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[[File:Barbebleue.jpg|thumb|Bluebeard, his wife, and the keys in a 19th-century illustration by [[Gustave Doré]]]]

"'''Bluebeard'''" ([[French language|French]]: ''La Barbe bleue'') is a French [[Folklore|folktale]], the most famous surviving version of which was written by [[Charles Perrault]] and first published by Barbin in Paris in 1697 in ''[[Histoires ou contes du temps passé]]''.<ref>{{cite EB1911|wstitle=Bluebeard}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://clpav.fr/perrault.htm |title=Charles Perrault (1628-1703)|publisher=CLPAV}}</ref> The tale tells the story of a violent nobleman in the habit of murdering his wives and the attempts of one wife to avoid the fate of her predecessors. "[[The White Dove (French fairy tale)|The White Dove]]", "[[The Robber Bridegroom (fairy tale)|The Robber Bridegroom]]" and "[[Fitcher's Bird]]" (Also called "Fowler's Fowl") are tales similar to "Bluebeard".

==Plot summary==
Bluebeard is a wealthy aristocrat, feared and shunned because of his ugly, blue beard. He has been married several times, but no one knows what became of his wives. He is therefore avoided by the local girls. When Bluebeard visits one of his neighbours and asks to marry one of his two daughters, the girls are terrified, and each tries to pass him on to the other. Eventually he talks the younger daughter into visiting him, and after hosting a wonderful banquet, he persuades her to marry him. After the ceremony, she goes to live with him in his castle.

Very shortly after, Bluebeard announces that he must leave the country for a while; he gives all the keys of the château to his new wife, telling her they open the doors to rooms which contain his treasures. He tells her to use the keys freely and enjoy herself whilst he is away. However, he also gives her the key to one small room beneath the castle, stressing to her that she must not enter this room under any circumstances. She vows she will never enter the room. He then goes away and leaves the house in her hands. Immediately, she is overcome with the desire to see what the forbidden room holds; and, despite warnings from her visiting sister, Anne, the girl abandons her guests during a house party and takes the key to the room.

The wife immediately discovers the room's horrible secret: its floor is awash with blood and the murdered bodies of her husband's former wives hang from hooks on the walls. Horrified, she drops the key into the pool of blood. She flees the room, but the blood staining the key will not wash off. She reveals her murderous husband's secret to her sister Anne, and both plan to flee the castle the next day; but, Bluebeard returns home unexpectedly the next morning and, noticing the blood on the key, immediately knows his wife has broken her vow. In a blind rage, he threatens to behead her on the spot, but she implores him to give her a quarter of an hour to say her [[prayers]]. He consents, so she locks herself in the highest tower with Anne. While Bluebeard, sword in hand, tries to break down the door, the sisters wait for their two brothers to arrive. At the last moment, as Bluebeard is about to deliver the fatal blow, the brothers break into the castle; and, as he attempts to flee, they kill him. He leaves no heirs but his wife, who inherits all his great fortune. All of Bluebeard's dead wives are buried and she uses part of his fortune for a dowry to marry off her sister, another part for her brothers' captains' commissions, and the rest to marry a worthy gentleman who makes her forget her horrible encounter with Bluebeard.

==Sources==
Although best known as a folktale, the character of Bluebeard appears to derive from legends related to historical individuals in [[Brittany]]. One source is believed to have been the 15th-century [[Breton people|Breton]] nobleman and later confessed [[serial killer]] [[Gilles de Rais]].<ref name="Opie" /> However, Gilles de Rais did not kill his wife, nor were any bodies found on his property, and the crimes for which he was convicted involved the motiveless, brutal murder of children and not a punishment for perceived betrayal.

Another possible source stems from the story of the early Breton king [[Conomor|Conomor the Accursed]] and his wife [[Saint Tryphine|Tryphine]]. This is recorded in a biography of [[St. Gildas]], written five centuries after his death in the sixth century. It describes how after Conomor married Tryphine, she was warned by the [[Ghosts in European culture|ghost]]s of his previous wives that he murders them when they become pregnant. Pregnant, she flees; he catches and beheads her, but St. Gildas miraculously restores her to life, and when he brings her to Conomor, the walls of his castle crumble and kill him. Conomor is a historical figure, known locally as a [[werewolf]], and various local churches are dedicated to [[Saint Tryphine]] and her son, [[Saint Tremeur]].<ref>{{cite book
| author = Marina Warner
| title = From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales And Their Tellers
| page= 261
| ISBN = 0-374-15901-7
}}
</ref>
The 3d possible sources of the character of Blue Beard was king of England Henry VIII, famous for killing two of his six wifes.
The character's blue beard is regarded as a symbol of his otherworldly origins.<ref name="Annotated_Classic_Fairy_Tales">{{cite book
| author = Maria Tatar
| title = The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales
| publisher = W.W. Norton & Company
| page = 151
| ISBN = 0-393-05163-3
}}
</ref>

