Feminist Themes in Carter’s ‘The Courtship of Mr. Lyon’
“The Courtship of Mr. Lyon” is based on the classic story, “Beauty and the Beast,” and told in the “once upon a time” third person common to traditional fairy tales. Carter’s classic backdrop of basic story and narration emphasizes her tale’s unconventionality, with its feminist themes and plot reversal. Like many of Carter’s stories, far from “classic,” “The Courtship of Mr. Lyon” is a tale of self-discovery and rejection of female objectification. According to Meyre Ivone Santana da Silva, the story’s primary thematic difference from “Beauty and the Beast” is its manipulation of that story’s “act of mirroring.” In “Beauty and the Beast,” we are forced to see Beauty and Beast as diametrically opposed forces; Beauty is feminine, beautiful, innocent, and gentle, while Beast is masculine, ugly, experienced, and wild. The original story suggests that the sides of this dichotomy are irreconcilable, or in da Silva’s words, “completely dissociated.”
Yet Carter’s characters are more “ambiguous.” In the story of “Beauty and the Beast,” according to da Silva, “One side is always empowered in relation to the other.” Although “The Courtship of Mr. Lyon” begins this way, Carter quickly reverses the convention. Beauty begins as a penniless, helpless girl, whom the rich, powerful, and world-weary Beast forces to live in his house. However, she rapidly becomes the more active, experienced, and adventurous character. While the Beast hides from the world, she is confident enough to live a high-profile life in the city. While at first she is afraid of him, she comes to realize that he is actually afraid of her. In the end, Carter totally reverses the Beauty/Beast dichotomy; the Beast takes on the role of fairy-tale princess, wasting away in his attic “tower,” guarded by a beast (in this case himself), and needing Beauty to rescue him from that beast or beastliness.
Carter uses symbolism in “The Courtship of Mr. Lyon” to emphasize her main feminist agenda. She employs a paradigm commonly found in literature, distinguishing the city as a masculine place of experience and corruption and the country as a feminine one of inexperience and purity. However, she uses this literary convention to undermine a gender convention; the Beast is trapped in isolation in the country while Beauty has free range of the city. Because the characters need to access both their “masculine” and “feminine” attributes in order to be happy, they are both unhappy when they are limited to being in one place. The country is so “innocent” or devoid of activity that it weakens the Beast almost to the point of death. The city is so “worldly” and full of superficial interactions that it hardens Beauty and begins to replace her inner beauty with a spoiled, false air. Carter uses the city and country as symbols to strengthen her contention that a person needs to be both “masculine” and “feminine” to have an authentic and fulfilled existence.
Carter uses food or sustenance as an equalizer because it is a symbol of both animal and human nature; both animals and humans must eat in order to survive. At first, food signifies civilization and humanity. When the Beast leaves out food for Beauty’s father, he shows his humanity by being courteous to his guest. It is the same when he feeds Beauty; he may be a lion who eats raw flesh, but he provides her with the finest human food. At the story’s end, food signifies animal nature. The Beast is dying because he is not eating, just as humans can die from starvation because we too are animals.
Beauty proves herself to be more than a traditional fairy tale heroine, but in the beginning, she conforms to the paradigm. Like many of Carter’s heroines, she must start within and then break free from the restrictions and assumptions of patriarchal society. As da Silva phrases it, “The daughter is conscious of her annihilation in the patriarchal society but she doesn’t have autonomy to overcome it.” While Beauty is living with the Beast, she finds amusement in reading fairy tales. It is as though despite living in a modern world with telephones and automobiles, Beauty wants to believe in the conventional “happily ever after.” Her request for a single white rose also conveys this wish for conventionality; the rose symbolizes her chasteness and delicateness. Carter emphasizes Beauty’s femininity, innocence, and virginity by comparing her to the immaculate snow upon which she gazes. By saying the snowy road, and by association, Beauty is “white and unmarked as a spilled bolt of bridal satin,” Carter seems to insinuate that Beauty’s uniqueness lies in her gentle femininity and that her destiny is marriage. However, knowing Carter’s motives, we can assume that Beauty’s virginity represents possibility more than it does naivete. Beauty may be trapped within a society that objectifies her, but her innocence empowers her; she is pure of mind enough to see through its conventional dichotomies and claim her own destiny, as she does at the story’s end. In fact, Carter reminds us explicitly early on that Beauty has “will of her own”; she actually empowers herself by consenting to live with the Beast because in doing so she is choosing to step out of her role of child and act as protector to her father.
Like Beauty, the Beast does not conform to his side of the “irreconcilable binary” of Beauty/Beast. Also like Beauty, in the beginning of the story, he seems to conform. As a lion, ‘king of beasts,’ he is the embodiment of masculine power, strong, confident, and rough. When we first encounter the Beast, this seems to be true of him. His very anger ignites the house with “furious light” and he roars with the strength of not only one but “a pride of lions.” He is strong enough to “[shake] Beauty’s father like an angry child shakes a doll … Until his teeth rattled.” But it quickly becomes clear that the Beast’s strength is an impediment to human interaction. When he speaks, Beauty wonders “how [she can] converse with the possessor of a voice that seemed an instrument created to inspire …Terror.” The first time he kisses her hands, Beauty is terrified by how rough his tongue is until she realizes he is not trying to harm her.
The Beast is so ashamed of his appearance that his only companion before Beauty is his spaniel. By the end of the story, we see that the Beast’s loneliness makes him weak and inactive. Beauty’s absence weakens him so much that he is unable to do so much as feed himself, and he almost dies of despair. At the end of the story, Beauty is still a beautiful woman, but she is active and brave; she is a mixture of Beauty and Beast. So too is the Beast, who retains remnants of his leonine appearance when he transforms into a gentle human. He also retains the name Lyon, signifying his former identity. Beauty takes his name when she marries him. While taking one’s husband’s name can be seen as an act of submission, in this case it is an acknowledgment of Beauty’s own masculinity. She is claiming her rightful title, for she too is a strong Lyon/lion.