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Fairy Tale and Film
Is he making light of a grisly crime? And how seriously are we sup-
posed to take his accusation of the wife? Marina Warner points out that
‘Bluebeard’ was published alongside ‘Griselda’ and ‘Donkeyskin’, two
other tales which dramatise the abuse of male privilege (1995: 244), and
affirms Perrault’s affiliation with female fairy tale writers of the period,
asserting that ‘however frivolous his tone, he took the part of daughters
against the arranged marriages of the day ... [and]
issued an open argu-
ment, by means of his tales, for the rights of women to administer their
own wealth’ (266). This is precisely what Bluebeard’s wife manages to
achieve, yet the horror she has to endure, and the suggestion of culpa-
bility on her part, have led many critics to accuse Perrault of misogyny.
The tale bears some kinship with a number of related folk tales, includ-
ing two collected
by the brothers Grimm, ‘The Robber Bridegroom’ (ATU
955) – in which a young woman discovers her betrothed’s murderous
nature and denounces him on their wedding day – and ‘Fitcher’s Bird’
(aka ‘Fowler’s Fowl’) – in which the youngest of three sisters takes up
residence with a wizard and discovers her siblings’ remains, yet succeeds
in magically reviving and sending them home, ultimately disguising
herself as a bird to enable her own escape. These tales provide fantasti-
cal assistance to their heroines (a talking bird warns the fiancée in ‘The
Robber Bridegroom’ while the younger sister in ‘Fitcher’s Bird’ mysteri-
ously contrives to return the dead to life).
2
In ‘Bluebeard’
the wife simply
relies on her wits and a level of good fortune – her brothers being due
to visit on the very day her husband decides to kill her. Just why he is
a murderous fiend is never explained, prompting considerable debate
about his motives, yet the narrative bears more than a passing resem-
blance to the frame tale of the
Arabian Nights
,
in which we are told that
King Sharihyar adopts a homicidal policy towards his wives (murdering
each one the morning after their wedding) due to his first wife’s infidel-
ity and his refusal to be betrayed again.
3
The same impulses are suggested
in Perrault’s ‘Bluebeard’. Offering his new wife the key to a room that he
then forbids access to is clearly a test of her trustworthiness – a test her
predecessors have seemingly failed – and many have inferred that the
bloodstained key symbolically suggests sexual betrayal, although this
reading contorts our notion of blame in unnerving ways. Whether or
not she is explicitly
accused of infidelity, Perrault seems to place greater
culpability on the bride’s inquisitive nature than the serial killer she has
just married – that is, if we take his denunciation of female curiosity seri-
ously. Ultimately, he ensures that Bluebeard is punished for his crimes
and grants the wife liberty and wealth, an ending that seems to affirm
where his sympathies truly lie. Given the
extreme gruesomeness of the