==Commentaries==
[[File:Walter Crane06.jpg|thumb|Bluebeard is slain in a woodcut by [[Walter Crane]]]]

For [[Iona and Peter Opie]], the tale reads as a legend imperfectly recollected. For example, a gap occurs in the narrative between the wife's entrance into the forbidden chamber and Bluebeard's unexpected return, a time when her house guests vanish without explanation, and Bluebeard's willingness to wait a quarter of an hour before slaying his wife is out of character and poorly excused. Although no earlier retelling of the story has been discovered, it may be assumed one existed.<ref name="Opie">{{cite book
| author = Iona and Peter Opie
| title = The Classic Fairy Tales
| publisher = Oxford University Press
| year = 1974
| pages = 103&ndash;105
| ISBN = 0-19-520219-8
}}
</ref>

The fatal effects of feminine curiosity have long been the subject of story and legend. [[Lot's wife]], [[Pandora]], and [[Cupid and Psyche|Psyche]] are all examples of mythic stories where women's curiosity is punished by dire consequences. In an illustrated account of the ''Bluebeard'' story by [[Walter Crane]], when the wife is shown making her way towards the forbidden room, there is behind her a tapestry of the serpent enticing [[Eve]] into eating the forbidden fruit in the [[Garden of Eden]].<ref name="Annotated_Classic_Fairy_Tales" />

In addition, hidden or forbidden chambers were not unknown in pre-Perrault literature. In Basile's ''[[Pentamerone]]'', one tale tells of a Princess Marchetta entering a room after being forbidden by an ogress, and in ''[[The Arabian Nights]]'' Prince Agib is given a hundred keys to a hundred doors but forbidden to enter the golden door, which he does, with terrible consequences.<ref>http://www.wollamshram.ca/1001/Dixon/dixon02_20.htm</ref> In the story of Prince Agib, the motive is clear: the forbidden door is a test. However, in "Bluebeard", the motive is less clear. It is not explained why Bluebeard would give a key to his wife that will reveal his horrific marital past.<ref name="Opie" /> In an Indian story, an ogress looks after a prince while disguised as a beautiful woman and tells him not to enter the Tower, Pit or Kitchen, which will reveal her. In the Tower, an old man who has been tied up by her reveals who she is, in the pit are the bones of her victims, and the Kitchen contains three magical balls which the prince uses to escape the Ogress, with the final one a fire is caused which the Ogress runs into and burns to death in.

==Aarne–Thompson classification==
According to the [[Aarne–Thompson]] system of classifying folktale plots, the tale of Bluebeard is type 312.<ref>{{cite web
| author = Heidi Anne Heiner
| url = http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/bluebeard/other.html
| title = Tales Similar to Bluebeard
}}
</ref>
Another such tale is ''[[The White Dove (French fairy tale)|The White Dove]]'', an oral French variant.<ref>Paul Delarue, ''The Borzoi Book of French Folk-Tales'', New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., p. 359, 1956</ref> The type is closely related to Aarne–Thompson type 311, the heroine rescues herself and her sisters, in such tales as ''[[Fitcher's Bird]]'', ''[[The Old Dame and Her Hen]]'', and ''[[How the Devil Married Three Sisters]]''. The tales where the [[youngest daughter]] rescues herself and the other sisters from the villain is in fact far more common in oral traditions than this type, where the heroine's brother rescues her. Other such tales do exist, however; the brother is sometimes aided in the rescue by marvelous dogs or wild animals.<ref>{{cite book
| author = Stith Thompson
| title = The Folktale
| publisher = Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press
| page = 36
| year = 1977
}}
</ref>

Some European variants of the ballad ''[[Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight]]'', [[Child ballad]] 4, closely resemble this tale. This is particularly noteworthy among some German variants, where the heroine calls for help, much like the calls to Sister Anne in ''Bluebeard'', and is rescued by her brother.<ref>Francis James Child, ''The English and Scottish Popular Ballads''; v 1, New York: Dover Publications, p 47, 1965</ref>

==Bluebeard's wives==
It is not known why Bluebeard murdered his first bride; she could not have entered the forbidden room and found a dead wife.

