Nobody Likes a Handsome Prince
As promised, here is the companion essay to my beast-complex essays. I have written quite a few words in praise of literary beasts, such as the beast from "Beauty and the Beast," Mr. Rochester from Jane Eyre, Cyrano de Bergerac, and the Phantom of the Opera. (See http://ercasse-ainince.livejournal.com/21800.html and http://ercasse-ainince.livejournal.com/34630.html.) Now I will comment on the beast's foil, his nemesis, the handsome prince.
Most beasts in general and each of the beasts I have mentioned in particular have their handsome-prince foils -- Mr. Rochester versus St. John Rivers, Cyrano versus Christian, the Phantom versus Raoul, and, of course, the beast versus the prince. At first, the handsome prince looks like a very attractive romantic prospect. He is young, handsome, dashing, admired and pursued by other women. He is the textbook-perfect model of romantically attractive manhood, the kind of man a Beauty, a Roxanne, a Christine is supposed to want. He is the happy ending to the fairy tale.
Or is he?
Note the "supposed to." Note the attitude of "this should be," the foregone conclusion that any woman, particularly an attractive one such as a fairy-tale princess, must want the prince, must even be destined for him. Doesn't she get a choice? Few of us know or have ever been told that the Grimm Brothers' Cinderella runs from the prince all three nights of the ball and that he gets her shoe only by spreading pitch on the stairs in an attempt to stop her flight. It takes a royal decree to get those two married. Old-school (read "non Disney") fairy tales are full of girls who aren't out looking for love but who end up catching a prince's eye anyway. Christine is enjoying her first night as opera prima donna, due to the tutelage of her angel of music, when Raoul decides to notice her, remember their childhood romance, steal into her dressing room, and take her to dinner. She refuses, thinking of her angel's displeasure, but Raoul won't hearken to her objections. St. John Rivers, too, though Jane is in love with Rochester, doesn't ask but rather demands Jane's hand in marriage, saying, "A missionary's wife you must -- shall be. You shall be mine: I claim you." When she persists in her refusal, knowing that she cannot be the wife he will require her to be, he tells her, "It is not me you deny, but God." Jane sees even St. John's beauty as a form of his tyranny, saying that to be what he wants of her is "as impossible as to mould [her] irregular features to his correct and classic pattern."
What the prince and often the audience fail to realize is that the prince's love for the maiden isn't always requited. His admiration doesn't obligate her to him. Her heart is hers to give, even if everyone else thinks she should give it to him, even if her family and friends are willing to sell her for money and a title. When the forces of parents and society and religion join to tell a woman that she must like a certain man, even if he is a prince, how can she help but feel manipulated and trapped? Is it any wonder if she succumbs to the allure of the forbidden and gets a crush on the dirty, sweaty blacksmith?
When we step back from the prince and the brilliance of his title, money, and popularity, what is so confounded attractive about him? He is a pretty boy. I know that pretty boys and metrosexuals are plastered all over present-day magazine covers and touted as the pinnacle of fashionable, sexually attractive manhood (again with society's telling women what to like). I know that I should allow for varying tastes among women. But can a pretty boy really do it for so many? So he's young, cute, (often) blond, bright eyed, smooth skinned. He sounds more like competition than a date to me. When I think of masculinity, I don't think of a pretty-boy handsome prince. I'll bet that blacksmith I mentioned earlier could easily take down our prince here and not even break a sweat (beyond that which he's worked up while pounding metal and building up those biceps). Even blind and maimed, Rochester could snap St. John's neck like a twig. The waifish Christine has to save Raoul twice from the Phantom's wrath. And Roxanne actually charges Cyrano with protecting Christian first from their allies among the cadets and then from their enemies in the war.
Yet despite the prince's general uselessness and utter lack of manliness, he is his own biggest fan. We can hardly wonder at his vanity, since everyone has always told him how cute, desirable, and extraordinary he is. He is Queen Mommy's darling, King Daddy's chip off the ol' block. Women fall all over him, even if he spends more time primping at his mirror than they. Sure, he can't arm wrestle the blacksmith, but he can order the palace guards to do it for him and then take all the credit. The prince is good at taking the credit for other people's work; after all, it's his due as royalty or as a pretty-boy heartthrob or as whatever characteristic he chooses for his entitlement complex. The rather dim-witted Christian sees no problem in claiming Cyrano's eloquence as his own in wooing Roxanne. St. John Rivers declares that God has destined Jane to be his bride.
The prince's vanity and sense of entitlement make it very difficult to believe that he truly loves. What, after all, does he see in his desired woman but a pretty face for the family portrait, another check mark on his list of accomplishments? As Disney's Gaston says, "[She's] the most beautiful girl in town. That makes her the best. And don't I deserve the best?" Prince Humperdinck, too, declares, "I want someone who is so beautiful that when you see her you say, 'Wow, that Humperdinck must be some kind of fella to have a wife like that.'" As to the prince types I have named in particular, Raoul doesn't even notice Christine until she is made prima donna by the Phantom and displayed on stage, whereupon he says, "What a change! You're really not a bit the gawkish girl that once you were." When Christian tries to express his love to Roxanne without Cyrano's help, his words are, "Your neck! I'd like to kiss it." True, St. John wants plain Jane, but he wants her for his great missions work. As he says, "It is not the insignificant private individual -- the mere man, with the man's selfish sense -- I wish to mate: it is the missionary," and "You are formed for labour, not for love." In his way, St. John sees Jane as a missionary's trophy wife.
