Gaston

Appearances

Beauty and the Beast

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Gaston in Beauty and the Beast.

Gaston is the local hero of a small French village at an unknown point in French history. He owns a large tavern where he and the villagers drink and talk. Inside, there is a large portrait of himself along with "trophies" from his hunt consisting mostly of animal antlers. He also says he eats five dozen eggs every morning to help make him "roughly the size of a barge" (even though he earlier mentions to Belle that he would have his latest kills roast over the fire).

He starts off in the film shooting down a waterfowl headed south with perfect accuracy (implying that he had just returned from a hunting trip) and declaring his intent to marry Belle after acknowledging from LeFou his popularity with the females in the village. He then started pursuing Belle throughout the village as she returns home after buying a book from the local bookstore. Their meeting starts off well, but Gaston's remarks about women like Belle reading drive her away from him, and she proceeds her way home, leaving Gaston a little disappointed. In addition, Gaston, after LeFou, learning Belle was going to aid her father, mocked her father, scolded LeFou for mocking Maurice (although it was implied that he mostly did that in an attempt to impress Belle rather than out of any genuine concern for Maurice).

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Gaston's "proposal".

The next day, however, Gaston organizes a wedding outside Belle's cottage in an attempt to "surprise" her, complete with various decorations, a priest, and a wedding cake. He forces his way into the cottage and attempts to strong-arm her into marrying him, again making sexist remarks about women and housewifery (he even envisions the home they would live in as a "rustic" hunting lodge, with his latest kill roasting over the fire and Belle massaging his feet while their children—six or seven strapping boys—play on the floor with their dogs). While he attempts to corner Belle, her using her wiles to keep him at bay, she manages to open the door that he has pinned her against. This causes him to lose his balance and fly headfirst into a large mud puddle (complete with cat-tail plants) in front of Belle's cottage, where we find out that a pig (Pierre) is there too. Furious and humiliated, Gaston storms off but not before vowing to make Belle his wife regardless of her refusals and throwing LeFou into the mud to boot.

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Gaston strikes a deal with Monsieur D'Arque.

Later, during a snowstorm, the villagers in the tavern, along with LeFou, sing a song about Gaston's greatness to cheer him up after being rejected and humiliated by Belle. Maurice suddenly interrupts and warns the villagers about a monstrous beast who has locked up Belle as a prisoner in the tower of his castle. Thinking he is talking nonsense, the villagers, amid Gaston ambiguously affirming that they'll "help [Maurice] out", throw him out of the tavern into the snow. Gaston then realizes that he can use Maurice's outrageous claim to his advantage. In a surprising display of animalistic cunning, he bribes the owner of the local asylum, Monsieur D'Arque, to threaten to throw Maurice into the asylum in order to pressure Belle into marrying him. While D'Arque realizes that even Maurice's nonsense about a beast and his odd inventions do not make him dangerous, he is willing to accept the bribe, mostly because he liked the despicability of the plot. Considering the management of asylums of the 18th century (the time that the film takes place), this is an extremely harsh threat. However, just before Gaston and LeFou barge into Belle and Maurice's cottage, Maurice left for the castle on his own. Gaston orders LeFou to stay outside the cottage and wait for their return.

When Belle and Maurice eventually return to the cottage, LeFou immediately informs Gaston, and he sets his plan into motion. With the villagers gathered outside the house, D'Arque has his men drag Maurice towards their carriage, while Gaston slinks out of the shadows and slyly makes Belle his offer - he will clear up the "misunderstanding" if she marries him. Horrified and disgusted, Belle refuses, as a smug Gaston allows Maurice to be dragged away. Belle, however, manages to prove her father's apparently insane claims about a beast inhabiting a huge castle in the woods to be true by using the mirror to show the Beast to Gaston and the entire village through a magic mirror that the Beast had given her. Gaston grows even more frustrated after his plan fails and is shocked that Maurice was indeed telling the truth but becomes increasingly jealous when Belle begins referring to the Beast as "kind and gentle," realizing that she prefers a "monster" over himself. When he refers to the Beast with this insult, Belle angrily retorts back that he is the real monster, which is the final straw that makes him snap. that the Beast is a threat to the village and therefore must be brought down immediately for if he couldn't have Belle then no one could. Shocked, Belle tries to stop him, but perceiving that Belle is against him, has her and Maurice locked in the basement to keep them from warning the Beast. He then steals their horse he leads a lynch mob to attack the Beast's castle and leave no one alive while declaring that he himself is to take down the Beast. Gaston bypasses the ensuing battle between the rioters and castle servants and confronts the Beast alone in the West Wing. He fires an arrow into him, tosses him out of the window onto a lower section of the roof and taunts him then