Beauty and the Beast (1987)

A letter is delivered to an impoverished merchant, announcing the arrival in port of a vessel carrying a rich cargo which is known to be his. His two elder daughters, vain and selfish, beg him to bring them new dresses and fashionable bonnets from the city. Beauty, his youngest and favorite daughter, not wishing to appear critical of her sisters by asking for nothing, asks for a rose, “for here they are a kind of rarity.”

The Merchant loses everything in a suit at law and, returning home through the forest, loses his way in the storm and is led by a fairy to take refuge in a mysterious and deserted palace where everything seems to be arranged for his comfort. Not long morning, he plucks a rose to take home to Beauty and is confronted by the Beast who spares his life only on condition that he will send one of his daughters to die in his place. Beauty insists on accompanying the Merchant herself to the Beast’s palace where, full of misgivings, her father leaves her, “half-dead with fear.”

Three months later, Beauty is living a quiet life of lonely contentment in the Beast’s demesne. Every night the half-man, half-beast asks her to marry him. Every night she refuses him, though she pities his predicament. From the kindness of his heart, he allows Beauty to visit her ailing father, exacting from her a promise to return in seven days. The promise is soon forgotten in the complications at home: Beauty finds her father ailing, in the belief that he has been the cause of her death, and the two sisters have made disastrous marriages. All three prevent Beauty from fulfilling her vow until the Fairy who watches over the Beast as well as his Beauty, reminds her of the Beast in a dream. He is dying in his garden from a broken heart. When Beauty returns by supernatural means and assures him that she loves him enough to marry him, to her amazement, the prince is released from his enchantment. The Fairy appears to bless their union, the reward of a warm and generous heart, and to impose eternal punishment on those whose hearts are forever full of envy and malice.

“And so the prince married Beauty, and happily lived ever after: their happiness proved of long endurance, because it was born of generous love.”