beast and transform him into human form still resembling lion.

5. Story ends with Beauty and now human Mr Lyon strolling the grounds of his estate.

Narrative Perspective

• Third person

• First person → Understand character feelings and perspective of emotion, emphasising danger

Setting and location

• Large estate, big house, “mahogany door”, “walled, wintry gate”, “wrought iron gates”

• Set in London and Manor House on outskirts

• Modern elements (car, train, telephone), as well as old-fashioned (smoking jacket, squire)

• House is hiding away → “hide itself shyly behind snow-laden skirts of an antique cypress)

Similarities of Beauty and Beast

• Beauty and father’s relationship

• Luxurious rooms and foods

• Isolated setting

• Sense of enchantment (“Eat me””Drink me” (Alice))

• Spaniel with human qualities (anthropomorphic)

Themes

• Appearance vs reality

• Gender

• Transformation

• Love and relationships

• Redemption

Spaniel

• “the spaniel came and sat with her” → befriending dog over beast

• “Neat choker of turquoises” → opulence

• “If she had not been a dog, should would been in tears” → anthropomorphism, emotive

• “Old spaniel drowses on the grass” → done her job saving her master

• “Patient” “Faithful” → Sidekick (gothic feature)

Beauty

“Single pearl” “do not think she had no will of her own” → Independent and obedient. Not most magnificent girl but still worth and beautiful. Judgemental and vain

“Gazed at her with his green, inscrutable eyes, in which she saw her face repeated twice” → shallow. Sees self rather than Beast true identity. Materialistic and fickle

Father

“His girl child, his pet” → protective but diminutive. Doting

Beast

• “Mighty paws of a lion”

• “Lions are more beautiful” → Melancholy, grateful, makes feel human

• “Hint of shyness” → Appearance vs reality. Beast’s vulnerability

• “Otherness” → trying to disassociate himself from being both Beast and human

Gothic hero. Weakened by love and pines for her

White rose

• “Withered ghost of a tangle of thorns”

• Loyalty, innocence, purity

• Beast is waiting (open door, etc)

• Joyless rose bush, loneliness

Lion Door Knocker

• “Solid gold” = opulence

• “Thickly muffled in black crepe” → Beast has already accepted his death, dying too quick to be saved

• Originally thinks is brass. Closer look at Beast to know he is not a monster

Political Comment

“Where all the laws of the world he knew need not necessarily apply, for the very rich”

Carter comments on how life is different for those who are richer versus those who are poor

Gothic features

• Isolated setting but not fully

• Vivid colours

• Opulence

• Wealth

• Mysterious older male and predatory animal

• Sidekick

• Enchantment

• Developed female protagonist