Atwood's Bluebeard's Egg as an Inverse Fairy Tale
This essay argues that Margaret Atwood's short story "Bluebeard's Egg" functions as a deliberate inversion of the traditional fairy tale, using Charles Perrault's "Bluebeard" as a framework for comparison. Through close analysis of characterization, plot, and point-of-view, the paper demonstrates how Atwood revises key fairy tale conventions to show that wealth, physical attractiveness, and marriage are insufficient guarantees of happiness for real women. The essay draws on scholarly criticism to support its central claim that Sally's doubt, jealousy, and ultimate confusion represent a thoroughly modern and disenchanted response to the fairy tale ideal.
- Introduction: Atwood and the Fairy Tale Inversion: Thesis: fairy tales fail real women's happiness
- Sally's Fairy Tale Life and Its Discontents: Sally's apparent ideal life masks deep doubt
- Character Contrasts: Ed Versus Bluebeard: Ed's appeal and flaws antagonize Sally's happiness
- Plot Differences and the Ambiguous Ending: Infidelity replaces Bluebeard's murderous climax
- Point-of-View and the Compounding of Doubt: Sally's subjective narration intensifies her confusion
- Conclusion: What Fairy Tales Cannot Provide: Women need love and reassurance beyond fairy tale trappings
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What makes this paper effective
- The thesis is clearly stated early and consistently supported: fairy tale circumstances do not equate to real happiness, and every section returns to this claim with fresh textual evidence.
- The comparative structure — pairing Perrault's "Bluebeard" against Atwood's revision across character, plot, and point-of-view — gives the argument logical organization and cumulative force.
- Close reading of specific quotations, particularly Sally's embrace of the refrigerator and her confused internal monologue after witnessing Ed and Marylynn, grounds abstract claims about doubt and dissatisfaction in the actual text.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper uses comparative literary analysis across a source text and its literary adaptation. By identifying deliberate deviations in characterization, narrative structure, and focalization, the writer shows how authorial choices create meaning — a core skill in literary criticism. Citing secondary scholarship (Merli, Ridout, Lyons, Hermansson) to contextualize the reading demonstrates integration of academic sources rather than mere summary.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens with a review of existing critical perspectives before asserting its own thesis. Each of the three body sections addresses a distinct literary element — character, plot, and point-of-view — following the same structural pattern: describe Perrault's version, contrast it with Atwood's, and explain what the difference reveals about the theme. The conclusion synthesizes these three strands and restates the central argument about women's needs beyond the fairy tale ideal.
Introduction: Atwood and the Fairy Tale Inversion
Conventional literary criticism pertaining to Margaret Atwood and her works of fiction tends to focus on the postmodern genre for which she is generally regarded as a purveyor. This scope of focus certainly applies to a body of criticism aimed at some of her shorter works of fiction, particularly those found in her collection Bluebeard's Egg. Carolyn Merli (2007) both mentions this propensity and is disposed to "consider the 'postmodern' strategies of one of Atwood's [stories in] Bluebeard's Egg." Postmodernists will find a variety of evidence to justify an analysis of Atwood's titular work from this perspective, such as her temporal displacements (Ridout 856), in which the narration leaps forward and backward in time despite chronicling a single dinner party.
In examining the work through such a lens, however, it may be easy to overlook one of the most important facets of this particular story. It is vital to understand that what Atwood has constructed with her version of the Bluebeard fairy tale is actually the inverse of a fairy tale itself. Atwood's work proves that fairy tale lives, endings, and mores are not enough for happiness, and that in their wake reign morasses of doubt and dissatisfaction.
Sally's Fairy Tale Life and Its Discontents
In order to propagate her take on the inverse effects that fairy tales can have on real people, Atwood sets up a plethora of points of comparison between Perrault's Bluebeard and her own story, as well as between fairy tales in general and her narrative. The latter is evident fairly early in "Bluebeard's Egg" as the author considers the viewpoint of Sally, the story's protagonist. On the surface, it would appear that Sally has everything a woman could want — an attractive, affluent husband, a beautiful house, a degree of wealth, and fairly good looks herself. Atwood informs the reader of this when Sally reflects that "She has what they call everything: Ed, their wonderful house on a ravine lot, something she's always wanted" (Atwood 783).
Such a combination frequently serves as the ultimate fairy tale paradigm for many women. Elements of this model also appear in the original Bluebeard fairy tale, in which a woman marries to achieve wealth and through that wealth attains happiness (Hermansson 312). However, the critical point of distinction between fairy tales in general — and between Perrault's fairy tale and Atwood's version specifically — is that marriage and wealth do not equate to happiness for the bride in Atwood's work. Instead, Sally harbors a number of doubts about her husband, her best friend, and ultimately herself. These doubts in the face of what appears to be a fairy tale life suggest that Atwood is arguing that fairy tales are not enough to satisfy women in the real world.
Character Contrasts: Ed Versus Bluebeard
One of the critical points of distinction between Atwood's tale and Perrault's "Bluebeard" lies in characterization. In Perrault's version, the husband is physically repulsive — a rampant wife-murderer, which makes him about as unattractive as a man can be. The husband in Atwood's work, Ed, is renowned for his good looks. He is so attractive that women habitually gravitate toward him. This characteristic marks a remarkable distinction between Sally's husband and Bluebeard: women greatly desire the former while they attempt to avoid the latter.
The other principal difference between these characters is that, throughout Atwood's story, Ed appears painfully unintelligent — a character flaw that does not apply to Bluebeard. If anything, Bluebeard is credited with a certain shrewdness that enables him to exist through most of Perrault's work as a criminal whose crimes go unnoticed. Both of these differences in the husband characters, however, serve to antagonize and ultimately diminish Sally's happiness. Because Ed easily attracts other women, she is vigilant and jealous; because he is intellectually less capable than she is, she is dissatisfied with their relationship. Thus, despite being an affluent physician whom women find beautiful, Ed's flaws help demonstrate that fairy tale lives are not enough to sustain women's happiness in the real world.
Conclusion: What Fairy Tales Cannot Provide
The Bluebeard fairy tale provides a framework for several points of comparison that Atwood creates with her own work to prove that for real women, fairy tale circumstances do not necessarily equate to happiness. Atwood makes deliberate deviations in terms of plot, character, and point-of-view to offer an alternative, more modern meaning of a fairy tale existence for women and wives. These dissimilarities help emphasize the fact that women need much more than merely wealth, a husband, and a fairy tale home. They actually need reassurance and fulfillment and, perhaps most of all, a concerned and devoted love that they can reciprocate. Without these needs being met, the fantasy of a fairy tale is just another aspect of life that reflects a deeper and more profound dissatisfaction.
Works Cited
Atwood, Margaret. Bluebeard's Egg. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1983. Print.
Hermansson, Casie. "Found in Translation: Charles Perrault's 'Bluebeard' in the English Eighteenth Century." University of Toronto Quarterly. 76(2), 796–807. 2007. Print.
Lyons, Bonnie. "Bluebeard's Egg and Other Stories." Studies in Short Fiction. 24(3), 313–313. 1987. Print.
Merli, Carolyn. "Hatching the Posthuman: Margaret Atwood's 'Bluebeard's Egg.'" Journal of the Short Story in English. 48. 2007. Web. http://jsse.revues.org/780
Ridout, Alice. "Temporality and Margaret Atwood." University of Toronto Quarterly. 69(4), 849–870. 2000. Print.
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