The rose is one of the oldest, most beloved, most frequently used icons for the feminine principle. On the symbolic level, when Beauty said, “Bring me back a rose, Father,” in Beauty and the Beast, she was saying, "Bring me back some Mama."
On an ordinary, everyday, practical level, we can see why someone like Beauty could use an animal husband as well as some Mama. She has a bad habit of being too good.
Her sisters were acting vilely in the story, of course. Begging their father to bring back clothes and jewels and riches. But couldn’t Beauty have asked for something personal? A spool of thread? A book? New strings for her lute? No. Not this girl. She denies—even to herself—that she wants anything at all—even the rose—and it is this denial that brings on the problems in the story, not the Beast. Beauty’s denial of her own needs, her refusal to even try to figure out what she wants, brings a monster down on her whole family. In real life, a girl like this would be so passive-aggressive there’d be no living with her.
Selfishness is a basic human trait. We’re each born selfish as sea gull chicks {Mine! Mine!} ready to knock our siblings right out of the nest for any extra morsel. Selfishness is instinctual. It's a form of self-preservation, an archetypal way of acting, as demonstrated by Beauty’s sisters in Beauty and the Beast. Selfishness is the raw will to thrive in a hostile world. Thus no human being who is still breathing can be totally unselfish. We can only face up to the fact that we all have an inborn tendency to be selfish, and then try to manage that tendency without harming others.
As Thomas Moore says in Care of the Soul, there is simply no curing certain things in ourselves. All we can do is care for those things. But to take care of something, you have to—at the very least—be able to admit that it exists. Pretending not to be selfish does not equal ‘taking care of’ one’s selfishness. Pretending not to be selfish equals ignoring one’s selfishness.
Besides, if we don’t know what we want and how to go about getting it, why should anyone else know? Should other people have to read our minds so we can get whatever we want without having to come out and ask for it? That can get real nasty in real life. Not being able to just come out and say what you want—or what you mean, or what you feel—is the leading cause of resentment and divorce on the planet Earth.
But… maybe we should give a girl like Beauty the benefit of the doubt. She seems so nice. Maybe she really doesn’t want a single thing for herself. Maybe she has completely conquered all desire, like a bodhisattva.
Riiii-ght. Then she should’ve said so, "I don't want a thing, Father." Instead, she just made up a rose story to keep her sisters from getting mad at her.
Saying something you don’t mean to keep someone else happy merely allows their bad attitudes to determine your actions.
Going along with something you don’t agree with just to be polite is not civil—it’s servile. And it’s also downright dangerous, as we’re finding out every day.
Funny… how not being aware of one's own selfishness and not being able to say what you want go together so well.
