Literature / Bluebeard

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An old French Folktale (online version here) written as La Barbe Bleue ("The Blue Beard") by Charles Perrault in 1697, which later found its way into the Grimms' first edition of 1812 as König Blaubart or "King Bluebeard" (Online version here). (In various versions of the fairy tale the eponymous man is a king, sometimes a knight or other rich person.) The story starts with a rich gentleman, who is a widower, asking for the hand of a fair young maiden in marriage. After the wedding, he gives her a key-ring with the keys to all the doors of his mansion (or palace), with the request that if she loves him she must never, ever, ever use the golden key to open a certain door in the house.

Then he leaves the house on business, sometimes for days at a time, and the woman gets bored and eaten up with curiosity about the door she is not supposed to open, so finally she goes and opens it. (In some versions Bluebeard merely points out the key as forbidden, and the woman tries the key in all the doors of the house until she finds the right chamber.) When she opens the door, she finds the blood-spattered dead bodies of all of Bluebeard's former wives, whom he murdered for their money.

The wife flees in horror and tries to act as if nothing happened, but, when Bluebeard returns, he invariably finds out what she has done, one way or the other (sometimes by finding traces of blood on her shoes or the key that she dropped in fright), and threatens to kill her, too, for betraying his trust. Depending on the version of the tale, she is saved by the arrival of her relatives who kill Bluebeard, or, after having been locked up, manages to flee and alert the authorities.

A second Grimm variant, "Fitcher's Bird", indicates that the woman was only wrong insofar as she got caught. The heroine in "Fitcher's Bird" also "betrays his trust" to find the bodies of her sisters, but does so in a manner that he cannot detect, and therefore ultimately comes out on top.

An English version of the story, "Mr. Fox", has the heroine witness the villain murdering a previous bride, and confronting him at the wedding breakfast with the severed hand of the unfortunate lady. Shakespeare, in Much Ado About Nothing, makes a reference to the recurrent rhyme in this version:

This story has given name to a specific kind of Serial Killer, "The Bluebeard," who kills a succession of wives. One of the most infamous examples to get the nickname is Frenchman Henri Désiré Landru, "The Bluebeard of Gambais".

Despite what Bart Simpson may tell you, the titular character is not a pirate.

Bluebeard and variations contain the following tropes:

