Fairy Tale and Film

Fairy Tale and Film
romantic attachment, the fact that she has no financial incentive to 
wed makes her agreement to marry a stranger somewhat inexplicable. 
Yet by far the strangest aspect of this film is the fact that, three centu-
ries after Perrault’s tale, it endorses such a reactionary view of female 
virtue. Although Bluebeard’s wife dispenses with any hope of romantic 
redemption, once she realises her husband’s murderous nature, Celia 
resigns herself to death rather than contemplate living without a man 
she scarcely knows – and who has done little other than reject her since 
their marriage. Far from representing a ‘sleeping beauty’ who wakes with 
her first ‘kiss’, she forfeits any identity of her own, serving instead as her 
husband’s loyal wife, financer – and analyst! Tatar argues that ‘Bluebeard 
films are propelled into action by a crisis of interpretation, by the need 
to get to the bottom of a life history’, and seems to explicitly reference 
Secret beyond the Door 
in adding ‘that vibrant investigative energy is 
always also tainted by and sometimes dominated or nearly defeated by 
the heroine’s submission to masochistic desires and by her dark passion 
for psychological disturbances’ (2006: 96). Celia defers to her disturbed 
husband, risking her life to help him, and our apparent explanation is 
that this is considered her wifely duty – particularly just after the war. 
Tatar’s third example of a ‘Bluebeard film’, 
Notorious
, also provides a 
deferential heroine who is similarly explained as serving the war effort. 
The daughter of a Nazi spy, Alicia (Ingrid Bergman) is coerced into mak-
ing amends by working for the US government. She marries a friend of 
her father to obtain useful information, and reveals a consignment of 
uranium in the wine cellar, yet is discovered and almost killed by her 
husband, requiring US agent (and furtive love interest) Devlin (Cary 
Grant) to save her. Despite the courage and cunning required in her 
role, she loses narrative agency, and Tatar notes that she ‘lapses into 
a completely passive role, transformed from a confident, resourceful 
Bluebeard’s wife into a sleeping beauty carried off in the arms of a fellow 
agent’ (2006: 98). By contrast, Celia, referred to as a ‘sleeping beauty’ in 
Secret beyond the Door
, wrapped in ‘cotton and wool’, is claimed by Tatar 
to attain greater agency, asserting that ‘It is Mark who will gradually 
remove these protective layers, exposing Celia to perils but also inciting 
her to awaken from delicate passivity to discover the pleasures of intel-
lectual and emotional engagement’ (2006: 100). Celia’s relationship 
with Mark is thus problematically perceived as positive, despite seeming 
to be profoundly masochistic. Tatar’s main criticism is that 
Although Bluebeard films present women as active bearers of the gaze 
and as detectives, analysts, and interpreters, they simultaneously 

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Demon Lovers and Defiant Damsels 
99
ensure that those investigative powers, analytical skills, and inter-
pretive talents are confined to the site of domesticity, restricted to 
problem solving within the context of a marriage. (2006: 107)
However, the marriages in 
Gaslight 
and 
Notorious
are sham unions 
which their heroines escape, while 
Secret beyond the Door
seems highly 
regressive in not only maintaining Celia’s subjection to her husband 
but additionally blaming women for warping Mark (the same idea that 
Rebecca
and 
Jane Eyre
fall prey to).
4
Although Tatar’s idea of ‘Bluebeard 
films’ is an interesting one, we need to be aware of the differing forms 
such films have taken since the war and note the increased part women 
have played in discovering and denouncing murderous men. In