Beauty

Adult fairy tale. A scullery maid, constantly put down for her unattractive features and pervasive smell of dead fish (her main job is scaling fish in the kitchens, thus her name Coddie), unwittingly frees a fairy from an entrapment and is granted a wish. She wishes to be beautiful. The fairy (maliciously?) makes her the most beautiful woman in the world, and immediately her troubles begin. Men are driven mad with desire when they see her, they want to woo or win her, to marry or simply own and use her. She has to flee for her safety, and finds her first haven in the castle of a nearby lord. She thinks this is great- it’s such a huge step up from her previous living conditions- but the fairy visits her again and points out that her station could be greatly improved. This young lord has to hunt daily to provide for his table, his castle is in disrepair, his lands are suffering. So she moves on, grasping for more. Before long she is caught up in wars and schemings, as one powerful man after another vies for her hand (or rather, the possession of her body). Even women turn against her, driven by jealousy and anger. The only one she can really trust and work together with, turns out to be her daughter. Having a child causes all sorts of new problems- because her beauty is only in the eyes of all those who behold her. The fairy couldn’t change what she was, but only how others saw her (this is reflected in the pictures, which sometimes show her looking awkward and homely, other panels she looks graceful and lovely). So when her daughter is born, the baby takes after her mother’s true looks, and the father (she was married to a king at the time) instantly suspects an infidelity (after all, he is an attractive man), so this throws her life into chaos again. In the end, Beauty (so called by everyone now) is imprisoned in a ruin of a castle by a man gone half crazy who refuses to let anyone else see her. She’s literally walled up in one room with her daughter. But the fairy visits again, and this time Beauty has her wits about her. She’s learned in the intervening years more truths about this fairy (and fairies in general) and has a plan. . .

I thoroughly enjoyed this story. It’s quite complex and has a lot to say about appearances (of course), abuses of power, inequalities how men and women are treated, fairness, compassion, and so on. Coddie is rather shallow and spiteful at first (you can’t blame her, seeing how she lived and how cruelly other children treated her at the time) and she acts this out quite a lot once when she is suddenly beautiful, noticed by all, and has some power over others for the first time in her life. But she changes throughout the course of the novel, and by the end is able to act justly, to use her cursed gift for good. It took some doing. I liked the ending a lot. The artwork is amazing, and so expressive. Not for the squeamish or faint of heart, and definitely an adult book. There’s depictions of sexual assault, quite a bit of nudity, and plenty of violence (lots of beheadings). Brutality and unfairness abound. Which makes the few moments of compassion and kindness in the story really stand out. It’s dismaying that so many characters  end up getting killed, but it feels very blunt and realistic in that regard (to what I assume living in medieval times was like). The fairies are curious- half-bird or animal, half-human creatures. And it’s nice that some of the side characters have their own story arcs too, making this far more involved a read than I would have expected for a graphic novel under 200 pages. I did have to remember to have my reading glasses with me whenever I picked it up, there are multiple panels on most pages and some of them are quite small. It’s the kind of artwork where you want to appreciate the details, too.

I have to look for more graphic novels by this duo. Borrowed from the public library.