Bluebeard – Not a Fairy Tale for Children

Illustration by Beauge Bertall

The story of Bluebeard is possibly the best example of how fairy tales are not really for children. Although I read the story as a child in Andrew Lang’s Blue Fairy Book, which despite being in a book published for children is surprisingly full of blood,  somehow I managed not to be too traumatised by this story of a serial killer of women, but I can’t say it was a favourite of mine. It was only as I grew older that this dark tale began to interest me.

It is the story of a young wife, who is given the keys to all the rooms in the house by her husband Bluebeard, and told she may enter any room except for an underground chamber. He disappears on his travels and of course the young wife feels compelled to open the door to the forbidden room. The room is awash with blood and the six corpses of Bluebeard’s former wives lie along the walls. In horror she drops the key. Having picked up the key again and locked the door, the wife finds she cannot wash the blood from the key. Bluebeard returns, studies the key, and confronts his wife telling her that she must die for her disobedience. He is about to slay the young woman when her brothers arrive and kill him.

There is no magic in the story to help the heroine, only the malign magic key. The arrival of the heroine’s brothers is just a coincidence; they were due to visit that day anyway.

In earlier retellings such as the 1697 version by Charles Perrault, the moral of the tale is said to be that women should obey their husbands and not be curious about their husbands’ lives. Of course more recently women have started to see another opposite moral: not to trust men. Either way the tale of Bluebeard is directed at young women not children.

In a future post I will explore why I have used this tale of horror in Something In Nothing,  as well as looking at how other mostly female writers have been drawn to the tale.