In the original 1812 Kinder- und Hausmärchen by the Brothers Grimm, Wilhelm Grimm makes a very interesting handwritten comment in the book on pg XLI of the annotations: “It seems in all Märchen of Blubeard, wherein his Blutrunst [flowing of blood] has not rightly explained, the idea to be the basis of himself through bathing in blood to cure of the blue beard; as the lepers. That is also why it is written that the blood is collected in basins.”

Maurice Maeterlinck wrote extensively on Bluebeard and in his plays names at least five former wives: ''Sélysette'' from "Aglavaine et Sélysette" (1896), ''Alladine'' from "Alladine et Palomides" (1894) and both ''Ygraine'' and ''Bellangère'' from "La mort de Tintagiles" (1894), ''Mélisande'' from "Pelléas et Mélisande" and ''Ariane'' from "Ariane et Barbe-bleue" (1907).

In [[Jacques Offenbach]]'s opera (1866), the five previous wives are Héloïse, Eléonore, Isaure, Rosalinde and Blanche, with the sixth and final wife being a peasant girl, Boulotte, who finally reveals his secret when he attempts to have her killed so that he can marry Princess Hermia.

[[Béla Bartók]]'s opera ''[[Bluebeard's Castle|A Kékszakállú herceg vára]]'' (1911), with the libretto by [[Béla Balázs]] names "Judith", which places her as wife number four, whereas Ariane would be wife number six, but fails to take Judith into account. Bartók's version does not name any of the wives that appear in it. Rather than retelling the original story, the libretto only uses the main characters and setting, and transforms them into a symbolist story.

Anatole France's short story "The Seven Wives of Bluebeard" names ''Jeanne'' as the last wife before Bluebeard's death.

[[Alfred Savoir]] wrote in the 1920s a play "La huitième femme de Barbe-Bleue" (''Bluebeard's eighth wife'') from which Sam Wood and Ernst Lubitsch produced two films, other than starting from the point of being a plus one wife of Bluebeard and that it considers Anatole France's count of his wives, this play or the films share nothing with a description or numbering of the duke's wives.

In [[Edward Dmytryk]]'s film ''[[Bluebeard (1972 film)|Bluebeard]]'' (1972), Baron von Sepper (Richard Burton) is an Austrian aristocrat known as Bluebeard for his blue-toned beard, and his appetite for beautiful wives. This film names an American beauty named "Anne", who discovers a vault in his castle filled with the frozen bodies of his previous wives.

==Variations==
[[File:Page 35 illustration from Fairy tales of Charles Perrault (Clarke, 1922).png|thumb|"Blue Beard" by [[Harry Clarke]].]]
Other versions of ''Bluebeard'' include:<ref>Shuli Barzilai, ''Tales of Bluebeard and His Wives from Late Antiquity to Postmodern Times''</ref>
* [[Pantomime]] versions of the tale were staged at the [[Theatre Royal, Drury Lane]] in London as early as 1798, and famous editions there were by [[E. L. Blanchard]] in 1879 and starred [[Dan Leno]] in 1901.<ref>Adams, William Davenport. [https://books.google.com/books?id=1UM5AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA176 "A dictionary of the drama: a guide to the plays, play-wrights, players, and playhouses of the United Kingdom and America"], Chatto & Windus, 1904, p. 176</ref> Many of these productions orientalized the tale by setting it in the [[Ottoman Empire]], often giving the wife the name Fatima. The popularity of the pantomime made orientalized depictions of Bluebeard common in English illustrations throughout the 19th century and into the early 20th century.
* ''[[Ariane et Barbe-bleue]]'' by [[Paul Dukas]]
* ''[[Bluebeard's Castle]]'' by [[Béla Bartók]] and [[Béla Balázs]]
* ''Bluebeard'' by [[The Brothers Grimm]]
* ''[[Barbe-bleue (opera)|Barbe-bleue]]'' by [[Jacques Offenbach]]
* ''[[Captain Murderer]]'' by [[Charles Dickens]]
* ''[[The Awful History of Bluebeard]]'' by [[William Makepeace Thackeray]]
* ''[[Bluebeard's Keys]]'' by [[Anne Thackeray Ritchie]]
* ''[[The Seven Wives of Bluebeard]]'' by [[Anatole France]]
* ''[[Bluebeard's Egg]]'' by [[Margaret Atwood]]
* ''Bones'' by [[Francesca Lia Block]].
* ''[[Bluebeard (play)]], an [[off-Broadway]] comedy by [[Charles Ludlam]]
* ''[[Bluebeard (Vonnegut novel)|Bluebeard]]'' by [[Kurt Vonnegut]]
* ''[[Strands of Bronze and Gold]]'' by Jane Nickerson
* ''[[The Bloody Chamber]]'' the eponymous story of [[Angela Carter]]'s Collection
* ''Mr. Fox'' by [[Helen Oyeyemi]]

