Gaston

**Gaston** is the chauvinistic, charming and arrogant hunter from Belle's village, who was after her hand in marriage by any means necessary (regardless what she thinks about his offer).

Gaston is strong and handsome, and exploited these traits to the fullest. While it is not clear if he considers himself as a good person or not (like Ratcliffe and Judge Claude Frollo do), the villiagers very much do, considering how popular he is with them (especially the Bimbette triplets), and seem unaware of his true nature (Gaston reprise in the original film notwithstanding), and this serves to fuel his already massive ego -- a narcissist who sees himself as superior to everyone around him. Gaston is proud, boorish, uncultured, impolite, and sexist. He was also arrogant, as evidenced by his setting up a wedding before he even proposed to Belle under the expectation that she'd approve of becoming his wife. He was also convinced that he is powerful enough to defeat the bigger and stronger Beast by himself. He even taunts the Beast, wanting him to fight back as he wants to prove that he can kill him in a fair fight.

However, his arrogance makes him underestimate his opponent and once he realizes his life is on the line, he may have to rely on desperate measures to survive. Despite this, he was not *arrogant* enough to believe there was no risk to being killed by the Beast, as he freely admits that fighting the Beast does have the likelihood that he or the other villagers might very likely die during the "Mob Song".

Despite his belief that thinking is "a dangerous pastime" (suggesting that he is anti-intellectual), Gaston is not unintelligent; in fact, he is quite cunning, which is emphasized twice in the story; he comes up with a plan to get Belle to marry him by *threatening* to have her father, Maurice, thrown into an asylum should she refuse. When that plan is foiled by Belle showing the Beast with a magic mirror, Gaston simply improvises and quickly turns the tables by manipulating the villagers into forming a mob to kill the Beast, thus eliminating his competition. Gaston is not above using underhanded tactics, which had earlier been implied with LeFou's claim about Gaston being "slick" as well as Gaston's admission about being good at "taking cheap shots", and confirmed when he shows himself to literally be a backstabber in his final moments, showing that he also cheats at things. In fact, his "begging" to the Beast may have been nothing more than a trick: he still had a knife on his person, and if the Beast was as "kind and gentle" as Belle described him to be, then Gaston would've appealed to his enemy's better nature, thus allowing him to be brought back on solid ground before he could get one last shot.

## **Physical Appearance**

As noted throughout the film, he possessed an athletic build, a double square chin, and a handsome appearance. His black hair was long and tied with a crimson band into a ponytail. He had icy blue eyes. He generally wore yellow hunting gloves, although he discarded them by the midpoint but wore them again towards the end of the film. He also wore a red tunic and black tights, alongside boots. He mainly carried a quiver of arrows on his back and wore a cape during cold evenings and his final battle with the Beast. He also had a lot of hair on his chest.

## **Personality and Traits**

Gaston is strong and handsome and exploited these traits to the fullest. While it is not clear if he considers himself as a good person or not (like Ratcliffe and Frollo do), the villagers very much do, considering how popular he is with them (especially the Bimbette triplets), and seem unaware of his true nature (Gaston reprise in the original film notwithstanding), and this serves to fuel his already massive ego. A narcissist who sees himself as superior to everyone around him, Gaston is proud, boorish, uncultured, greedy, short-tempered, impolite, narcissistic, and sexist. He was also impulsive and arrogant, as evidenced by his setting up a wedding before he even proposed to Belle under the expectation that she'd approve of becoming his wife, thinking she was in love with him. He was also convinced that he is powerful enough to defeat the bigger and stronger Beast by himself. He even taunts the Beast, wanting him to fight back as he wants to prove that he can kill him in a fair fight. However, his arrogance makes him underestimate his opponent and once he realizes his life is on the line, he may have to rely on desperate measures to survive. Despite this, he was not arrogant enough to believe there was no risk of being killed by the Beast, as he freely admits that fighting the Beast does have the likelihood that he or the other villagers might very likely die during the "Mob Song".

