After reading and studying the different versions of Beauty and the Beast, some differences that stood out were that in the Norwiegian version, Beauty has to be talked into marrying the best by her father whereas in many of the other versions she volunteers to prove her love and gratitude towards her father. This leads to another difference between versions, that some of them deal with the virtue of the beauty and 'being good' vs others dealing with the beauty being forced to marry the beast and 'doing well.' Another difference that is closely tied with the others mentioned is that in Madama de Beautmont's version she values the essences of the beast over the physical appearance. Her version is very virtuous, vs many of the other versions that are complete opposite and have the Beauty being completely turned off by the physical appearance of the beast.
A couple similarities are that the transformation of the beast to prince does not happen until the morning after the wedding in basically all of the versions. Each version expresses a woman's "anxieties about marriage" but now had turned into a story focused on the beast rather than the beauty. It's almost has if the story has originally changed from the beauty in need of the beast, to the beast in need of the beauty. Another similarity is that "defiance is, in fact, a characteristic trait of many of the folkloric heroines who find themselves pestered by beasts." Basically saying that the heroine character in all of the versions deals with the same problem of defiance at one point or another throughout the story.
I think that these changes were made based on where and when the version was written. Each culture is different throughout the world from the US, to France, to Polish, to Spanish, to Russia, etc. I feel like each version is based off of what their society and culture truly values.
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