Fairy Tale and Film

Demon Lovers and Defiant Damsels 
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Whether he is motivated by avarice, anger, insecurity, impotence or 
simply a psychotic desire to shed blood, the tale remains discomfiting 
because identifying a likely bluebeard seems impossible. 
In the Cut 
pre-
sents two detectives with more in common than their matching ‘3 of 
spades’ tattoos: they are both divorcees who seem bitter about their exes 
and are happy to exchange demeaning comments about women. What 
makes one man into a killer takes us all the way back to ‘Bluebeard’ in 
suggesting a combination of impotence, anger and arrogance. Having 
had his gun taken from him by the police force when he threatened his 
adulterous wife, Rodriguez widens his target and choice of weapons, 
dismembering the bodies of his chosen ‘brides’ and scattering them 
around Manhattan in a maniacal rage until Frannie confounds his 
expectations (as well as our own) by using her acquired gun to put a 
stop to his crimes.
11
Like the heroine in ‘Bluebeard’, she is tested yet also 
transformed by her experience, forced to jettison romantic fantasies to 
defend herself, avenge her sister and prove any doubters wrong. 
Speculating on the likely origins of Perrault’s tale, Zipes has contended 
that he created a misogynist male as a swipe against fellow critic Nicolas 
Boileau, additionally suggesting that impotence may serve as a trigger 
for his enmity (2006: 159–62),
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yet he also cites Philip Lewis in arguing 
that the character’s murderousness stems simply from aiming to assert 
masculine superiority at all cost. In answer to the question of what wife 
no. 1 could possibly have seen to anger her husband so much, Zipes 
agrees with Lewis that it is precisely because there is ‘nothing in the 
room’ that triggers his rage: ‘Bluebeard kills her because she realizes there 
is nothing to justify male domination’ (2011: 159).
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Nonetheless, Zipes 
evidently regards Bluebeard’s last wife somewhat negatively, seeing her 
as a schemer who married for money, and who ensures her family profit 
handsomely from Bluebeard’s death. As he argues, ‘both Bluebeard and 
his wife are calculating individuals. Neither marries for love but for 
social or financial advancement ... There is no magic in this tale, and 
Bluebeard becomes the victim of his own miscalculations’ (2011: 157). 
The contended absence of magic ignores the key that remains indelibly 
stained, alerting Bluebeard to his wife’s alleged transgression, yet we also 
need to question the use of the term ‘victim’ here. Even if the wife’s 
motives are financial, her husband remains a serial killer and regarding 
him as a victim thus seems odd indeed. Equally contentiously, some have 
argued that Bluebeard’s wife, by dint of her virtue, lacks the same nar-
rative interest of her husband. As Tatar comments, ‘while the wife may 
appear to occupy the “moral center” of Bluebeard tales, she is in some 
ways the story’s protagonist only by default’. Citing Lydia Millet’s claim 

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Fairy Tale and Film
(1998: 243) that ‘any interest we have in the story lies with its villain’ 
(2006: 48), Tatar further contends that what arouses our curiosity, ulti-
mately, is ‘both the character who has something to hide and the secret 
he is harbouring’:
The villain and his bloodthirsty deeds, in other words, have a narrative 
verve that exceeds that of the prospective victim and her act of defi-
ance. Folktales never let us see inside the minds of their protagonists, 
but given the choice to read the mind of either Bluebeard or his wife, 
most readers would elect to enter the taboo regions of Bluebeard’s 
thoughts. (2006: 50) 
Although his presence looms largest in the tale, wanting to enter 
Bluebeard’s damaged psyche is a questionable ambition. His character 
shocks, rather than fascinates, because of the horrors he has committed, 
and although his motives are never truly explained I’m not sure if this 
matters. Bluebeard’s forbidden chamber – filled with trophy wives and 
a pool of blood – is an alluring trope because it is so horrific, yet his last 
wife remains all the more alluring because she manages to overcome 
him. Her most integral characteristic – curiosity – is met with compa-
rable courage (how many others might have fainted at the sight?), and 
the tale’s resilience, several centuries on, is particularly interesting in 
foregrounding these same qualities in cinematic antecedents. 
Where horror films often veer towards excess – presenting an array of 
corpses and the shocked reaction – the thriller takes a more subtle tack, 
interrogating the murderous potential of apparently normal men.