Fairy Tales 2010

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

A Short Something or Perhaps Nothing that Has a Little to Do With Bluebeard...

It is at least slightly interesting that most of the stories of Bluebeard in some way make the victim the one at fault, when clearly the man is the bad guy for being a serial killer... and even the later rewritings of the tale attempt to make Bluebeard into a good guy and demonize the wife. Victim blaming is bad.

That being said, I would like now to focus on a minor detail that I didn't really find fascinating but am able to fixate on because I feel like it: the urgent trip that the master of the house invariably must take... It is at least slightly noteworthy that the wife is only ever trusted with any of the keys when the husband has chosen to leave and that the husband never so much as shows her the rooms of the house of his own accord.

The fact that he chooses to allow her the key to the room with the corpses also suggests that he is testing her to some purpose, which is made explicitly clear in Fitcher's Bird when the evidence not existing inspires the man to remain faithful to the woman...

An actually interesting thought is that the sorcerer in Fitcher's Bird suddenly lost all power over the girl and had to do as she requested when he decided to actually marry her... Marriage is enslavement for a man and will bring about his demise in the event that he is not careful enough to find a trustworthy bride, which she was not... Clearly, marriage is evil.

1 comment:

  1. I agree with the first paragraph- I also found it interesting that the woman is always portrayed as the one at fault. Though she should have listened when he asked her not to go in that room, it is also not a normal reaction to kill someone for not obeying an order. Also, like you said, he leaves her with the key to the door which is a big test of her self control. If he really did not want her to go in there he would keep the key himself.

    ReplyDelete