In [[Charles Dickens]]' short story, the titular character is described as "an offshoot of the Bluebeard family", and is far more bloodthirsty than most Bluebeards: he cannibalises each wife a month after marriage. He meets his demise after his sister-in-law in revenge for the death of her sister, marries him and consumes a deadly poison just before he devours her.

In [[DC Comics]]' ''[[Fables (comics)|Fables]]'' series, Bluebeard appears as an amoral character, willing to kill and often suspected of being involved in various nefarious deeds. Bluebeard is also a character in the video game by [[Telltale Games]] based on the Fables comics, [[The Wolf Among Us]].

In the Japanese light novel and recently adapted manga/anime ''[[Fate/Zero]]'', Bluebeard appears as the Caster Servant, where his character largely stems from Gilles de Rais as a serial murderer of children.

Bluebeard appears as a minor darklord in the [[Advanced Dungeons & Dragons]] (2nd ed.) ''[[Ravenloft]]'' Accessory ''[[Darklords]]''.

In [[Stephen King]]'s ''[[The Shining (novel)|The Shining]]'', the story of Blue Beard is read by Jack to Danny as a 3-year-old, to his wife's disapproval.

===In theatre===
*''[[Bluebeard (ballet)|Bluebeard]]'', a ballet by the choreographer [[Marius Petipa]] to the music of composer [[Pyotr Schenk]]. Premiered 1896, [[Imperial Mariinsky Theatre]], [[St. Petersburg]], Russia.
* '' [[Bluebeard (ballet)|Bluebeard]]'' by the director and choreographer [[Staša Zurovac]] and the composer [[Marjan Nećak]]. The new ballet work in [[THE CROATIAN NATIONAL THEATRE IN ZAGREB]] is based on the famous legend of the Bluebeard finding inspiration in the novel [[The Seven Wives of Bluebeard]] of the French Nobel laureate [[Anatole France]]. The premiere - November, Friday 13, 2015.

===In television===
* Bluebeard is featured in ''[[Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics]]'' as part of its "Grimm Masterpiece Theater" season.
* The character Bluebeard is also featured as one of seven ''servants'' in the 2011 anime [[Fate/Zero]].
* Bluebeard is featured in ''[[The Fairytale Detective Sandra]]'' as the villain in the episode ''The Forbidden Room''.
* Bluebeard is featured in ''[[Scary Tales]]'', produced by the [[Discovery Channel]], [[Sony]] and [[IMAX]], episode one, in 2011. Not related to the Disney collection of the same name. Revealing what might be the truth behind this scary fairy tale.

===In other media===
* Bluebeard featured as a villain in the comic series ''Fables''.
* Bluebeard also featured in "The Wolf Among Us" a game based around ''Fables''. He is voiced by [[Dave Fennoy]].
* Bluebeard is mentioned in "Blackberry Picking", a poem by [[Seamus Heaney]].
* Bluebeard is the title of and inspiration for a song by the [[Cocteau Twins]]. It was included on their 1993 album "[[Four-Calendar Café]]".
* Bluebeard was adapted for [[BBC radio4]] in 2014 in a radio play called Burning Desires by Pier Productions.
* A crypt for Bluebeard and his wives is featured in the exit area of [[The Haunted Mansion]] at the [[Magic Kingdom]] park in [[Walt Disney World]].
* In the [[Sisters Grimm]] series by [[Michael Buckley (author)|Michael Buckley]], Bluebeard is a minor villain and attempts to kill Ms. White.
* In the anime series FateZero, the heroic spirit Caster names himself as Bluebeard shortly after the senseless murder of a child.

