I was watching one of Babity Kate's video essays on what she termed the Belle problem about how Belle from Beauty and the Beast is not as cohesive of a character as some of the other Disney princesses. One of her main points was that Belle's I Want song is incredibly vague and what concrete things she does say she wants in it, are not the things she actually gets at the end of the movie, and therefore her ending is less happy than some of the other princesses who go everything they wanted and more. I thought the video was very well argued and brought up some interesting points, but respectfully, I'm going to have to disagree. Bear with me for a second because I am going to go off on something that is going to seem like a bit of a tangent.
In some ways, Belle reminds me a lot of Jo March from Little Women. They are both ride or die for their family and they feel awkward and like they don't fit with the people around them and are uncomfortable with the role that society expects them to play. They both have dreams that feel grandiose but somewhat nebulous. When Meg and Amy tell us their dreams in the chapter Castles in the Air, they say them directly. Meg wants to be rich and rule over a grand house. Amy wants to go to Rome and be the best artist in the world. But while Jo is closely associated with wanting to be a famous writer, what she actually says is, "I want to do something splendid before I go into my castle,—something heroic, or wonderful,—that won't be forgotten after I'm dead. I don't know what, but I'm on the watch for it, and mean to astonish you all, some day. I think I shall write books, and get rich and famous." Her first thought is not to writing a great book but the idea that writing a great book can be the heroic or wonderful thing that creates a legacy for her after she is gone.
Another thing that I think connects Jo and Belle is that they have a deep well of loneliness in them, and their happy ending involves finding the thing that fills it. For Jo, this is marriage to a man who shares her interests and has strengths that help her overcome her weaknesses, as well as a school where she can help teach and raise boys as she did with Teddy Laurence previously. She's surrounded by love and laughter and understanding. For Belle, this is marriage to a man who understands what it is to feel lonely and ostracized, who may not always know exactly what she is thinking but who cares deeply about learning what those things are and helping her get the things that are important to her like her father's well-being and continued learning, as a castle full of people who love and appreciate her and don't just see her as that weird girl who could be a real catch if she'd just give up those silly notions of hers.
The important aspects of what Belle wanted were the love and acceptance, and while I do think that she absolutely got her big adventure because come on, the whole movie could easily be turned into a gothic novel where she's the heroine, and she certainly got out of her small town, I think the exact details of the rest of what she wanted were never the important parts, and that's why they were so nebulous.
At the end of Little Women, you have the following exchange between Jo and Amy that I have very slightly paraphrased:
"I don't think I ever ought to call myself 'Unlucky Jo' again, when my greatest wish has been so beautifully granted."
"And yet your life is very different from the one you pictured so long ago."
"The life I wanted then seems selfish, lonely and cold to me now. I haven't given up the hope that I may write a good book yet, but I can wait, and I'm sure it will be all the better for such experiences and illustrations as these."
Jo's life looks very different from the exact details of what she said she wanted, but it fulfills the most important parts of the brief. She's no longer deeply lonely like she was after Beth's death, and she is creating a legacy for herself in the boys whose lives she influences. (She also gets to write her famous novel in the later book Jo's Boys, which I only mention to silence the haters and not because I think that Jo's ending wouldn't have still been a happy one even if no more books followed it.) But while it looks different, Jo also explicitly says that what her life looks like makes her happier than the things she dreamed for herself as a child, which now look shallow in comparison.
Beauty and the Beast doesn't come right out and say it, but I think this is true for Belle as well. She's found a place and a community where she's happy. She doesn't need to go out and search for that anymore.
And I think that's really beautiful. I love that dreams can change and we can still find happiness and fulfillment in those new dreams. Because if we're going to be honest, how many of us really get the things we wanted when we were little? The world would have a lot more fairy princesses and astronauts and pro baseball players in it if we did. But maybe, just maybe, we don't have to get our first dream or even or second or third or fifth, and we can still live a life we love that brings us a sense of fulfillment. Maybe our vague wants can crystalize into beautiful sculptures we never expected.