Note - I help run a group over on Goodreads. This is a feature of the group.
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| Rackman Illustration |
A woman marries a man with an interesting physical
feature- a blue beard (not blue hair
interesting enough). She marries well
and is given keys to all the rooms in his castle. But she cannot go into one room, even though
he gives her the key to that room. Of
course, when she leaves, she goes into the room where she discovers the bloody
bodies of his former wives, and just when she is about to beheaded for giving
into curiosity and disobeying her husband, she is saved by her siblings (sometimes
just her brothers, sometimes her sister calls the brothers).
Bluebeard
is a very interesting story. Supposedly
the famous wife killing spouse was based either on Gilles des Rais who fought
with Joan de Arc but later confessed to killing and sodomizing children in the 1430s
and was hung in 1440. He is the most
popular candidate. There are some who
believe that it is Conomor the Accursed who was active in Brittney in the mid-500s. He supposedly married St. Tryphine, who he
abused and later killed. In some stories
of Conomor, he kills his first wives before Tryphine, who is brought back to
life by St. Gildas (hence in part while St. Tryphine).
The
thing about the French version that gets modern women in particular is the
woman being seemingly punished for her curiosity. Whether or not this was the original
intent of the original legend/story,
Charles Perrault’s first moral for the story indicate giving to curiosity is
bad for women. The second moral, that in
a modern marriage it is the woman who controls the husband. The similar tales, where
a woman disobeys a command from a spouse and discovers murder, feature women
who are for the most part not condemned for the curiosity. Sometimes I wonder if the tale itself was
simply, this is what you do if your husband is abusive. After all, he seeks to kill her because she
disobeyed him, not because she will tell others what he did. Does Perrault’s version of the tale suggest
that women should keep their inquiring minds to themselves and not seek to answer
the questions? Is it, does he say,
better not to know than to know?
Additionally,
the tale has at times an Orient theme to it.
Illustratrions show a Bluebeard and wife who wear stereotypical Muslim
or Eastern dress. The wife is sometimes
named Fatima, while her sister always seems to be Anne.
It’s
interesting that in Angela Carter’s retelling, the heroine is punished and
keeps a mark of her punishment – and the question arises in that retelling –
what is she punished for?
Some
people call Henri Landrua a real-life Blue Beard. He was active in Paris before the First World
War, where he would seduce widows and steal their money. Eventually, he started to kill the widows he seduced. He promised marriage but doesn’t seem to have
actually gone through with it. A sister
of one his victims was the driving force in discovering his murders.
It’s
worth noting as well that the Grimms’
“Mary’s Child” also deals with indulging in curiosity. In this tale, however, the girl in question
disobeys the Virgin Mary and then lies about it. She is punished more for the lie than anything
else.
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