The question, "Which princess do you think is the smartest?" is asked very often and every time it is asked, there are those people who pick Belle. There are the people who not only pick Belle, but comment, "Because she reads." Then, there are the people who think that is a dumb thing to say, and begin immediately saying stuff like, "She only reads fairy-tales." Every time this process has been repeated I have wanted to say something like what I am about to say, but never got the chance. So now I'm going to say it.

I think many people forget that Beauty and the Beast is not set in 2011. It isn't set in the 1950's, either. It is set a long while back, before laptops and iPad's and cars. Before gigantic bookstores with every book genre and every book title you could possibly think of. Belle lives in a small, provincial town, and the only "library" is a little bookshop with maybe two or three shelves. There aren't any trucks that come into town every week, with stacks & stacks of the newest books. No, in Belle's library, the books in there are probably the only books that are in there for months at a time. At the time Belle was alive, there also probably wasn't a Harry Potter or a Great Expectations. The only books that were probably in that library were fairy-tales. Not thin paperback fairy-tales with pictures, no, the thick, complicated, original versions of fairy-tales. Have you ever read the original version of The Little Mermaid? It's not something just anyone can read.


Another thing I think people forget is that Belle was a dreamer, a dreamer who wanted to escape her boring town. Books like Pride & Prejudice offer no escape. Fairy-tales? Now those are something. Reading books like those, of far of places, dashing sword fights & a prince in disguise were possibly Belle's only source of comfort in that town she so wanted to leave. They offered her adventure that she couldn't have. If you think that it is very childish of Belle to read such stories, put yourself in her place. Pretend that's all your library had. Pretend you need to flee where you are, but you can't, and unfortunately, Harry Potter doesn't exist yet. She also states that she's read all the books in

I'm going to end this article with the wise words of someone who has written a very fairy-tale like series himself:
Some day, you will be old enough to start reading fairy-tales again. - C.S. Lewis