GAD, IRENE, (New York). ‘“Beauty and the Beast” and “The Wonderful Sheep”. The couple in fairy tales: when father's daughter meets mother's son.’ In Psyche's Stories, ed. M. Stein and L. Corbett. Wilmette, Illinois,  Chiron Publications, 1991.

The author looks at two fairy tales which cover very similar themes but with different endings, and uses the differences to focus, not, as is usual, on the hero or heroine, but on the couple, and especially on the differing patterns of interaction evidenced by the two stories. In each tale, the hero, in animal form, lives secluded in a forest, and befriends the heroine who has been, in effect, sacrificed by her father. The first story, ‘The wonderful sheep’, has the heroine returning home where she becomes again enthralled by her father and forgets her lover who subsequently dies. In ‘Beauty and the beast’, the heroine eventually remembers her lover and returns to him when he is on the point of death. Her kiss restores him to his original form, and the couple live in happiness.

The daughter, still tied to her father, finds herself choosing, a weak partner, thus splitting the masculine image into puer and senex. This enables her to maintain an idealization of her father while she looks for the mother she never had in her partner. In ‘The wonderful sheep’, the sheep's parents are not mentioned, but only a witch, who attempts to seduce him and, when he refuses, changes him into a sheep. The author suggests that the sheep/son is unable to free himself from the grip of the negative mother archetype. Thus he remains in the form of an animal, representing someone who is arrested in his development and so is unable to reach his full manhood. The shadow of both the sheep and the heroine are projected on to other characters in the tale, and because they are too narcissistically wounded to acknowledge and assimilate their shadows either as individuals or as a couple, they are doomed. The outcome of this story is contrasted with that of ‘Beauty and the beast’ in which Beauty feels such love for the beast that she kisses him in spite of his ugly form, thus embracing shadow elements in herself and in the dyad, and thereby transforming the beast into a handsome prince.

These two tal