===In film===
Several film versions of the story exist:

* [[Barbe-bleue (1902 film)]] (''Blue Beard''), a short film by Georges Méliès.
* [[Bluebeard (1944 film)|''Bluebeard'' (1944 film)]], a film directed by [[Edgar G. Ulmer]], starring [[John Carradine]].
* ''[[Secret Beyond the Door]]...'', a 1948 contemporary adaptation by director Fritz Lang and produced by Walter Wanger, with Michael Redgrave making his Hollywood debut in the Bluebeard-inspired role and Wanger's wife Joan Bennett as Redgrave's new bride.
* ''[[Bluebeard (1951 film)|Blaubart]]'', released in the United States as ''Bluebeard'', a 1951 German-French film directed by [[Christian-Jaque]], starring [[Hans Albers]]
* [[Bluebeard (1972 film)|''Bluebeard'' (1972 film)]], a film directed by Edward Dmytryk, starring Richard Burton
* The [[Cinema of France|French film]] ''[[Bluebeard (2009 film)|Barbe Bleue]]'', directed by [[Catherine Breillat]], is modeled closely on the work by Charles Perrault.
* ''[[Monsieur Verdoux]]'' is a 1947 black comedy film directed by and starring Charles Chaplin.
* ''[[The Piano]]'', a 1993 film directed by Jane Campion. The film also serves as a retelling of the fairytale "Bluebeard", which is hinted at further in the inclusion of "Bluebeard" as a piece of the Christmas pageant.
* [[Very Blue Beard|''Ochen' siniya boroda ["Very blue beard"]'' (1979 USSR animation film)]], modern satirical variations on the theme of blue beard
* [[Ex Machina (film)|''Ex Machina'']], a 2015 film by writer/director [[Alex Garland]], adapts the Bluebeard character as the reclusive CEO of a fictional tech company called "Bluebook" (a seeming amalgam of [[Google]] and [[Facebook]] described as having been named for [[Ludwig Wittgenstein|Wittgenstein]]'s [[Blue and Brown Books|Blue Book]]), dividing the role of Bluebeard's wife between a female-bodied [[Artificial intelligence|AI]] and an unsuspecting Bluebook programmer summoned to [[Turing test|evaluate]] it.
* ''[[Crimson Peak]]'', a 2015 [[gothic horror]] film has plot similarities to the tale of Bluebeard

==References==
{{Reflist|2}}

==Further reading==
*Hermansson, Casie E. (2009). ''Bluebeard: A Reader's Guide to the English Tradition''. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi.
*Loo, Oliver (2014). ''The Original 1812 Grimm Fairy Tales Kinder- und Hausmärchen Childrens and Household Tales''
*Ogden, Valerie (2014). "Bluebeard Brave Warrior, Brutal Psychopath" Palisades, New York: History Publishing Company.

==External links==
{{Commons category|Barbebleue|Bluebeard}}
{{wikisource|Blue Beard}}
{{wiktionary|Bluebeard}}
*[[Edwin Sidney Hartland]] "[[s:The Folk-Lore Journal. Volume 3/The Forbidden Chamber|The Forbidden Chamber]]" ''The Folk-Lore Journal. Volume 3, 1885.
* [http://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/scotland/ayrshire/ayrshire4.html Legendary Scottish bluebeard Sir John Cathcart]
*[http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/bluebeard/index.html SurLaLune Fairy Tale Pages: Heidi Anne Heiner, "The Annotated Bluebeard"]
* [http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0312.html Variants]
* [http://www.endicott-studio.com/rdrm/forblue.html "Bluebeard and the Bloody Chamber" by Terri Windling]
* [http://www.americansymphony.org/dialogues_extensions/98_99season/5th_concert/leon.cfm Leon Botstein's concert notes on Dukas' ''Ariane et Barbe-bleue'']
* [http://www.glimmerglass.org/insights/bluebeard/bluebeard.htm Glimmerglass Opera's notes on Offenbach's ''Barbe Bleue'', the Bluebeard fairy tale in general, and operetta in the time of Offenbach].
* [http://www.northern.edu/hastingw/bluebeard.html A Shakespeare reference]
* {{fr icon}} [http://www.litteratureaudio.com/livre-audio-gratuit-mp3/perrault-charles-la-barbe-bleue.html/ Bluebeard, audio version] [[File:Speaker Icon.svg|20px]]
* [http://www.fairytalechannel.org/2010_03_12_archive.html Translation of the German version of the fairy tale "Knight Bluebeard" by Ludwig Bechstein]
* [http://www.bigfishgames.com/download-games/15032/bluebeards-castle/index.html?src=frmtrygame&osdetect=true Game about Bluebeard]
* [https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=473931049333975&set=pb.424220650971682.-2207520000.1359471978&type=3&theater=true Bluebeard at the Iroquois Theater]

