Fairy Tale and Film

 Insomnia
(Christopher 
Nolan, 2002), who helps catch a killer when a higher ranking officer 
proves to be corrupt, as well as the female detective Marge Gunderson 
(Francis Mcdermott), leading the murder investigation in 
Fargo 
( Joel 
and Ethan Coen, 1996). These scenarios abound with neo-noir ambigu-
ity, cops aren’t as good as they seem, husbands betray their wives for 
money, and female figures are notably charged with upholding law and 
order. Continuing the legacy set by the likes of ‘Bluebeard’, ‘The Robber 
Bridegroom’ and ‘Fitcher’s Bird’, these heroines observe and unearth the 
truth about monstrous males and use their capacity as officers of the law 
to wield violence in order to despatch them. 
In other cases, where women operate outside the law, the use of vio-
lence often poses problems, although some examples present an inter-
esting case of vigilante justice. 
Jagged Edge 
(Richard Marquand, 1985) 
shows how easily a woman can be deceived when lawyer Teddy Barnes 
(Glenn Close) becomes overly intimate with her defendant, Jack 
Forrester ( Jeff Bridges): a seemingly charming figure on trial for killing 
his wife. His innocence, she realises, is a sham, having witnessed his 
murderous side after securing his acquittal, yet the wife-killer is shot 
dead as he attacks her, dispensing summary justice, outside the court 
system, with a gun.
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Like the denouement of
 In the Cut
, imperilled 
females are thus allowed to kill men who endanger them, although this 
is clearly presented as self-defence (and the narrative doesn’t trouble 
itself with questions about what happens when the bodies are found). 
The Gift
and 
What Lies Beneath
evade the issue of culpability altogether 
by making a supernatural entity responsible for despatching male killers, 
and again we are invited to think that justice has been served, with 
former victims avenging themselves, and protecting other women. 
More troubling territory is explored in examples where females aim to 
confront male violence, with evident difficulties avoiding charges of 
monstrosity. 
Dirty Weekend
(Michael Winner, 1993), adapted from the 
novel by Helen Zahavi, transforms a feminist revenge fantasy about 
a victim-turned-crusader into a vigilante movie where our heroine 
seemingly takes things too far. 
Butterfl y Kiss
(Michael Winterbottom, 
1995) presents a distasteful black comedy in which a female serial killer 

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108 
Fairy Tale and Film
attacks men whilst travelling around the north of England. Claiming 
provocation, she is quickly revealed as a psychotic who welcomes her 
eventual death. By contrast, the biopic of real-life serial killer Aileen 
Wournos, 
Monster
(Patty Jenkins, 2003), situates a woman’s killing spree 
against a horrendous life of abuse, inviting us to question the accuracy 
of the film’s title. 
Stieg Larsson’s heroine, Lisbeth Salander, the star of his three 
Millennium novels – 
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
, 
The Girl Who Played 
with Fire
and 
The Girl Who Kicked a Hornet’s Nest
– and their cinematic 
adaptations, is an interesting fantasy counterpart to Wournos. A woman 
with a troubled past, who investigates and explicitly targets male abusers 
and killers of women, Salander is a fascinating figure, a waiflike female 
avenger who is both intriguing and intimidating. Larsson was par-
tially inspired by Swedish children’s character the nine-year-old Pippi 
Longstocking, created by Astrid Lindgren (who was herself influenced 
by Hans Christian Andersen and Elsa Beskow), and Salander is presented 
as similarly ‘wayward’, yet attains heroic standing through her defiant 
attitude. Having witnessed her mother’s continued abuse at the hands 
of her vile misogynistic father, Salander torches him and is subsequently 
institutionalised, yet despite being labelled a retarded psychotic by the 
authorities she earns a formidable reputation for investigative skills that 
enable her to not only eliminate her father, but trace (and kill) various 
other male abusers. Larsson has thus created a complex modern heroine 
who confronts male violence (often with equal violence), representing 
a formidable variant of Bluebeard’s wife in not only refusing to be a vic-
tim but in taking a stand against men who hate women.
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Tatar deems 
Salander among an emerging group of female ‘tricksters’, a group distin-
guished by the fact that ‘they are not just cleverly resourceful and deter-
mined to survive. They’re also committed to social causes and political 
change’ (Tatar, 2012). Interestingly, although she links such characters 
to Scheherazade, Tatar fails to make the connection with her kindred 
figure, Bluebeard’s wife, despite their overt kinship as women who 
thwart murderous men. In fact, Bluebeard’s wife may be the ultimate 
trickster in not only failing to conform to expectations, by not perish-
ing at her husband’s hands, but escaping her perilous marriage with his 
wealth intact (money used to improve her family’s prospects). Salander 
may partly be driven by ‘social causes’ in her feminist sympathies, but 
we might note that she also uses her wits to make a good deal of money 
for herself, all too aware that survival entails self-reliance. 
While we might be tempted to think that such figures as Clarice Starling 
and Lisbeth Salander challenge the contention that it is Bluebeard, 

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