La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast)

Two of the ten stories in the collection are Beauty and the Beast, rewritten twice over and deliberately given opposite endings. The Courtship of Mr Lyon keeps Beaumont's resolution, in which the Beast becomes a man; The Tiger's Bride refuses it, and the girl sheds her own skin to become an animal instead. Carter translated Perrault and worked on fairy tales all her life, and the method of the book is to take a known tale and ask what its bargain actually is. Beaumont's version is a lesson about looking past appearances and about a daughter's duty to her father; Carter reads the same plot as a transaction in which a woman is handed over to settle a man's debt, which is what the original says if you do not soften it.

Disney's film is the Beaumont version of the tale, the short 1756 retelling that became the standard one, rather than Villeneuve's much longer 1740 original. What comes straight across: the merchant father, the rose picked in the Beast's grounds that puts him in debt, the daughter who takes his place, the enchanted household, and the condition that the Beast be loved as he is before the spell breaks. Gaston and the talking objects are the film's additions; the bargain and its terms are Beaumont's.

Maas explicitly pitched the first book as a loose, dark fantasy retelling of the traditional French fairy tale "La Belle et la bete", blending it with Scottish and Scandinavian folklore.

Leprince de Beaumont worked as a governess in London, teaching young girls from wealthy families. She found Villeneuve’s original novel far too long, dense, and inappropriate for children.She stripped away the subplots, complex fairy politics, and adult themes to publish it in her educational magazine, Magasin des enfants. Her goal was to use the story as a didactic tool to teach young girls that a good character, compliance, and looking past outward appearances were the most important traits for a future wife. Because it was short and easy to read, Beaumont's version became the definitive blueprint for all modern adaptations, including the Disney films.