Blog Entry#9

Bluebeard is a much darker villain than we've seen in other stories. While there have certainly been other sinister antagonists, Bluebeard's cruelty runs much deeper. As a man who desires to marry young women whom he then sets up for failure. Bestowing upon them a test of their obedience which their curiosity is sure to win, he now feels he has a troublesome wife whose punishment can only be death and thus begins the vicious cycle as he looks for his next victim.

It is a twisted person, indeed, who keeps memorabilia of his bloodied victims in a locked room for his new wife to stumble over.

My favorite version of Bluebeard was certainly the Fitcher's Bird by The Brother's Grimm. Although her older sister's fell into the same trap as the young bride in Bluebeard by Charles Perrault, the youngest sister, who is "clever and cunning", is able to outwit her husband and save not only herself, but her dead sisters and any other young women who would have otherwise fallen victim to the sorcerer's cruelty.

It is still a brutal story, regardless of the cleverness of the heroine who does not rely so desperately on her siblings aid to free herself. The descriptions of the hacked up bodies as well as the dismembered remains of her sisters which were "chopped to pieces", leaves the reader with a truly chilling effect.

Still this version does, unlike Perrault's Bluebeard, was not as suspenseful. To have the sorcerer go through the first two sisters in a similar fashion, but then the third -- and youngest -- to prove to be the bright young heroine is typical in fairystories. However, to only have one young women and that desperate moment when she is living her last moments and waiting for the arrival of her brothers, the reader -- after witnessing how dark the story has been thus far -- does begin to fear for the life of the young bride.