{{Charles Perrault}}
{{Bluebeard}}

{{Authority control}}

[[Category:1697 short stories]]
[[Category:Grimms' Fairy Tales]]
[[Category:Fairy tales]]
[[Category:Characters in fairy tales]]
[[Category:Fictional serial killers]]
[[Category:Works by Charles Perrault]]
[[Category:French folklore]]
[[Category:Uxoricide in fiction]]
[[Category:French fairy tales]]

Revision as of 00:46, 12 January 2016

For other uses, see Bluebeard (disambiguation).
Bluebeard, his wife, and the keys in a 19th-century illustration by Gustave Doré

"Bluebeard" (French: La Barbe bleue) is a French folktale, the most famous surviving version of which was written by Charles Perrault and first published by Barbin in Paris in 1697 in Histoires ou contes du temps passé.[1][2] The tale tells the story of a violent nobleman in the habit of murdering his wives and the attempts of one wife to avoid the fate of her predecessors. "The White Dove", "The Robber Bridegroom" and "Fitcher's Bird" (Also called "Fowler's Fowl") are tales similar to "Bluebeard".

Plot summary

Bluebeard is a wealthy aristocrat, feared and shunned because of his ugly, blue beard. He has been married several times, but no one knows what became of his wives. He is therefore avoided by the local girls. When Bluebeard visits one of his neighbours and asks to marry one of his two daughters, the girls are terrified, and each tries to pass him on to the other. Eventually he talks the younger daughter into visiting him, and after hosting a wonderful banquet, he persuades her to marry him. After the ceremony, she goes to live with him in his castle.

Very shortly after, Bluebeard announces that he must leave the country for a while; he gives all the keys of the château to his new wife, telling her they open the doors to rooms which contain his treasures. He tells her to use the keys freely and enjoy herself whilst he is away. However, he also gives her the key to one small room beneath the castle, stressing to her that she must not enter this room under any circumstances. She vows she will never enter the room. He then goes away and leaves the house in her hands. Immediately, she is overcome with the desire to see what the forbidden room holds; and, despite warnings from her visiting sister, Anne, the girl abandons her guests during a house party and takes the key to the room.

The wife immediately discovers the room's horrible secret: its floor is awash with blood and the murdered bodies of her husband's former wives hang from hooks on the walls. Horrified, she drops the key into the pool of blood. She flees the room, but the blood staining the key will not wash off. She reveals her murderous husband's secret to her sister Anne, and both plan to flee the castle the next day; but, Bluebeard returns home unexpectedly the next morning and, noticing the blood on the key, immediately knows his wife has broken her vow. In a blind rage, he threatens to behead her on the spot, but she implores him to give her a quarter of an hour to say her prayers. He consents, so she locks herself in the highest tower with Anne. While Bluebeard, sword in hand, tries to break down the door, the sisters wait for their two brothers to arrive. At the last moment, as Bluebeard is about to deliver the fatal blow, the brothers break into the castle; and, as he attempts to flee, they kill him. He leaves no heirs but his wife, who inherits all his great fortune. All of Bluebeard's dead wives are buried and she uses part of his fortune for a dowry to marry off her sister, another part for her brothers' captains' commissions, and the rest to marry a worthy gentleman who makes her forget her horrible encounter with Bluebeard.

Sources

Although best known as a folktale, the character of Bluebeard appears to derive from legends related to historical individuals in Brittany. One source is believed to have been the 15th-century Breton nobleman and later confessed serial killer Gilles de Rais.[3] However, Gilles de Rais did not kill his wife, nor were any bodies found on his property, and the crimes for which he was convicted involved the motiveless, brutal murder of children and not a punishment for perceived betrayal.

Another possible source stems from the story of the early Breton king Conomor the Accursed and his wife Tryphine. This is recorded in a biography of St. Gildas, written five centuries after his death in the sixth century. It describes how after Conomor married Tryphine, she was warned by the ghosts of his previous wives that he murders them when they become pregnant. Pregnant, she flees; he catches and beheads her, but St. Gildas miraculously restores her to life, and when he brings her to Conomor, the walls of his castle crumble and kill him. Conomor is a historical figure, known locally as a werewolf, and various local churches are dedicated to Saint Tryphine and her son, Saint Tremeur.[4] The 3d possible sources of the character of Blue Beard was king of England Henry VIII, famous for killing two of his six wifes. The character's blue beard is regarded as a symbol of his otherworldly origins.[5]

