beauty and the beast

Beauty and the Beast have always been my favorite movie inpart because of the story which i still love more than anyother story, but that made me curious on the original story so i decided to read it a few years ago and i liked it but not nearly as much as the Disney version.

Now i have re-read it and in honor of the DVD release i thought that i should write a comparison between the two version of the same story.

The Original Fairy Tale
The Characters 

Lets start with the characters:
There are only two major characters in the fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast.

Beauty 

Beauty is the female lead, she is the daugther of a merchant who have lost his forturne and is forced to leave his wealthy life behind to start over as a farmer.
Her role in the story is basicly to live in the castle and turn dow the beast´s wedding proposals every night.

The Beast 

The Beast is the male lead and he is a prince that have been cursed to live as a beast by a witch for an unexplained reason.
He is described in the fairy tale as a creature with a human body but the head of a lion,a boar or another animal depending on the illustrator.