A Study Guide for Robin McKinley's "Beauty"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Robin McKinley's "Beauty," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jun 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535819251

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Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast

Robin Mckinley

1978

Introduction

Robin McKinley's Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast (1978) is a novel-length expansion of the classic fairy tale that was first written in France in the eighteenth century. The story concerns Beauty, a young woman who must go to live with a monstrous creature in his castle to keep the creature from killing her father. As Beauty spends time with the Beast, she realizes that he is not as monstrous as she first believed, and begins to develop feelings for him.

Beauty was McKinley's first novel, though it contains certain characteristics that are trademarks of much of her later work. First, it is a retelling of a classic fairy tale; McKinley has returned to fairy tales several times over the years, creating new visions of familiar stories such as Robin Hood and Sleeping Beauty. Second, the novel contains a heroine who is smart, honorable, and takes charge of her own fate—something seldom seen in the traditional tales or in other retellings, but common in nearly every McKinley story since.

Author Biography

McKinley was born Jennifer Carolyn Robin Turrell McKinley on November 16, 1952, in Warren, Ohio. An only child with a father in the navy and a mother who was a teacher, McKinley moved often while young, but showed a tremendous interest in books. Eventually McKinley attended preparatory school and college in Maine, and graduated summa cum laude in 1975. Following her college years, McKinley began working on a story set in a world called Damar. However, the world continued to expand in her imagination until she realized it could only resolve itself in more than one tale. At around the same time, McKinley watched a made-for-television adaptation of the tale of Beauty and the Beast starring George C. Scott. She was so displeased with the version that she set about writing her own novel-length retelling of the tale. Beauty became McKinley's first published novel in 1978, when the author was twenty-six years old.

After her success with Beauty and a collection of additional retold fairy tales titled The Door in the Hedge (1981), McKinley returned to the world of Damar and produced her second novel, The Blue Sword (1982), which was selected as a Newbery Honor book. The Hero and the Crown (1985), another Damar novel and the prequel to The Blue Sword, won the Newbery Medal. She has also written several short stories set in the world of Damar, some of which were collected in A Knot in the Grain and Other Stories (1996).

McKinley has also returned to the world of fairy tales, with novel-length retellings of several popular tales and legends. The Outlaws