Commentaries

Bluebeard is slain in a woodcut by Walter Crane

For Iona and Peter Opie, the tale reads as a legend imperfectly recollected. For example, a gap occurs in the narrative between the wife's entrance into the forbidden chamber and Bluebeard's unexpected return, a time when her house guests vanish without explanation, and Bluebeard's willingness to wait a quarter of an hour before slaying his wife is out of character and poorly excused. Although no earlier retelling of the story has been discovered, it may be assumed one existed.[3]

The fatal effects of feminine curiosity have long been the subject of story and legend. Lot's wife, Pandora, and Psyche are all examples of mythic stories where women's curiosity is punished by dire consequences. In an illustrated account of the Bluebeard story by Walter Crane, when the wife is shown making her way towards the forbidden room, there is behind her a tapestry of the serpent enticing Eve into eating the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden.[5]

In addition, hidden or forbidden chambers were not unknown in pre-Perrault literature. In Basile's Pentamerone, one tale tells of a Princess Marchetta entering a room after being forbidden by an ogress, and in The Arabian Nights Prince Agib is given a hundred keys to a hundred doors but forbidden to enter the golden door, which he does, with terrible consequences.[6] In the story of Prince Agib, the motive is clear: the forbidden door is a test. However, in "Bluebeard", the motive is less clear. It is not explained why Bluebeard would give a key to his wife that will reveal his horrific marital past.[3] In an Indian story, an ogress looks after a prince while disguised as a beautiful woman and tells him not to enter the Tower, Pit or Kitchen, which will reveal her. In the Tower, an old man who has been tied up by her reveals who she is, in the pit are the bones of her victims, and the Kitchen contains three magical balls which the prince uses to escape the Ogress, with the final one a fire is caused which the Ogress runs into and burns to death in.

Aarne–Thompson classification

According to the Aarne–Thompson system of classifying folktale plots, the tale of Bluebeard is type 312.[7] Another such tale is The White Dove, an oral French variant.[8] The type is closely related to Aarne–Thompson type 311, the heroine rescues herself and her sisters, in such tales as Fitcher's Bird, The Old Dame and Her Hen, and How the Devil Married Three Sisters. The tales where the youngest daughter rescues herself and the other sisters from the villain is in fact far more common in oral traditions than this type, where the heroine's brother rescues her. Other such tales do exist, however; the brother is sometimes aided in the rescue by marvelous dogs or wild animals.[9]

Some European variants of the ballad Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight, Child ballad 4, closely resemble this tale. This is particularly noteworthy among some German variants, where the heroine calls for help, much like the calls to Sister Anne in Bluebeard, and is rescued by her brother.[10]

Bluebeard's wives

It is not known why Bluebeard murdered his first bride; she could not have entered the forbidden room and found a dead wife.

In the original 1812 Kinder- und Hausmärchen by the Brothers Grimm, Wilhelm Grimm makes a very interesting handwritten comment in the book on pg XLI of the annotations: “It seems in all Märchen of Blubeard, wherein his Blutrunst [flowing of blood] has not rightly explained, the idea to be the basis of himself through bathing in blood to cure of the blue beard; as the lepers. That is also why it is written that the blood is collected in basins.”

Maurice Maeterlinck wrote extensively on Bluebeard and in his plays names at least five former wives: Sélysette from "Aglavaine et Sélysette" (1896), Alladine from "Alladine et Palomides" (1894) and both Ygraine and Bellangère from "La mort de Tintagiles" (1894), Mélisande from "Pelléas et Mélisande" and Ariane from "Ariane et Barbe-bleue" (1907).

In Jacques Offenbach's opera (1866), the five previous wives are Héloïse, Eléonore, Isaure, Rosalinde and Blanche, with the sixth and final wife being a peasant girl, Boulotte, who finally reveals his secret when he attempts to have her killed so that he can marry Princess Hermia.

Béla Bartók's opera A Kékszakállú herceg vára (1911), with the libretto by Béla Balázs names "Judith", which places her as wife number four, whereas Ariane would be wife number six, but fails to take Judith into account. Bartók's version does not name any of the wives that appear in it. Rather than retelling the original story, the libretto only uses the main characters and setting, and transforms them into a symbolist story.

Anatole France's short story "The Seven Wives of Bluebeard" names Jeanne as the last wife before Bluebeard's death.

Alfred Savoir wrote in the 1920s a play "La huitième femme de Barbe-Bleue" (Bluebeard's eighth wife) from which Sam Wood and Ernst Lubitsch produced two films, other than starting from the point of being a plus one wife of Bluebeard and that it considers Anatole France's count of his wives, this play or the films share nothing with a description or numbering of the duke's wives.

