Fairy Tale and Film

part in disobeying her husband’s command, and the fact that she fails 
to save herself, relying instead on male protectors. 
A young woman marries a wealthy man of uncertain reputation, who 
tests her by taking his leave soon after their marriage, giving her a set 
of keys to all the rooms in his household, yet barring her from entering 
a ‘forbidden chamber’. Her curiosity overcomes her and she discovers 
several female corpses within, dropping the key in horror at the sight. 
The bloodstain refuses to come off, however, a feature generally read as 
signalling her loss of virtue, and her husband, realising her disobedience, 
demands her death as penalty. She stalls by asking to say her prayers 
first, and her sister Anne (who happens to be staying with the newly-
weds) urgently signals to their brothers, who arrive just in time to cut 
Bluebeard down. In a curious after-note, we are informed that his riches 
were used to advance the family’s fortunes and that his widow managed 
to put the ordeal behind her and marry again (a finale we might read 
as a tacked-on happy ending designed to sustain the virtues of mar-
riage, while also attributing somewhat sinister motives to the original 
wedding). Given the two 
moralités
Perrault appends to the story – the 
first condemning female curiosity, and the second assuring readers that 
such men no longer exist – it is easy to misinterpret his intentions. 

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94 
Fairy Tale and Film
Is he making light of a grisly crime? And how seriously are we sup-
posed to take his accusation of the wife? Marina Warner points out that 
‘Bluebeard’ was published alongside ‘Griselda’ and ‘Donkeyskin’, two 
other tales which dramatise the abuse of male privilege (1995: 244), and 
affirms Perrault’s affiliation with female fairy tale writers of the period, 
asserting that ‘however frivolous his tone, he took the part of daughters 
against the arranged marriages of the day ... [and] issued an open argu-
ment, by means of his tales, for the rights of women to administer their 
own wealth’ (266). This is precisely what Bluebeard’s wife manages to 
achieve, yet the horror she has to endure, and the suggestion of culpa-
bility on her part, have led many critics to accuse Perrault of misogyny.
The tale bears some kinship with a number of related folk tales, includ-
ing two collected by the brothers Grimm, ‘The Robber Bridegroom’ (ATU 
955) – in which a young woman discovers her betrothed’s murderous 
nature and denounces him on their wedding day – and ‘Fitcher’s Bird’ 
(aka ‘Fowler’s Fowl’) – in which the youngest of three sisters takes up 
residence with a wizard and discovers her siblings’ remains, yet succeeds 
in magically reviving and sending them home, ultimately disguising 
herself as a bird to enable her own escape. These tales provide fantasti-
cal assistance to their heroines (a talking bird warns the fiancée in ‘The 
Robber Bridegroom’ while the younger sister in ‘Fitcher’s Bird’ mysteri-
ously contrives to return the dead to life).
2
In ‘Bluebeard’ the wife simply 
relies on her wits and a level of good fortune – her brothers being due 
to visit on the very day her husband decides to kill her. Just why he is 
a murderous fiend is never explained, prompting considerable debate 
about his motives, yet the narrative bears more than a passing resem-
blance to the frame tale of the
 Arabian Nights
, in which we are told that 
King Sharihyar adopts a homicidal policy towards his wives (murdering 
each one the morning after their wedding) due to his first wife’s infidel-
ity and his refusal to be betrayed again.
3
The same impulses are suggested 
in Perrault’s ‘Bluebeard’. Offering his new wife the key to a room that he 
then forbids access to is clearly a test of her trustworthiness – a test her 
predecessors have seemingly failed – and many have inferred that the 
bloodstained key symbolically suggests sexual betrayal, although this 
reading contorts our notion of blame in unnerving ways. Whether or 
not she is explicitly accused of infidelity, Perrault seems to place greater 
culpability on the bride’s inquisitive nature than the serial killer she has 
just married – that is, if we take his denunciation of female curiosity seri-
ously. Ultimately, he ensures that Bluebeard is punished for his crimes 
and grants the wife liberty and wealth, an ending that seems to affirm 
where his sympathies truly lie. Given the extreme gruesomeness of the 

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