Bluebeard

“Blue Beard,” by 17th-century French author Charles Perrault, is a short story in the fairy tale genre that relies on symbolism and concision to address themes of Female Agency, Transgressive Knowledge, and Patriarchal Control. First published in Perrault’s 1697 book Histoires ou Contes du Temps passé, avec des Moralités (meaning Stories or Tales from Times Past, with Morals), “Blue Beard” was found alongside other classic fairy tales that engage with similar themes, such as “Sleeping Beauty,” “Cinderella,” and “Little Red Riding Hood.” However, “Blue Beard” is uniquely violent in its depiction of a young woman who marries a wealthy man, only to discover the murdered bodies of his previous wives hidden away in the castle.

Though Charles Perrault’s “Blue Beard” is the earliest and most prominent written version of the story, he did not invent the narrative. All of the entries in Stories or Tales from Times Past were based on fairy tales from France’s oral storytelling tradition. Perrault acknowledges the origins of his collection through its subtitle, Les Contes de ma Mère l’Oye (meaning Tales of Mother Goose). The recording and printing of such rural village stories was an important aspect of growing aristocratic and adult interest in folk and fairy tales in the 17th and 18th centuries.

This guide refers to the 2000 version of the text found in Perrault’s Complete Fairy Tales translated by A. E. Johnson.

Content Warning: The source material and quoted text include graphic references to violence against women.

Perrault wrote “Blue Beard” primarily using a third-person objective point of view, with a brief shift into third-person limited point of view following the young bride at the climax of the story. The story begins with the traditional opening of “Once upon a time” (70) and introduces the reader to a man who is very wealthy but possesses a blue beard that disgusts and frightens women. Blue Beard makes an offer to a neighboring noblewoman, asking to marry whichever of her two beautiful daughters she chooses. Neither girl is enthusiastic about the match, given both the man’s blue beard and the fact that his previous wives seem to have disappeared.

To woo the young women, Blue Beard invites them, their mother, and a party of their friends to one of his homes in the country. After eight days of fine dining and entertainment, the group has such an enjoyable time that the younger daughter is persuaded “to think the master of the house had not so very blue a beard after all” (71) and agrees to marry him.

The couple has been married only a month when Blue Beard tells his new wife that he must leave on a six-week business trip. In his absence, he suggests she invite her friends to join her at the country house. Before he leaves, Blue Beard gives the young bride all of his keys, detailing the many riches that each one grants access to. However, there is one key to a little room at the end of a lower-level hallway that Blue Beard forbids his wife from opening, telling her that “if you were indeed to open the door, I should be so angry that I might do anything” (71-72). Once the girl promises she will not disobey, Blue Beard departs.

Though the young bride’s friends immediately take advantage of her frightening husband’s absence to visit, the young lady is uninterested in exploring Blue Beard’s luxurious house alongside her peers. Instead, she is “so overcome with curiosity” (72) that she races down a secret set of stairs to get to the forbidden room. While the bride briefly hesitates, thinking of Blue Beard’s instructions, “the temptation [is] so great” (73) that she unlocks the door.

Inside, the girl sees the murdered corpses of Blue Beard’s former wives hanging on the wall, whose slit throats have created a pool of blood on the floor. Terrified, the young bride drops the key. When she is able to control herself enough to leave, she picks it up and closes the door. Back in her rooms, she notices that there is blood on the key and tries to clean it off, but it is “bewitched, and there was no means of cleaning it completely” (73).

Blue Beard unexpectedly returns that night, explaining that his business had already been taken care of. The next morning, he demands his keys back. Though the young bride pretends not to know why the secret room’s key is stained, upon seeing the blood, Blue Beard becomes enraged and announces that he is going to kill her, telling his wife, “[Y]ou shall go and take your place among the ladies you have seen” (74). The bride’s weeping apology does not change her husband’s mind, so she pleads for a little time to say her prayers.

Alone in her room, the young woman calls her sister to her and begs Sister Anne to go look for the arrival of their brothers, who were supposed to visit that day. Even as Blue Beard yells for his bride to come downstairs and meet her fate, the girl asks over and over if Anne sees anything. The sister does not, until the very last moment, when she sees the two brothers on horseback right as the young bride can no longer delay. At the instant that Blue Beard makes “as if to cut off her head” (76), the lady’s military brothers run in. Though the murdering husband tries to escape, the two young men kill him immediately.

Blue Beard’s wife inherits all of his wealth and uses it to give Sister Anne a dowry, to buy her brothers captain’s commissions, and ultimately to dower herself for a new marriage that helps her forget the events that had transpired. The story closes there, but appended to it are two morals in verse. One implies that the tale’s meaning is that women should never give in to their curiosity. The second reminds the reader that the story is from a distant past, and therefore means nothing about the behavior of contemporary husbands.