Moral of the Story: Marry for Money

Rating: 1/10 (6 April 2017)

Beauty and the Beast is about a deposed slave-owning aristocrat who imprisons a farm girl. She undergoes Stockholm Syndrome, identifying with her captor, then proceeds to betray her village's uprising and reinstates the slave-owning prince to power by offering her hand in marriage.
Furthermore, Belle's contempt for the provincial farming community and their lack of refinement stems from vague memories she has of a more cultured upbringing in Paris. When she later is shown a vision of her childhood house and remarks "it's so small," this was a moment where she could put it all together.
The lack of refinement in the rural areas was due to brutal exploitation which forced unmarried women to beg in the streets. It is likely that the community's surplus resources were taken by aristocrats like the Beast, and used to fund his opulent palace. Thus, depriving the farming community of leisure time and resources for education and arts, which would have made them more sophisticated, meeting Belle's approval.
It is also possible that Gaston's intense desire to marry, which caused his nefarious plot, may be linked to levée en masse, a policy that required conscription for all unmarried French men between 18 and 25. So his patriarchal demands were a direct result of state policy to benefit the aristocracy by providing soldiers to sacrifice their lives in land disputes between inbred blue blood cousins.
Then, this exploitation provided a concentration of wealth and power in the city, which created the market for her father to pursue creative employment rather than farm work. This also forced them into slums, where squalor and poor public health systems lead to the spread of plague, which is met with cold indifference by the doctor, indicating lack of public health care as a source of Belle's childhood trauma.
All of this exploitation and upward wealth transfer made its way back to the remote plantation of the Beast.
When confronted with this inescapable logic, what does she do? She decides to take the easy way out and enjoy the life of luxury, waited hand and foot by Beast's slaves, who feed her, clothe her, sing and dance for her. A life she always felt entitled to, on part of her feeling of superiority towards her provincial neighbors.
The moral of the story is, marry for money, and ignore the suffering of the poor. A terrible message for children.