• Adaptational Alternate Ending: Some versions change the ending to have Bluebeard win, such as the introductory story in Bluebeard's Bride. Potentially justified in that he killed a lot of wives before the one seen in the tale that escaped.
• Adaptational Location Change: Originally set in France, some versions move the setting to the Middle East, usually the Ottoman Empire or Persia. This includes the 1798 opera adaptation.
• Ambiguously Human: Bluebeard, because of his titular blue beard, is implied to be much more than a typical human Serial Killer. In particular, he hews very closely to the common portrayal of ogres in French and German fairy tales, insofar as he's a rich, solitary figure who lives in a lavish mansion while also being a savage killer with a larder-like room filled with bodies — compare him to the so-named ogres in Hop-o'-My-Thumb and Puss in Boots, for instance. Artwork also tends to portray him as a very big man. However, he is not usually described as being any particular type of nonhuman entity.
• Beard of Evil: The title character's striking blue beard accentuates his villainy.
• Big Bad: The titular Bluebeard turns out to be a serial wife murderer and intends on making the protagonist his next victim.
• Big Damn Heroes: The relatives, if they arrive in the nick of time.
• The Bluebeard: Trope Namer, about the man who is discovered to have killed his previous wives for money and stuffed their bodies in his secret room.
• Bowdlerize: One version of the tale from the Indian comic "Tinkle Digest" changes Bluebeard's wives to his maids, and instead of being killed they are changed into statues. The main characters are sisters who are worried that their sister Elsa went missing after going to work for Bluebeard for a month; they decide to take the job to find out what happened to Elsa. Their older brother goes to get help from the army, and will arrive back in a month. He arrives just in time to save his little sisters, and when Bluebeard dies all of his statues turn back into normal women.
• The Cavalry: The wife's brothers in Perrault's version. They arrive right in time to save her and kill Bluebeard.
• Creator's Culture Carryover: Some versions are set in cities in the Middle East like Baghdad, and give the wife the name Fatima. But her sister is still called Anne and Bluebeard also keeps his European name.
• Damsel in Distress: The wife, as she stalls for time as her relatives approach.
• Decapitation Presentation: In some versions of the story, Bluebeard's new bride doesn't find all of his previous wives' entire bodies, just their heads he's cut off and preserved. It's much easier to store them all in a single closet, you see.
• Deus ex Machina:
  • The woman's relatives seem to show up out of nowhere, to kill Bluebeard at the very last minute.
  • In the Georges Méliès film version, a good fairy brings the dead brides back to life.
  • Averted in the "Mr. Fox" variation, where it makes sense that her relatives are there to save her. She waits to expose Mr. Fox until she, he, and the rest of her family and suitors are at her pre-wedding breakfast.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: In one regional variant, the girl escapes, a furious Bluebeard goes in search of her for three months... and then gets killed by a werewolf, which was in no way set up beforehand.
• Family-Unfriendly Death: A lot of versions have some awfully graphic descriptions of the murdered women when the heroine finds them.
• Faux Affably Evil: The title character seems nice enough at first... then we learn he's a Serial Killer.
• Final Girl: Bluebeard is a wife-killer and has killed at least six other previous wives, as his latest would-be victim discovers. She delays her death time enough for her brothers to come and kill him.
• Forbidden Fruit: The forbidden chamber must never be opened, but ultimately the temptation is too strong for the bride.
• Human Head on the Wall: Some variations on the story have the wife discover Bluebeard isn't keeping the entire bodies of his previous wives preserved, just their heads that he's cut off and hung up in the closet as trophies.
• Idiot Ball: Good grief, why would the murderer give his wife a key to the room that he's desperate to keep a secret?
  • For that matter, why exactly would you keep the bodies of your previous victims around at all if this is something you want to keep a secret?
  • In many versions, the key is a Secret Test of Character that the wife inevitably fails. This gives Bluebeard the thin excuse of killing them because he can't trust them.
  • In some versions, the wife discovers the secret room while throwing a party. So why doesn't she leave with her friends when they depart or at the very least tell them what she saw so they can send for help?
• Interplay of Sex and Violence: In some versions, instead of the wife's making increasingly feeble pleas for Bluebeard to hold off murdering her a little longer (and his inexplicably granting her a respite each time long enough for the Deus ex Machina to occur), the tale has the more clever device of having her ask him to wait while she puts on various parts of her wedding dress. Due to an ancient version of this trope, this tricks Bluebeard into thinking that she's preparing for an imminent marriage to Death, i.e. that she's resigned to dying and just insists on doing it with honor; which he decides to allow because he's rather Wicked Cultured that way.
• Orientalism: Depictions of Bluebeard as Middle Eastern are often considered an example of this, due to the portrayal of Bluebeard as dangerous and exotic.
• Off-Limits Room: Bluebeard welcomes his new wife into his home, but warns her to never use the keys to open one specific room. While he's away on a business trip, curiosity gets the better of the wife and she opens it, discovering that her husband is a Serial Killer and the rooms contain the bodies of his dead ex-wives.
• Off With Her Head!: In some versions of the story, the wife doesn't find the bodies of her predecessors, but only their severed heads, all lined up in the cupboard. The variations where Bluebeard wins also frequently feature the wife being killed when Bluebeard chops off her head.
• Peek-a-Boo Corpse: Several of them. This is the story of Bluebeard and the corpses of his many murdered wives in the closet.
• Psychosexual Horror: The story is about a woman who marries a man under the promise of being given wealth and luxury. One day, Bluebeard must leave home for a couple of days and grants her access to all the rooms of his home, with the only request being that she stay out of the locked room. Unfortunately, her curiosity gets the better of her, and she discovers Bluebeard's previous wives dead and chained up. When Bluebeard inevitably finds out, he throws aside all of his good graces and tries to murder her for disobeying him.
• Race Lift: Bluebeard was originally French and may have been inspired by historical figures from Brittany. However, various illustrations have made him Middle Eastern, usually Turkish. It’s possible these artists were inspired by Shahryar, the sultan of Arabian Nights who also kept murdering his wives.
• Red Right Hand: The antagonist's facial hair is an unnatural shade of blue.
• Remember the New Guy?: The wife's sister, Anne, randomly shows up at the castle during the climax to call for their brothers to comes rescue them despite the fact she was never mentioned previously in the story.
• Schmuck Bait: "You can open any door in the castle, but not that one." Now, guess what she does next as soon as he's gone.
• Secret Test of Character: Some versions of the story make the key into this for Bluebeard's wife - since she disobeyed his direct orders, he can't trust her and now he's "justified" in killing her.
• Serial Killer: Bluebeard has murdered all his previous wives for disobeying him.
• The Sociopath: Implied. Bluebard is superficially charming in public (known for his generosity and courtly graces), but behind closed doors he rather coldly and casually murders his many wives over the smallest disobediences or missteps, then stuffs their rotting corpses in a single room in the main manor in front of his next wife.
• Spirit Advisor: In one version, the ghosts of Bluebeard's previous wives help the girl escape with the same instruments that Bluebeard used to kill them.
• Surprising Domestic Discovery: A key plot point in the original story and its subsequent adaptations over the centuries is that after some time into their marriage, the wife of Bluebeard discovers to her horror that in a locked room in Bluebeard's home, he kept the corpses of his previous wives whom he murdered.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Bluebeard's blue beard puts people off. But his wealth and apparent generosity keeps getting him young, beautiful wives from time to time.
• Villain Has a Point: The story does point out that it was wrong of Bluebeard's wives to break their promise to him, which is even treated as an aesop in some tellings. Not that it justifies murdering them or makes him any less of a monster.
• Wealthy Ever After: The wife is Bluebeard's only heir, so his discovery as a Serial Killer and subsequent execution leaves the wife very wealthy.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Some versions of the text mention that the wife invites friends over and is having a party when she goes down to the cellar and discovers Bluebeard's secret. During the climax the friends inexplicably disappear from the castle and don't appear in the story again despite the fact they were there when the wife went downstairs.

Adaptations of the tale or appearances of the character in other works: