Fairy Tale and Film

Sleeping with the Enemy
(Joseph Rubin, 1991) may 
go to the length of faking her own death to escape an abusive husband, 
yet turns the tables when he finds and threatens to kill her, phoning the 
police to tell them she’s shot an intruder before calmly shooting him 
three times. The title character in 
Dolores Claiborne
(Taylor Hackford, 
1995) puts up with humiliating abuse to maintain the semblance of 
a harmonious family, yet is forced to take action against her husband 
when she realises that her daughter is being molested. Overseeing his 
fatal fall in their backyard, she is notably prompted by her ‘bitch’ of 
a boss, Vera (Judy Parfitt), who alludes to having despatched her own 
philandering husband (in an interesting reversal of the ‘Bluebeard’ tale), 
advising her ‘sometimes, Dolores, accidents happen’. Other, more real-
istic scenarios tend towards bleaker narratives. A hideously abused wife 
in 
Tyrannosaur
(Paddy Considine, 2011), subjected to years of horrific 

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Demon Lovers and Defiant Damsels 
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assaults, eventually slits her husband’s throat yet goes to jail for this pat-
ent act of self-defence. 
In the Valley of Elah
(Paul Haggis, 2007) is bleaker 
still. A brief yet chilling scene reveals a desperate fearful wife who is 
ignored by military police prior to being killed by her battle-fatigued 
husband. The tragedy may prompt an investigation by Detective Emily 
Sanders (Charlize Theron), yet this is ultimately carried out for a mur-
dered soldier, rather than the wife they have so badly let down. We 
may recall Tatar’s observations about traumatised veterans creating 
‘Bluebeard’ scenarios, yet the ignored wife in this film also reminds us 
that not all women get the help they need, even when they have good 
reason to be scared. Other cinematic examples enable women to take 
the law into their own hands to thwart violent men, albeit in fairly 
outlandish ways. The Bride in 
Kill Bill
is a ‘Sleeping Beauty’ who refuses 
subjugation and ends up killing the man who sought to murder her (and 
presumably gets away with it). The protagonists in 
Hard Candy
(David 
Slade, 2005) and 
Freeway
(Matthew Bright, 1996) are apparent damsels in 
distress who also defiantly rewrite expectations, reminding us, to quote 
James Thurber’s punch-line, ‘it is not so easy to fool little girls nowadays 
as it used to be’.
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Identifying just who the predator is in these scenarios 
reveals familiar stories bent out of shape. Violence begets violence, some 
might argue, yet while such variations show the degree to which con-
temporary protagonists have dispensed with Perrault’s ‘brothers to the 
rescue’ finale, they also reveal the seemingly ubiquitous threat women 
are faced with – as well as continued failings of a social system that 
seems unable to defend them. 
Given the shocking degree of violence at its heart, just why ‘Bluebeard’ 
has interested so many female writers and film-makers remains curious. 
An interest in presenting a precarious relationship may not simply be 
masochism at work, but a desire to examine domestic dangers, perhaps 
even to pass on the same kind of warning that was told centuries ago, 
variations of which occur in every culture around the world.
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Some 
may simply be motivated by the tale’s salacious qualities – corroborat-
ing Lieberman’s claim that the husband’s cruelty towards his wife is an 
act we collude with, rather than condemn, arguing that ‘her function is 
to provide us with a couple of thrills of a more or less sadistic tincture’ 
(1984: 199). This is not the case, however, with rewrites that seek to give 
the heroine greater agency and understanding, as Campion’s examples 
attest, although her films also affirm that a female perspective is not 
without controversy or complexity. A recent version of ‘Bluebeard’, 
made by feminist film-maker Catherine Breillart in 2009, reiterates the 
point. An interesting framing device is used, set in the 1950s, in which 

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