Although the story is clearly focused on the love between Beauty and the Beast, the inclusion of the parents makes Beauty more likable and the tale more didactic. In the Disney film, Belle's father is a kooky inventor who can never seem to catch a break but truly loves his daughter. She would do anything for him, and it is this devotion, as well as her courage to help him no matter what it cost her, that makes her so much more interesting and well-rounded than the other Disney princesses. The inclusion of a family makes Beauty most admirable, for all she asks of her father is "Bring back yourself, papa, and that is what I want the most" (Jacobs, from the Ashliman site).
In Tatar, the inclusion of family mostly served to highlight how good Belle is in comparison to her mean sisters, who had to rub onions on their eyes in order to cry when she left. I found it kind of strange how willing the father was, in the written tale, to allow her daughter to be punished instead of him. Even though she did ask for the rose, nobody asked the merchant to pluck roses from the garden of beastly royalty. Although the inclusion of family makes Belle a laudable heroine, it is also a bit anti-climactic that she is visited once a week by her family, and that the beast's castle isn't scary at all. "So they spoke together about the garden and about the house and about her father's business and about all manner of things, so that Bella lost altogether her fear of the beast. Shortly afterwards her father came to see her and found her quite happy, and he felt much less dread." The neat, bow-tie ending does not make for a very interesting tale.
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I think that the point about having parents in the story makes Belle more relatable is a valid point. Especially for the movie version, it makes her seem more real to children as appose to a "Disney Princess." She is still portrayed as heroine in the story but she is not so far out of the ordinary that she is still a plausible person.
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