Despite his belief that thinking is "a dangerous pastime" (suggesting that he is anti-intellectual), Gaston is not unintelligent; in fact, he is quite cunning, which is emphasized twice in the story; he comes up with a plan to blackmail Belle into marrying him by threatening to have her father, Maurice, thrown into an insane asylum should she refuse. Due to poor management and cruel treatment of inmates, this is a surprisingly harsh threat. When that plan is foiled by Belle showing the Beast with a magic mirror, Gaston simply improvises and quickly turns the tables by manipulating the villagers into forming a mob to kill the Beast, thus eliminating his competition. Gaston is not above using underhanded tactics, which had earlier been implied with LeFou's claim about Gaston being "slick" as well as Gaston's admission about being good at "taking cheap shots", and confirmed when he shows himself to literally be a backstabber in his final moments, showing that he also cheats at things. In fact, his "begging" to the Beast may have been nothing more than a trick: he still had a knife on his person, and if the Beast was as "kind and gentle" as Belle described him to be, then Gaston would've appealed to his enemy's better nature, thus allowing him to be brought back on solid ground before he could get one last shot. Gaston is far from the smartest Disney villain.

Gaston is the kind of person who won't give up on his goals easily; no matter how much Belle evades him or however hard the humiliation he receives, he is determined to make her his wife. His persistence is such that he will go to great lengths and sink so low to ensure he wins. Even when the Beast overwhelms him, Gaston will not tolerate losing Belle to this "monster." This drive will blind him to the dangers of climbing a balcony, which overlooks a deep abyss, causing him to fall to his death.

In the film, Gaston vocabulary skills are slightly inconsistent; when Belle refers to him as being "positively primeval" early in the film, the latter apparently takes it as either a compliment, clearly not knowing what the term actually means, or a joke. However, in the "Gaston" song, he at one point accurately used the word "expectorating" in reference to his skills at spitting ("expectorating" being a more fancy way of saying the term "spit").

Gaston's view of women is extremely sexist even by standards of the time in which the film takes place, and while he appears charming to all of the other women of the village, such as the Bimbettes (who, being products of an upbringing in the village, grew up to see nothing wrong with Gaston's behavior, completely mesmerized by his muscles and handsome face), Belle is the only woman in the entire town to be able to see him for what he really is from the start of the film on. He believes that women like Belle are not entitled to think for themselves or even get ideas, and even tosses Belle's book into the mud in an attempt to get her to focus on "more important things" (namely, himself). Because of this, Gaston's attempts to charm Belle always fall flat because of his chauvinistic and boorish behavior. His sexism is also shown by the fact that he does not seem to even consider the possibility of fathering any daughters, as he states he wants "six or seven strapping boys" like himself.

Gaston suffers from obsessive love which is shown by his intense infatuation with Belle. Indeed, he is so obsessed with her that he ignores all the other pretty women in the village who would be happy to be his "little wife", even ironically, those who technically matched Gaston's standards of how women should behave. When Gaston is singing about wanting to marry her in the opening song, he says "When I met her, saw her, I said she's gorgeous and I fell", implying that he fell in love for Belle at first sight. These facts imply that another reason for his relentless pursuit of Belle is to satisfy his pride which may have had hurt by her resistance to him. Gaston is also adulterous (at least in the musical), as he states to Claudette and her sisters that his "rendezvouses" with the girls will continue after he marries Belle, which makes it clear that he does not know or care that marriage is a one-woman commitment or that is it supposed to be based on love and devotion rather than ownership of property.

Notably, at the start of the film and musical play, Gaston did not seem truly evil. Rather, he was simply conceited, male-chauvinistic, boorish, and rude than a true villain, but as time goes on his pride and obsession with Belle becomes so intense that it turns him into a twisted, sadistic, and murderous monster. With his obsession consuming him, Gaston became manipulative at this point; his speech to get the mob to kill the Beast in order to protect the village was nothing more than a ploy to get them to help him infiltrate the castle. All he wants is to kill his rival so he can have Belle as his property. By the time of his death, Gaston feels that if he can't have Belle, nobody can.

In an earlier version of the story, he was even going to commit suicide after killing the Beast as he knew that no matter what he did, Belle would never love him.