Before "Beauty and the Beast", Disney's tradition of depicting female characters as victims had already long been established. The fact that Belle was hardly depicted as a feminist in earlier versions of the film became a point of contention among the filmmakers. Despite the fact that Disney wanted "Beauty and the Beast" to resemble an old-fashioned film, the filmmakers envisioned Belle as "a woman that was ahead of her time". As the first woman in the history of Disney to write a feature-length animated film, Woolverton decided to explore Belle as an opportunity to create a female character who would ultimately be better received than Disney's previous animated heroines, specifically Ariel from "The Little Mermaid". Woolverton was aware that the task would be particularly challenging due to the previous character's popularity, but fought relentlessly to make sure that she was creating "a new kind of Disney heroine." Inspired by the women's rights movement Woolverton herself had experienced during the 1960s and 1970s, the screenwriter was determined to avoid creating another "insipid" Disney princess and decided to conceive Belle as a headstrong feminist. Woolverton strongly believed that contemporary audiences would not identify with Belle unless she was updated appropriately, and thus evolved the character into "a woman of the '90s". The screenwriter refused to watch Jean Cocteau's 1946 film adaptation of the fairy tale and chose to base Belle on American actress Katharine Hepburn's portrayal of Jo March in the 1933 film adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's book "Little Women" instead, who she felt was "a real depiction of womanhood." Similarly, story artist Brenda Chapman drew influence from Hepburn's on-screen bickering with actor Spencer Tracy during the scene in which Belle tends to the Beast's wounds.