I’ve never read Bluebeard until now and I can see why it was left out of the normal fairy tales that my parents used to read to me all the time. It is very gory for a young kid. The fact that women are getting butchered by a man is just not exactly something I would read to a kid before bed. However, just like Little Red Riding Hood, there are versions where the “bride” in the story doesn’t follow the rules and gets butchered, along with the other women that Bluebeard took as victims, but there are also the women that get away. As in the Brothers Grimm version of the story, Fitcher’s Bird. After convincing the sorcerer that she has not gone into his secret room, she tells him that she will marry him only if he brings a basket full of gold back to her parents. (The basket also happened to carry her two supposed to be dead sisters.) As he carried the basket to her house, she tricked all of his crew to come to his house for their “wedding” and her and her family burned down the house with the sorcerer and his crew all locked inside.
“But when he got to the house with his guests, the brothers and relatives who had been sent to rescue the bride were already there. They locked the doors to the house so that no one could escape. Then they set fire to it so that the sorcerer and his crew burned to death” (pg. 151).
What a happy ending!! Although there are murdered women in the basin that they describe to be covered in blood and body parts, all of the women that are part of the stories usually make it out quite alive. For instance, in Fitcher’s Bird again, both of the sisters were killed before the third one came along and their body parts magically rejoined and burst back to life so that they could all escape. (Reasonable, right?). Also, in Charles Perrault’s version called Bluebeard, the woman was caught going into the forbidden room, but her brothers happen to be coming to visit that day. They made a quick entrance and killed Bluebeard before he could get to the bride.
“Just at that moment there was such a loud pounding at the gate that Bluebeard stopped short. The gate was opened and two horsemen, swords in hand, dashed in and made straight for Bluebeard. He realized that they were the brothers of his wife: the one a dragoon and the other a musketeer. He fled instantly in effort to escape. But the two brothers were so hot in pursuit that they trapped him before he could get to the stairs. They plunged their swords through his body and left him for dead” (pg. 147).
That bride also went on to receive all of his riches, and marry the man of her dreams. Although Bluebeard’s stories may be very bloody at points, they tend to end with happy endings.
Skylar Nerone 