has it come to this?

That my sunday nights are so empty I choose to write a blog when I have a whole two days left to do it last minute?
How awful.

Oh well I'm here now.
I'm gonna do The Tiger's Bride and The Courtship of Mr. Lyon together cos I find the parallels and contrasts interesting.
Ok I'm not. I'm going to bed and finishing this tommorow...maybe.

Good morning, good morning! We haven't talked the whole night through but I have been thinking about lions and tigers.
I think the major contrast between these two is how the two narrators begin in terms of free will. In Mr Lyon the narrator, Beauty, is loving and obedient to her father, and goes willingly to the lion's house. However in Tiger's Bride the narrator is disgusted by her father's actions and by the beast himself, at his request to see her naked.
However both narrators end the story by willingly loving the beast. In Mr. Lyon is he revealed to be a man, and in Tiger's Bride the narrator reveals her inner beast. I think both these endings portray the message that noone has to submit to anyone, not women to men or the other way around, but that we are all the same underneath.

Obviously both these texts are interpretations of the fairytale Beauty and the Beast, and I like the way Carter has used elements of the fairytale genre in each. In both Mr Lyon and Tiger's Bride the family in question has a recently lowered status and are looking to get it back, which i seem to find is often the case in tellings of fairytales. Another fairytale concept is the easy acceptance of the abnormal, like the father's lack of acknowledgement at a dog that wears jewels in Mr Lyon.

Right...yeah I'm gonna stop now.