The female protagonist in The Blue Beard and fairy tale heroine representations

Bluebeard

The story of Bluebeard is a famous one, although not as often retold as some of the happier stories like "Cinderella" or "Sleeping Beauty." One of the reasons for this is that the story of "Bluebird" does not end happily, nor does it allow the hearer to vicariously imagine him or herself saved from a life of poverty or despair. Fairy tales were told not only to entertain but also to instill wisdom and teach the listener important lessons about proper behavior. The concept was that if a young person, particularly a young female, emulated the behaviors of the virtuous characters in these stories, then perhaps they too would be saved from a miserable life of destitution and depression. This tale, then, is an advisory both about who you choose to marry and about the dangers of disobeying your husband. Critics have argued about what the purpose of this story might be and how we should interpret this story as modern readers. Two critics with decidedly opposing perspectives on the Bluebeard tale are Andrea Dworkin in Woman Hating and Allison Lurie in Don't Tell the Grown Ups.

A wealthy, but fearsome man desires to marry. Finally, he finds a willing young lady who is won over by his seeming generosity and wealth. In her new home, the wife is furnished with all she could desire (Opie). The home they share is filled with opulence and grandeur and the wife is allowed to share in all of it. In return for this splendor, Bluebeard orders her not to open his private cupboard which is supposedly filled with all his most expensive and rare treasures. This, of course, is something she is unable to do. Inside she sees the remains of the former wives of Bluebeard who also were unable to heed his demand not to look inside. The bride in the Opie version of the story does not die. Instead her brothers come and save her at the moment just before Bluebeard would cut off her head. She inherits all his money and it is supposed that she lives happily ever after, but the story begs the reader to ask how someone could go on after the horrors this young woman witnessed in that cupboard.

In the Dworkin piece, the author states that people are born to a certain gender. This gender has nothing to do with the physical differences between the sexes, but is concerned with the sociological stereotypes that people are supposed to embrace when they belong to either the group of females or males. Popular culture is one way in which society reinforces gender, exemplified by the fairy tale (Dworkin 34). The husband is in reality, according to this critic, an avatar for the father figure in the female protagonists life. Female is subservient to male and it is up to her to obey her husband just as she would her father. Women are supposed to be passive. Any woman who does not do as she is told is inherently flawed and needs to be punished by the male in her life.

This piece works with the story of Bluebeard. The bride is to be killed at the end of the story, although in this instance she does not. She is to die not because her husband happens to be a serial killer, but because she defied his orders and opened the locked door. Dworkin says that all women who act in the fairy tales are at fault for anything negative that befalls them. A reader would learn this lesson from the story. Had the wife not opened the door, then her husband would not have been compelled to murder her.

The second critic is Alison Lurie. In her book Don't Tell the Grown Ups, the author describes how some people feel as though fairy tales are not and were not intended for children's audiences. She also talks about the gendering of the female and how the males use this tendency in fairy tales to exploit women and to somehow brainwash them into behaving in a way that is subservient and submissive (Lurie 18). However, she states, this is more because of the Victorian aesthetic than the actual perspective of the storytellers. Most of the stories that are told today have been filtered through the lens of Victorianism, which was a culture wherein the male was dominant and the female was expected to stay home in the domestic sphere. The stories we know today are not only skewed to the masculine, but have been sterilized to remove some of the darker or more feminist qualities (Lurie 22). Some of the scariest tales or the versions which celebrate the ingenuity and bravery of the female have been lost.

In the Bluebeard story, the protagonist is not a particularly hard-working or mistreated young woman, as one sees in Cinderella or the like. Rather she is relatively comfortable and marries beneficially to help herself and her family financially. Where most stories end in a marriage, Bluebeard essentially begins with one. In many versions of the story, as has already been said, the bride dies at the end which reaffirms the position that wife must be obedient; an idea that very well may have only come along with the Victorians. However, in this version of the story, the wife does not die. Instead, her curiosity is essentially rewarded. She does not live with the oppressive murderer anymore but instead has become financially stable enough to function as a matriarch to the rest of her family.