If this vain, self-centered prince marries his lady, will he love her selflessly? Will he make her happy? Of course he chases the fleeing maiden, because she challenges his view of himself as irresistible. But once he catches her, will he take her for granted as he would any toy of which he tires once he comes to possess it? Unfortunately for this question, the stories usually end with the prince's marriage, and we don't get to see his married life. But beauty/beast/prince stories in which the beauty chooses the prince don't give particularly glowing impressions of the couple's wedded life. Christine tearfully gives back the Phantom's ring and sails off with Raoul, and then we know nothing of her life except that she leaves Raoul a widower. Roxanne marries Christian minutes before he is sent to war, visits his camp just in time to hold him as he dies, lives in mourning at a convent for years, then at last learns that it was Cyrano who wrote the letters that won her heart, just in time to watch Cyrano die. She laments, "I've loved only one man, and I've lost him twice."
"But Holly," I hear you my readers say, "You titled this essay 'Nobody Likes a Handsome Prince,' and so far you've expressed only your own opinions." Well, now I will demonstrate that other writers are joining my cause and sharing my antiprince, probeast sentiments. The primary works I will discuss in this arena are Into the Woods, Shrek and Shrek 2, The 10th Kingdom, and a ballet version of "Beauty and the Beast" that I haven't seen but of which I've been told.
The first time I heard of a work that overtly agrees that a beauty should love the beast was when an aunt told me about a ballet version of "Beauty and the Beast" in which the dancer playing the beast dances around in a hideous mask. At the end, instead of his shedding the mask to become a prince, the Beauty character dons a mask and becomes a beast herself. I was so thrilled. Very soon afterward, I saw Shrek and was again glad to see Princess Fiona transform into an ogre rather than Shrek transform into a handsome-prince type. Even better than the sympathetic portrayal of the ogre Shrek are the characterizations of Lord Farquaad in the first film and of Prince Charming in the second film. Then I saw a college performance of Into the Woods, and I couldn't have been more pleased with the portrayals of the annoying handsome princes. And even The 10th Kingdom's Prince Wendell, though he isn't a romantic interest, is a wonderfully vain, spoiled, self-centered, useless prince.
The Shrek films do an excellent job of satirizing the "this is the way things should be" attitude of the prince type. (Sadly, these films take up satirical arms also against all fairy tales, which the films seem to recognize only as the Disney versions.) Lord Farquaad is a control freak who runs his not yet kingdom of Duloc as the most despotic of micromanagers and expects his princess to be part of his vision. As he says, "I will have order! I will have perfection!" Fiona, too, as if she has Stockholm syndrome from her long imprisonment, is at first a slave to fairy-tale convention. She balks at Shrek and his unorthodox rescue, saying, "It's destiny. You must know how it goes" and then "This is all wrong. You're not supposed to be an ogre." Later, however, she seems to realize the ridiculousness of marrying someone she doesn't know or like simply because it's expected of her. Shrek 2 does an even better job with Prince Charming, who also declares destiny has chosen him for Fiona. When Fiona's father the king points out that one can't force people to fall in love, the Fairy Godmother (Prince Charming's mother) says, "I do it all the time." The Shrek films are all about debunking convention and defying expectations, especially about love.
These new takes on handsome princes also tend to agree with me on the prince's lack of manliness. Shrek's Lord Farquaad is laughably short and must endure the resulting jokes and all their connotations, including jokes about his huge castle's being in order to "compensate." Prince Charming from Shrek 2 is incredibly effeminate and immature, shown sporting a hair net and sparkly lip gloss. He whines petulantly and must rely on his mother to solve all his problems, even to do his hair for the ball. The two princes from Into the Woods have their ridiculous phobias, one of blood, the other of dwarfs. Prince Wendell from The 10th Kingdom is easily duped by the evil queen and turned into a dog, leaving others to rescue him, save his kingdom, and restore him to the throne and to his human form.
As for vanity and a sense of entitlement, these princes have them in spades. Lord Farquaad declares he and his kingdom are perfect and will hear no word to the contrary. He believes himself fully entitled to wed Princess Fiona, though he doesn't bother to rescue her himself. In Prince Charming's opening monologue to Shrek 2, he declares himself "the bravest and most handsome in all the land" as he tosses his hair for the camera. He, too, thinks himself entitled to Fiona without slaying the dragon or rescuing her. The princes from Into the Woods strut like peacocks for every female they see. Prince Wendell, even as a dog, thinks himself entitled to unquestioning obedience from the dimensional travelers who are in no way his subjects. He is supposed to have performed "prearranged acts of bravery" as a coronation requirement.
Each of the amorous princes has selfish motives for wanting his lady. Both Lord Farquaad and Prince Charming want Princess Fiona in order to become king. Farquaad is willing to use his marriage to be king while locking Fiona turned ogre back into her tower prison. The princes from Into the Woods want Cinderella and Rapunzel as long as these ladies are unattainable. Once they marry their ladies, they begin to pine for other beauties in need of rescue. As Cinderella's prince says, "I was raised to be charming, not sincere." And I don't think it's coincidence that the actor who plays this prince traditionally plays the wolf, with his double-entendred lines, as well. It seems these new princes, just as I've always said of the old ones, are not capable of the selfless love that a beast has for his Beauty.
So it looks like popular culture is starting to agree with me that a handsome prince is no real man, no true lover. And at least to some extent, beasts are gaining in popularity. I'm glad we as a culture are starting to come to our senses, but I'm afraid beasts may never be appreciated as they deserve. In fact, I'm sure they won't. That, in the end, is what makes them beasts, what makes them so very attractive to those of us who understand.
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