Why Gaston is The Real Hero of Beauty and the Beast

By: Jireh Hodges

Since the launch of the Disney+ platform, I’m sure we’ve all taken the opportunity to revisit some classics from our childhood. For me, one of those classics was Beauty and the Beast. The antagonist, Gaston, has been making “Top 10 Disney Villains” lists since the film’s release in 1991. As one website put it, he’s “everyone’s favorite dude to hate.” Many critics highlight the overtly feminist construction of Belle as a strong, clever female character with aspirations beyond the borders of her small village. But upon rewatching this childhood favorite, I was shocked to discover that despite the writers’ most valiant attempts, Gaston was merely a righteous man trying to save Belle from the dangerous path of unchecked independence. The longer I thought about it, the more I realized that the moral of the story is far from feminist; in fact, the film inadvertently validates the very point it is trying to disprove.

Ostensibly, Beauty and the Beast is about how a young woman’s thirst for adventure leads her to find true love. Belle, an intelligent young woman possessed by wanderlust, sings in the film’s opening that she “just wants more than this provincial life.” Neither Gaston, the sexist brute who plans to “woo and marry Belle,” nor the townsfolk understand her need for more than the quotidian. After Belle bravely sacrifices herself for her father in the Beast’s castle, she finds humanity in the captor she once saw as a monster and lives happily ever after. However, a look beneath the surface reveals a different interpretation. Belle’s desire for “more” is not ambitious, but aimless and nonspecific. Her obsession with books is not an indication of knowledge, as she is admittedly only well-read in the genre of romance literature. As for her “heroic” behavior, she is only willing to make sacrifices when they satisfy her own selfish desires. For instance, she takes her father’s place as a prisoner out of curiosity, not love, while later refusing to marry Gaston to save her father from the mental asylum.

While Belle comes off as prideful and shortsighted, Gaston is established as a great hunter and the most desirable man in the village. After such an introduction, the film does a poor job of making him unpalatable: his only flaws are cautioning Belle against blindly accepting the tenets of romance novels and aiming to make her his bride. Belle and Gaston’s first encounter involves Gaston tossing her book into the mud and declaring that women shouldn’t be reading books, lest they get ideas in their heads. But even here, what is Gaston’s crime? Ridiculing a romance novel? What is he doing in this scene besides warning Belle about unrealistic ideals? When Belle’s obsession with romance novels leads to her indefinite captivity in the castle of a monster, we see that his warning turns out to be completely justified.

In trying to make a case for her adventurous spirit, the film ends up proving that Belle’s decisions are not only downright dangerous but ultimately unsatisfying. She demonstrates multiple times that she is not equipped to independently handle the consequences of her actions; true to Gaston’s predictions, she could not have survived without a man to save her. Further, her decisions fail to make her happy. For women, there is an inverse relationship between independence and happiness known in sociology as “the paradox of declining female happiness.” This phenomenon notes that as female independence has increased since the 1970s, women’s overall happiness has decreased. Gaston tried to convince Belle that she would be happier staying in her small town than pursuing a misleading fantasy in “the great wide somewhere.” An astute observer of the film will realize that Gaston, a man far ahead of his time, was just following the science.

Although at first glance, Beauty and the Beast seems like a feminist film, the real story is a cautionary tale about a naïve girl whose fanatic obsession with romance drives her into danger, and a confident and accomplished man’s failure to save her from herself. Contrary to what the film would have you believe, it was Belle’s commitment to fantasy that led her to embrace an abusive relationship and reject the one man that would have truly loved her. So, what can we all learn from this? Well, in the real world, if you run into a handsome guy who has it all and wants to spend his life with you, don’t trade his offer for a case of Stockholm syndrome. At the very least, don’t reject him solely in the name of female independence.