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dreams there is something more to life than the every day slog of this small town. She is always reading and they cannot understand this, making her unpopular. Belle confides in the bookseller that she loves to read because it lets her leave her dull life and escape into a utopian ideal world. A world full of thrills, adventures and romance. She is a pragmatic romantic who is also daring for a small-town girl. She wants to escape and get out on her own in the world but she lives alone with her aging father Maurice, and her first duty is to him. As with most Disney characters, the mother figure is missing from her life, but is later somewhat filled in by Mrs Potts, who becomes somewhat of a surrogate mother for all characters, not least of all the Beast. Most of all she wants to wait until the right man comes along before she gets married. Unlike most heroines she does not sit around daydreaming of getting a ring on her finger, she would rather have adventures "in the great wide somewhere" as she sings. She refuses to marry Gaston (the village hunk) because although she finds him attractive she also tells her father "he's rude and conceited...he's not for me". When Gaston tells her it's not good for a woman to read because soon she starts thinking and getting ideas, Belle quickly snaps back with "Gaston, you are positively primeval".

Belle seems to take her ambitious nature off of her father. He seems a dithering idiot on the outside, but inside he has a heart of gold and wants to do what is best for his daughter. He is an inventor and we find out that his ambition is to be a world-famous inventor. This is a reflection of postmodernism. Even though they live in a provincial town and their house is very basic he still has many tools and events things that can be used for industry. His laboratory is full of various test tubes and beakers filled with colourful liquids bubbling, sputtering and gyrating. His latest invention is a mechanical log chopper and he is convinced it will win first prize in a fair so he takes it off to the fair to be judged. Belle refers to him, rather proudly as "a genius", constantly defending him to the villagers who think of him as rather mad. He is also a small, balding, plump man who seems helpless and childlike at times, Belle seems more like a mother figure than a daughter to him and their relationship brings to mind that of Snow White's and the dwarves, indeed Maurice actually resembles the dwarves. This same relationship would

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