Maria Tatar, author of The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales and other significant works of folktale criticism, analyzes variants of “Bluebeard” in folklore, literature, film, and opera in this insightful study. The story of a young woman who cannot resist the temptation to uncover her murderous husband’s secrets has deep psychic and cultural resonance. Explaining that the story “reflects our anxieties as cultural symptom,” Tatar closely examines positive and negative interpretations of women’s curiosity while recognizing Bluebeard as both monster and cultural hero (172-73).
One of this book’s strengths is its inclusion of important variants of “Bluebeard,” from Perrault’s 1697 tale to the Grimms’ “Robber Bridegroom” and “Fitcher’s Bird” (1857), as well as others through the early twentieth century. These texts and wonderful illustrations from various editions help the reader understand how the story has developed in diverse cultures during the past three centuries.
In the second chapter, Tatar explains that Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca have taken some of the vigor out of “Bluebeard” by focusing on the wife’s success in “healing the wounds left by the disruptive violence of a previous marriage” (67). Both of these novels, as well as relatively recent Harlequin Romance volumes, emphasize mysterious old houses owned by men with dark secrets. The innocent young heroine must do her best to live “happily ever after,” no matter how bleak her situation seems. Tatar notes, “the cruelty and contempt of the latter-day Bluebeard in the Harlequin Romance are nothing more than a mask for deep devotion to the heroine”: a disturbing correlation in the context of contemporary domestic violence (87).
In chapter 3, Tatar analyzes Bluebeard’s wife as a character in Hollywood films of the 1940s. Fritz Lang’s Secret Beyond the Door (1948) and George Cukor’s Gaslight (1944) present frightening scenarios generated by marriage to a stranger. Tatar makes the important point that during the war years of the 1940s, many women married men whom they did not know well. In films of this era, “the drive for knowledge and the yearning for submission” create horrific scenes in which women struggle for survival (98).
Chapter 4, one of the book’s most interesting sections, addresses women authors’ revisions of “Bluebeard.” Margaret Atwood’s Robber Bride changes the genders of characters in the Grimms’ “Robber Bridegroom”; Atwood’s “Bluebeard’s Egg,” Angela Carter’s “Bloody Chamber,” Cindy Sherman’s Fitcher’s Bird, and Jane Campion’s The Piano explore women’s responses to disastrous marriages in various cultural contexts. By “drawing on the wisdom of old wives’ tales,” Tatar explains, women authors create “new narratives that can guide readers through the gender politics of contemporary domestic relationships and issues” (131).
In the last two chapters, Tatar analyzes the Bluebeard figure as criminal and cultural hero and as devoted aesthete. Henri Landru, the “French Bluebeard,” for example, was executed in 1922 for murdering ten women and one boy. It seems clear that Landru and other criminals have gained stature through their similarity to Bluebeard. A more intriguing trend is the portrayal of Bluebeard-like characters as artists who must protect themselves against intimacy. Tatar’s portrayal of twentieth-century Bluebeards who “write, paint, or photograph their way to immortality and notoriety in the arts” is highly perceptive and thought-provoking (153).
My only disagreement with the author’s argument is her contention that “we are in danger of repressing, even if not of losing, the ‘Bluebeard’ story pattern” (10). Her portrayal of Bluebeard figures and their wives across three centuries amply demonstrates how well the tale has adapted to different cultures and circumstances. As women in contemporary society continue to struggle with domestic violence, it seems likely that “Bluebeard” will not lose its meaning at any point in the foreseeable future.
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[Review length: 621 words • Review posted on August 29, 2007]