Fairy Tale and Film

4
Dangerous Liaisons: Demon Lovers 
and Defiant Damsels 
1. Women who defy serial killers appear in various narratives throughout 
history, serving as a popular theme in the medieval ballad. In ‘Lady Isabel 
and the Elf-Knight’ the heroine takes advantage of her attacker’s post-coital 
slumber to kill him with his own dagger in an arresting depiction of female 
stealth (Purkiss, 2000: 73–4). A number of fairy tales similarly champion 
females who resist unwelcome suitors, including those written by female 
contemporaries of Perrault. In ‘The Subtle Princess’, written by his cousin, 
Marie-Jeanne L’Heritier (in advance of ‘Bluebeard’), the heroine kills the man 
responsible for shaming her sisters and threatening her life, although the 
message is somewhat undermined by her attraction to his brother, forgiving 
him for also seeking to kill her (in a pledge to his dying sibling!). Given her 
contrasting antipathy towards her sisters, whom she sends to the workhouse 
after their disgrace, one could argue that ‘Bluebeard’ is far more progressive 
in endorsing female solidarity. 
2. Georges Melies’ charming cinematic version of ‘Bluebeard’ adds this magical 
revival to the finale, with all the murdered brides revived and happily paired 
off at the end!
3. In the famous frame tale to the 
Arabian Nights
, Scheherazade delays her exe-
cution and assuages her husband’s murderous distrust of women over three 

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184 
Notes to Chapter 4
years of storytelling, yet as Marina Warner notes, one of her tales includes an 
alternative version of the frame tale, in which the heroine, Bilqis, takes on 
another virgin-killing king and murders him. A jinniya, with supernatural 
powers, she provides an interesting contrast to the romantic redemption 
offered in the collection’s frame tale, and serves as a precursor to the many 
female avenger figures that similarly challenge male violence (2012: 5). 
4. In Daphne du Maurier’s 
Rebecca 
(1938), intimations of the first Mrs de 
Winter’s sexual deviancy are seemingly just cause for her husband’s enmity, 
and subsequent distrust of women, her dominance over him such that even 
her memory consumes him. The theme is echoed by Charlotte Brontë’s 
Jane 
Eyre
(1847) in which the first Mrs Rochester is similarly blamed for unfairly 
chaining her husband to a lunatic and thus denying his freedom – although 
it is she who is truly confined by him. Perhaps the most perplexing aspect of 
both stories is that they were written by women yet situate ‘virtuous’ female 
characters in opposition to unsympathetically presented rivals. For further 
discussion of this theme, and the influence of fairy tales such as ‘Snow 
White’, see Gilbert and Gubar (2000).
5. Although Clover contends that the Final Girl is intended as a primary means 
of male identification (thereby explaining her often androgynous name and 
lack of sexual conduct), this is a claim that I contest, affirming this character 
as a powerful source of female identification and a vital means of stating 
progressive claims for these films. For further elaboration on this point see 
Short (2006: ch. 1). 
6. A variation in horror that draws upon ‘Bluebeard’ is 
Skeleton Key 
(Iain Softley, 
2005), in which a brother and sister serve as the villains, using voodoo to 
possess people’s bodies and thus prolong their life. The forbidden chamber, 
in this case, is the attic of their New Orleans home where the bodies are kept, 
and the female investigator is a carer, hired by the couple, who succumbs to 
the same fate. Another interesting twist on the tale is achieved in