Bonjour :) This is just a quick story that popped into my head about Belle's childhood - something that always fascinated me in my own childhood. Beauty and the Beast is my favourite film of all time - I've loved it since I was four years old - and Belle one of my earliest role models, so writing this story was quite a personal experience. Not bad, just personal. With that being said I don't think it turned out especially well but hey - I'll let you be the judge of that.
As usual, I own none of the characters, songs or storylines of the original Beauty and the Beast. Disney owns all.
:)
Belle, everyone remembered, was a quiet child. It was a real task even to get her to speak her name. It wasn't that she was incapable of speech - far from it. In fact, when her infant burblings first started to sound like recognisable words, her parents agreed that she was very young to have started learning to talk. Villagers would often comment on how odd it was to hear such a young child speaking already.
"She'll be a clever one!" they all said. And her parents, bursting with pride, were inclined to agree. As well as being able to speak from a young age, Belle mastered reading early too. She and her mother would sit there, a book open in front of them, and read together.
It began with Belle's mother reading the story and Belle listening, her hazel eyes wide with curiosity and a smile beaming across her little face. Then, once Belle was around 18 months and could talk, she would occasionally repeat certain words in the story. "Duck!" she'd say, pointing at the picture on the page. "Foggie! Pincess!" She would then look up, eagerly seeking approval from her mother and father. And she always found it.
Then, once she could form sentences, Belle's parents didn't even find they needed to read the stories to her. Belle had them all memorised. The first one she could tell from memory was The Princess and the Pea, which was her favourite for a long time. There was one line the princess said, after she'd woken up and told the queen about her night sleeping on the pea - "I was black and blue all over!" - and Belle loved the prosody of that line, loved mastering the plosive "bl" and the fricative "ck" sounds. Once she was able to stop pronouncing the words as "gack" and "goo" and was actually able to say "black" and "blue", there was no stopping her. Her parents doubted she ever knew what it meant - she would just say that line "I was black and blue all over!" with a real gusto every time she recounted the story. People forgot just how verbal Belle was capable of being at that young age.
Belle loved to talk to people, and they loved to talk to her. Not only was she a fascinating little thing, talking to people of all ages as seriously and respectfully as she might address an adult, but because her name fit her personality so perfectly. Belle by name, Belle by nature. She was an adorable child, with thick brown hair and big, inquisitive, expressive hazel eyes. Everyone who saw her fell in love with her instantly. And yet, despite her obvious prettiness, Belle always had an air of the scruffy around her too. There were always flyaway strands of her hair that fell in her eyes; one of her socks would always be pulled up more than the other; her shoes were always scuffed and covered with pale, dusty dirt. Despite her parents' efforts to tidy her up a bit, Belle didn't seem to care. Her appearance was very low on her list of priorities. At the top of that list? Reading, of course.
As she grew older, Belle began to read alone. For a child who could be so friendly and talkative, when she was alone with a book she was dead to the world. She became entirely wrapped up in the story she read - even to the point where she couldn't even hear people talking to her. The people and the world in the story felt just as real, if not more so, than the world around her. Which led to Belle beginning to choose the story world over the real one. She had friends, of course - the children of the butcher, the greengrocer, the baker, who ran around the village with her - but once she began to choose books over them, they grew bored and left her behind, one by one. Belle missed them, but not so much as to give up the worlds she loved.
And that was just the start of her retreat into silence.
When Belle was seven, her mother became suddenly very ill. She was feverish and often vomited, and never seemed to get better. There seemed was nothing the doctor could do. So Belle's mother would just take to her room and stay there, all day, as her husband looked after her. Belle, terrified to see her mother so broken up, never went into that room. She would often be left alone in the cottage for hours, talking to nobody and trying to stop the worrying by escaping into her books. It was princesses, fairies and mermaids that kept her company now. They would talk to her, sit with her, entertain her. But Belle would not talk back. She would simply read, or walk around the grounds of the cottage, or cry. And barely utter a single word.
Belle oughtn't to have been surprised when her mother finally did die. It had been coming for a while, and honestly her mother had gone to a better place. She wouldn't be in any pain any more. But a seven-year-old couldn't possibly understand that. All she knew was that her mother was never coming back, and it hit her hard. She still had her father, but he was barely holding up better than her. There was a chasm in her life now that could never be filled again - and Belle had no words. She didn't want to speak, to make it real. To address the fact that her mother was gone.
So she stayed quiet.
For many years, Belle didn't talk even to her father. In all honesty, once the fear had subsided, she didn't see the point. As she grew older, she had become accustomed to the fact that nobody listened to what a woman had to say anyway. Once she had passed the point of being a cute child, and might actually have some opinions to impart, people turned away. Besides, she preferred to read, and that didn't require talking, did it? So she decided not to. Some people, Belle thought, decide not to eat meat, or not to follow fashion trends. I decide not to speak. Is that not exactly the same principle? She heard them start to whisper things like "odd" and "strange" in conjunction with her - why did some people think that just because she didn't talk, she also could not hear? - but she didn't let it bother her.
Then, when she was around fourteen, she decided to speak again. There was no definable reason for this - nothing had triggered it or anything - she just decided that now was the right time to talk. Her father never questioned it - in all honesty he was just glad he could communicate with her again - and she appreciated that. It didn't stop the comments though - but she supposed she'd have to put up with them all her life, or at least until she could move away to a place that was more accepting of her, and every day wouldn't be just the same as the last.
She couldn't wait for that day when she'd find her own adventure. Then she could be as loud or as quiet as she wanted, and nobody would care.
Look there she goes, that girl is strange but special,
A most peculiar mademoiselle!
It's a pity and a sin, she doesn't quite fit in,
But she really is a funny girl!
A beauty, but a funny girl!
She really is a funny girl, that Belle!