In Edward Dmytryk's film Bluebeard (1972), Baron von Sepper (Richard Burton) is an Austrian aristocrat known as Bluebeard for his blue-toned beard, and his appetite for beautiful wives. This film names an American beauty named "Anne", who discovers a vault in his castle filled with the frozen bodies of his previous wives.

Variations

"Blue Beard" by Harry Clarke.

Other versions of Bluebeard include:[11]

In Charles Dickens' short story, the titular character is described as "an offshoot of the Bluebeard family", and is far more bloodthirsty than most Bluebeards: he cannibalises each wife a month after marriage. He meets his demise after his sister-in-law in revenge for the death of her sister, marries him and consumes a deadly poison just before he devours her.

In DC Comics' Fables series, Bluebeard appears as an amoral character, willing to kill and often suspected of being involved in various nefarious deeds. Bluebeard is also a character in the video game by Telltale Games based on the Fables comics, The Wolf Among Us.

In the Japanese light novel and recently adapted manga/anime Fate/Zero, Bluebeard appears as the Caster Servant, where his character largely stems from Gilles de Rais as a serial murderer of children.

Bluebeard appears as a minor darklord in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (2nd ed.) Ravenloft Accessory Darklords.

In Stephen King's The Shining, the story of Blue Beard is read by Jack to Danny as a 3-year-old, to his wife's disapproval.

In theatre

In television

  • Bluebeard is featured in Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics as part of its "Grimm Masterpiece Theater" season.
  • The character Bluebeard is also featured as one of seven servants in the 2011 anime Fate/Zero.
  • Bluebeard is featured in The Fairytale Detective Sandra as the villain in the episode The Forbidden Room.
  • Bluebeard is featured in Scary Tales, produced by the Discovery Channel, Sony and IMAX, episode one, in 2011. Not related to the Disney collection of the same name. Revealing what might be the truth behind this scary fairy tale.

In other media

  • Bluebeard featured as a villain in the comic series Fables.
  • Bluebeard also featured in "The Wolf Among Us" a game based around Fables. He is voiced by Dave Fennoy.
  • Bluebeard is mentioned in "Blackberry Picking", a poem by Seamus Heaney.
  • Bluebeard is the title of and inspiration for a song by the Cocteau Twins. It was included on their 1993 album "Four-Calendar Café".
  • Bluebeard was adapted for BBC radio4 in 2014 in a radio play called Burning Desires by Pier Productions.
  • A crypt for Bluebeard and his wives is featured in the exit area of The Haunted Mansion at the Magic Kingdom park in Walt Disney World.
  • In the Sisters Grimm series by Michael Buckley, Bluebeard is a minor villain and attempts to kill Ms. White.
  • In the anime series FateZero, the heroic spirit Caster names himself as Bluebeard shortly after the senseless murder of a child.

In film

Several film versions of the story exist:

References

  1. ^ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Bluebeard" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
  2. ^ "Charles Perrault (1628-1703)". CLPAV.
  3. ^ a b c Iona and Peter Opie (1974). The Classic Fairy Tales. Oxford University Press. pp. 103–105. ISBN 0-19-520219-8.
  4. ^ Marina Warner. From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales And Their Tellers. p. 261. ISBN 0-374-15901-7.
  5. ^ a b Maria Tatar. The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales. W.W. Norton & Company. p. 151. ISBN 0-393-05163-3.
  6. ^ http://www.wollamshram.ca/1001/Dixon/dixon02_20.htm
  7. ^ Heidi Anne Heiner. "Tales Similar to Bluebeard".
  8. ^ Paul Delarue, The Borzoi Book of French Folk-Tales, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., p. 359, 1956
  9. ^ Stith Thompson (1977). The Folktale. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. p. 36.
  10. ^ Francis James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads; v 1, New York: Dover Publications, p 47, 1965
  11. ^ Shuli Barzilai, Tales of Bluebeard and His Wives from Late Antiquity to Postmodern Times
  12. ^ Adams, William Davenport. "A dictionary of the drama: a guide to the plays, play-wrights, players, and playhouses of the United Kingdom and America", Chatto & Windus, 1904, p. 176

Further reading

  • Hermansson, Casie E. (2009). Bluebeard: A Reader's Guide to the English Tradition. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi.
  • Loo, Oliver (2014). The Original 1812 Grimm Fairy Tales Kinder- und Hausmärchen Childrens and Household Tales
  • Ogden, Valerie (2014). "Bluebeard Brave Warrior, Brutal Psychopath" Palisades, New York: History Publishing Company.
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