5 Reasons Why Belle is the Best Disney Princess
Beauty and the Beast is a masterpiece, and Belle is my favorite Disney Princess. Allow me to explain why I’d let her tame my beast any day of the week.
1. She’s not a princess.
Belle lives with her father on the outskirts of a poor, quiet, provincial town in France. The house is quirky and jumbled. We wonder if Maurice (Belle’s inventor father) built it himself, considering the various contraptions and inventions that proliferate on the property. They live aloof, away from the rest of the townspeople, and Belle is without a mother figure. It’s unclear what happened to Belle’s mother; her lack of presence is entirely unaddressed in the film. No matter how beautiful Belle is, the film makes it clear that she is merely a peasant girl with her head in the clouds.
Hot damn!
The only other Disney Princesses that weren’t born from wealthy families are Mulan and Tiana. However, Tiana’s film is called The Princess and the Frog, so that…uh…complicates things a bit. I think we should just stick with Mulan and Belle as the only two young women not actually born from aristocratic families or deemed princesses. But Mulan comes from some semblance of prestige; her father is a respected military hero. Belle doesn’t even have that!
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