Belle's Cottage is a house that appears in Disney's 1991 animated feature film Beauty and the Beast. It was the residence of Belle, her father Maurice, and their horse Philippe until they moved into Beast's Castle. Directly behind the house is a valley with a winding riverbed. It is also a short walk away from the village.
The farmhouse in the 1989 screenplay, like in the original tale, would have been the recent home of Belle, Maurice, Aunt Marguerite, and Clarice, after the family were forced to move out of their mansion due to Maurice's ships being lost at sea. In addition, the family would also have nearly lost the farm because Maurice was unable to pay his taxes, resulting in Maurice trying to sell his late wife's music box, and Marguerite trying to marry Belle off to Marquis Gaston.
In the first draft of Linda Woolverton's screenplay for the film, it largely had the same role as in the final release, although the villagers paid a brief visit shortly after Maurice's first on-screen accident from working on his latest project and mocked him for the failure, implying this was not his first accident. During the song "Human Again", as well as various scenes leading up to Belle's discovery that Maurice was nearly dying, it was shown that the farmhouse was in severe disrepair, obviously because Maurice was obsessing with trying to find Beast's Castle, only to fail time and again. Maurice also used the cellar in the climax to help fix the Music Box after the latter injured himself trying to break Maurice and Belle out.
Places of Interest[]
Main Foyer - The room first seen when the house is entered. It also contains the house's primary living area, dining room, and Belle's bookcase. The front door has a contraption used to view other people outside with what resembled binoculars, similar to peepholes.
Maurice's Bedroom - This is where Maurice sleeps, and is also where Belle nurtures Maurice after returning him home from the forest. It is only seen during the film's scene where Maurice regains consciousness, and is glad to see Belle again.
Cellar - A small partition beneath the house which Maurice uses as a laboratory to construct his numerous inventions. It is also where Gaston locks Belle and her father to prevent them from warning the Beast of the angry mob's arrival until Chip frees them using Maurice's Machine.
In the first issue's second storyline Bothered, taking place a few years before the original film, although the cottage was never actually seen, the "ship" that the boys playing pirates used for their game (where they locked Belle into a cellar as her "galley prisoner") and was later rescued from by Maurice and Pierre, bore some resemblance to the cottage albeit in ruin, implying that Belle and Maurice may have eventually moved into the cottage and presumably fixed it up some time after the comic (as the comic depicted her and her father living closer to the village square instead of the cottage).
Belle's cottage serves as the entrance and queue for Enchanted Tales with Belle at Walt Disney World. The New Fantasyland version of the cottage expands on the interior of the house, including a growth post for Belle's height and growth since birth, a portrait of Belle's mother, and a book read to her by her mom while she was still alive. This book was Sleeping Beauty, and it was also confirmed via the bitten book to be the same book that Belle had been reading in her opening song (of which the book's story was implied but never directly stated).
