Belle is a young woman living in a small unnamed village in France. She first appears at the beginning of the film (after the prologue) as she emerges out of the cottage she lives in and heads to a bookstore in the village, aware that the (ignorant) villagers are noting her peculiarity and how she doesn't fit in with the rest of them due to her love of books and withdrawn nature. At the bookstore, Belle returns a book she has borrowed and takes the one she perceives as her favorite. While heading back home to the cottage, she is pursued by a conceited, arrogant, muscle-headed hunter named Gaston, who eventually stands in her way. Gaston takes the book from Belle, drops it into a mud puddle, and tells Belle to get herself out of reading and pay more attention to "more important things" like him. Just then, an explosion comes out from the basement of her cottage, prompting Belle to run back home.
Descending into the basement and coughing her way in, Belle finds her father, Maurice, who is about to give up on his latest contraption that he has built. Belle faithfully tells her father how she has believed he will get the machine working, win first prize at the fair, and become a world-famous inventor. Inspired by his daughter's beliefs, Maurice reworks on the machine, and once he thinks he has done fixing it, he gives it a test run. To both Belle and her father's surprise, the test run goes successfully. Belle waves goodbye to her father and wishes him luck as Maurice, riding on their horse Phillipe, goes off to the fair with the invention.
The following day, Belle hears a knock on a door. She uses the periscope, only to find that Gaston was at the porch, much to her dismay, but nevertheless lets him in. Gaston reveals to Belle that he wants to make her his little wife and the mother of seven handsome little boys; Belle is disgusted by this idea and slips away from Gaston, who continues to approach her. As Gaston has Belle cornered at the door and is about to plant a kiss on her, Belle opens the door, causing Gaston to fall into a large mud pond outside. After a furious and humiliated Gaston leaves the cottage, Belle goes outside to feed the chickens, shocked in disbelief at how Gaston has asked her to marry him. Not wanting to be the wife of that boorish, brainless man, she runs off into an open field, where Phillipe finds her. Seeing the horse without her father, Belle pleads the horse to take her to where her father is.
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"Take me, instead."
Belle rides to a mysterious castle on Phillipe in possibility of finding her father. She finds her father locked away in a dungeon, and begs the dungeon master to free him, offering her own freedom in exchange for her father's. On the condition that she stay with him forever, the dungeon master, a hideous beast, frees Maurice from the dungeon, however he is deeply moved by her beauty and affection towards her father, and can't help but feel touched by her boldness and bravery.
Belle is later taken on a tour by the head butler, Cogsworth and his assistant Lumiere. They decide to show Belle their library but Belle's curiosity of the West Wing makes her go into the forbidden room. There she sees a torn picture of a young man and a glowing rose. She takes the glass off the rose and tries to touch it. However, the Beast arrives and ruthlessly scolds Belle out of fury. Terrified and sad, Belle escapes the castle and runs away. There, she and her horse encounter a pack of frightening and savage wolves, but the Beast arrives and rescues her. And this is where their bond begins.
As a token of his appreciation, the Beast gives Belle his enormous library and Belle helps him to act more like a gentleman. The Beast falls deeply in love with her, but fears that she will never love him in return. When he is to reveal his feelings for her, Belle is soon granted right to leave on behalf of her sickly father, who tries to rescue her. But after denying Gaston her hand in marriage again and exposing the Beast's existence to save her father from being taken to the insane asylum by a mob of villagers orchestrated by Gaston, the mob attacks the Beast out of fear of the village's safety (and Gaston out of jealousy for the implication that Belle loves the Beast more than himself).
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Belle breaks the curse, thus returning the Beast to his true, human form.
After a grueling tussle between Gaston and the Beast, the Beast is fatally stabbed. Gaston falls to his death when he loses his balance. Belle is able to lay the Beast on a balcony, and he dies in her arms. Belle sobs over the Beast's dead body and confesses her love for him just as the last petal falls from the enchanted rose. As Belle continues to sob over losing her love, the Beast's body begin to float in the air and is enshrouded in a fog. Belle watches mysteriously as the Beast's fore-paws, hind-paws, and furry head respectively transform back into hands, feet, and head of a Prince. The Prince then turns to Belle, who initially looks at him skeptically, but then she recognizes him by his blue eyes. The Prince and Belle share their first kiss, a kiss of true love, which subsequently breaks the additional spell the Enchantress had placed on the castle: the dark, scary castle is restored into its original, shining state, and all the Prince's servants, including Lumiere, Cogsworth, and Mrs. Potts, are transformed back into human. Belle and the Prince then dance in the ballroom with her father and his servants watching happily.
Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas
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Belle in Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas.
A midquel taking place during the winter segment of Beauty and the Beast, this is the story of Belle's attempt to bring back to the castle the one ceremony the Beast hates most: Christmas. At the point the movie is supposed to take place, Belle still considered herself a prisoner in the castle, and was not truly friends with the Beast at that point, though she had begun to accept him. This takes not too long after she was saved from the wolves, she had started to warm up to the Beast a little.
A pipe organ called Forte is determined to do anything necessary to keep the spell from breaking, because he thinks that if the curse is broken, then the Beast won't need his depressing music anymore. Thus, he proves to be a real obstacle for Belle's plan.
After several attempts to get the Beast to agree, the Beast finally approves of the idea and allows Belle to prepare for Christmas, though he still bears a grudge, for Christmas is the day the Enchantress cast the spell on him and the castle residents.
With advice from Forte, Belle goes out into the woods to get a suitable tree for Christmas, but she falls into thin ice and almost drowns. Fortunately, she is rescued by Beast, who is enraged at her because Forte told him that she was trying to desert him again.
Belle is then thrown into the dungeon to rot, but the Beast then finds a book that Belle had written for him earlier in the West Wing, and decides to set Belle free and they both continue to prepare for Christmas. But Forte doesn't give up there, even going as far as to attempt to bring the whole castle down with Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 in order to prevent the spell from ending, as it can't if everyone is dead. Fortunately, the Beast stops him in time by crashing his keyboard to pieces. Sadly, the Beast mourns the loss of his servant and Belle comforts him.
The viewers are soon taken back the actual Christmas taking place, and Belle is presented with a gift from her husband: a rose.