The prince and the woodcutter

Running Head: ESSAY 1

ESSAY 6

Essay: Comparing and Contrasting “Beauty and the Beast” And “The Tales of Tulisa”

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Comparing and Contrasting “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Tales of Tulisa”

The stories revolving around love have existed for a very long time. Basically, love is power that crosses cultural, racial, ethnic, national, religious and even political boundaries and one that can join two distinctively different individuals. 2017’s Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and the mythological stories “Tales of Tulisa” are relatively similar in their overall messages and themes, but they equally differ from each other in several ways. The Tale of Tulisa is an ancient mythical love narrative that has its origin in the traditional Indian society, while the Beauty and the Beasts is more of a classic love story. The aim of this work is to compare and contrast the two to identify their resemblance and the differences between the two as a way of comparing ancient and classic mythologies.

The key characters in the two kinds of work are Belle (Beauty), Tulisa, Beast, King of Serpent, Nur-Singh and Maurice. In both works, beauty is portrayed as a virtue that flourishes from the beginning to the end. In addition to this, royalty is shown to be disfigured to non-human forms, while the fathers to the two girls, Beauty and Tulisa, try to get involved in their daughters’ decisions regarding love. Throughout the two works, love appears to be the major theme between human and non-human beings.

The Beauty and the Beast begins with a narration that “once upon a time, in the hidden heart of France, a handsome young prince lived in a beautiful castle”. The narration continues that “even though he had everything that he desired, the prince was selfish and unkind”. This part sets the mood of the movie. It is expected that the prince should suffer the consequence of his selfishness. This happens when the prince taxed the village to fill his castle with the most beautiful objects and the most beautiful girls in his castle. While they sang and thrilled, an intruder arrived into the castle. The intruder was ideally an old woman seeking for shelter from the bitter storms and in her hands, she carried a rose as a gift to the prince. Out of pride, the prince was repulsed by the intruder’s looks, and she turned her away. The intruder warned the prince about being deceived by the looks. It was then that the ugly look on the intruder melted away and she became a very beautiful enchantress. Although he begged for forgiveness, the enchantress would not forgive him and as a punishment, he was transformed into a beast through a curse. His castle was also put under a spell together with all who resided there.

The tale of Tulisa on the other hand begins with Tulisa, the daughter of a poor woodcutter, hearing a voice from a fountain that requests her to for marriage. This happens for three times and Tulisa Decides to involve her father. Surprisingly, the father gives consent to the marriage especially because it promises wealth. This is followed by a strange marriage ceremony, after which Tulisa finds herself in a marvelous palace where she gets everything she asks for. Tulisa sees her husband every night but he does not reveal his name to her. Additionally, Tulisa is warned of leaving the palace and letting visitors into the palace. She suffers loneliness and eventually decides to go against the warnings. Tulisa lets in an old woman, a fairy-like or demon, known as Sarkasukis. The woman comes thrice and every time she suggests a different way in which Tulisa’s husbands has fallen short of love with Tulisa. In response Tulisa would query her husband in anxiety. The third time, Tulisa is told to ask her husband his real name. He hesitates to answer her because he knew that revealing his real name would bring irreversible trouble to her. Upon telling her his name, “Basnak Dau”, he turns into a water snake and slithers away into a river. The palace equally vanishes and instantly, Tulisa gets herself back at her parents place and similarly, they are freshly re-impoverished.

A common aspect between the backgrounds of Belle and Tulisa was poverty. The two families do not appear to be wealthy. Both Belle and Tulisa, who are the key characters in the stories, were both raised by their fathers. The tale of Tulisa describes Tulisa as the daughter of a poor wood cutter, who would not resists consenting her daughter’s marriage for wealth. Belle on the other hand is a daughter of a former rich merchant, Maurice, who is now not wealthy.

Both works are founded on the theme of a beautiful girl falling in love with non-human forms. The nonhuman forms or creature in both works transforms later to become humans. In The tale of Tulisa, Tulisa gets married through a mysterious ceremony to a strange person whom she only saw at night, only to transform to a snake when he revealed his real name. Belle is a real beauty, “Now it's no wonder that her name means "beauty" Her looks have got no parallel”. Belle’s father, Maurice, went to a kind of an exhibition to sell some of his possessions to raise some money for his family. While on his way back, he got lost and was scarily chased by wolves. At this juncture, he managed to arrive to a dark looking castle. The beast found him and locked him in a dungeon after claiming that he had tampered with his roses. When belle realized that his father was not coming home soon, she set off to look for him guided by his father’s horse. Belle, her while trying to save her father from the beast, she gets imprisoned at the isolated castle.

Another similarity in the two works is the invocation of curses on the masculine gender. In the Tale of Tulisa, the non-human being refuted disclosing his name to Tulisa. Tulisa later on learned from squirrels that Basnak Dau had removed his mother from power when he became the king of his people. The mother tricked Tulisa to insist on knowing her husband’s identity and this is what deposed him. To break the curse, Tulisa was supposed to swim was supposed to swim in a river that had snakes and get a Huma Bird’s egg. Further, the egg was to be carried between her breasts until it hatched. The hatched snake would then help Tulisa’s husband to regain his power and kingdom by pricking the eyes of the green snake that coiled around the Queens neck. This is what she did, and although a hard and risky task, she managed to kill the Queen and the snake, and they lived happily with her husband. In the Beauty and the Beast, to break the curse, the, beast was to fall in love genuinely with another person before the last petal in the rose that was given to him fell off.

In both cases, men are set into curses that would only be broken by true and unconditional love. Tulisa witnessed her husband transform from invisible to visible man, then from man to snake. Her love for him would not allow her to let him go through such scenarios anymore and this caused her to kill the queen of snakes. To kill her, she needed an egg of a Huma bird which she would wait to hatch so that she could kill her. That is what she did and got her husband back. In the Beauty and the Beast, Belle was held captive by the beast in the place of her father, and while refusing to have anything to do with him. Belle was particularly unhappy, and she wanted to see her father. Using the magic mirror, she managed to see him, and it was clear that he was lost and suffering in the forest. She finally is let free to go and look for him where she managed and took him home. She meets with Gaston who she dislikes with a passion. Gaston is determined to find the beast and kill him since she was forcefully in love with Belle. Gaston locks Belle and her father in the cellar before setting to kill the beast. By luck, Belle’s father uses his inventions to set them free, and they eventually escape, and on rushing to the castle, they find Gaston fighting with the beast. The beast manages to hold Gaston by the neck and almost lets him out through the balcony, but he begs for mercy. Upon being saved, Gaston stabs the beast at the back, and he falls down. Belle gets to him, and upon whispering to him that she loves him just before the last petal of the rose fell off, the beast becomes human and they lived happily.

The two stories are very similar in the way love wins and the way they close in happy endings. However, they are different in the way they start. In addition, they were written in two different times and from two different settings. Different curses were used, and they were broken differently. The situations that led the two people to love each other are also different in the two works. The tales of Tulisa as a mythological folktale that can be adequately compared with the Beauty and the Beast, a traditional fairy tale romance film that was authored by a French novelist. The works have many similarities and differences, but they address majorly similar themes of beauty, love, curse and royalty.