Bluebeard (Perrault) — the tale of the forbidden room
Overview of Charles Perrault’s Bluebeard: publication history, plot, motifs, interpretations, historical associations, related variants and cultural legacy of the forbidden-room tale.
Overview
Barbe-bleue, commonly known in English as "Bluebeard," is a European fairy tale most often associated with Charles Perrault. Perrault placed the story in a deluxe illustrated manuscript prepared for a high-ranking patron and later included it in the published collection Contes de ma mère l'oye. The main narrative concerns a wealthy, mysterious husband who gives his new wife a set of keys but forbids her from opening one particular locked room. When curiosity leads her to disobey, she discovers evidence of his crimes and must use quick thinking to survive.
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Publication history
Perrault's version first circulated in manuscript form and was later printed anonymously in late 17th-century Paris. The deluxe manuscript was reportedly prepared for Mademoiselle, a niece of the king, and the printed edition reached a wider reading public. Editors and commentators have traced differences between versions and later retellings, noting Perrault's moralizing tone and courtly setting as characteristic of his approach.
Plot summary
The tale centers on an imposing man—often described as having an unusual facial hair color—who marries and then leaves his wife with keys and a strict prohibition. The wife uses a smaller key to open the forbidden door and finds the corpses of previous wives, proof that the husband murders them. The key (sometimes shown as marked by a magic stain) becomes an instrument of revelation; the wife's delay and cleverness, and in many versions timely help from relatives, determine whether she escapes.
Motifs and themes
- The forbidden room as a test of obedience and curiosity; the motif of a concealed interior that must not be inspected.
- A stained token—the key or another object—that visibly records transgression and serves as a moral or judicial sign.
- Marriage, inheritance and power: anxieties about wealth, property transfer, and control within the household.
- Gendered vulnerability and resourcefulness: the wife's survival often depends on wit, delay, and assistance from kin.
- The broader cultural taboo against forbidden knowledge and the consequences of violating social prohibitions.
Origins, influences and historical associations
Scholars debate whether the tale is an original composition by Perrault or a retelling of older folktale material. The theme of a sealed chamber occurs in a range of traditions, including elements found in eastern literature, and Perrault's telling has been noted for an Oriental flavor in some of its imagery. Contemporary French readers sometimes associated conspicuous facial hair with foreign or Turkish fashions, and many early illustrations render Bluebeard in a turban-like headdress or emphasize his beards as a mark of otherness.
Attempts to link the character to real historical criminals are speculative but longstanding. The medieval nobleman Gilles de Rais, once a comrade of Joan of Arc, has been proposed as an inspiration because of contemporary reports of violent crimes and many alleged victims. Other local legends, such as those surrounding the Breton ruler Comorre, have been compared to the tale. These historical associations illuminate how motifs of secrecy and violence could be grafted onto known figures, but direct lineage remains uncertain.
Variants and related stories
Bluebeard belongs to a family of narratives that recur in European folktale traditions. The Brothers Grimm collected a related tale, "The Fitcher's Bird," and English oral tradition preserves analogous stories such as "Mr. Fox." Shared elements include a deceptive host, forbidden spaces, and the discovery of prior victims. Regional retellings adjust setting, emphasis and resolution: some stress punishment, others the heroine's clever escape, and some transform the gruesome material into cautionary moral fables.
Interpretations and cultural legacy
Interpreters have read Bluebeard through many lenses. Moral didacticism treats it as a warning about curiosity and disobedience. Feminist critics emphasize the tale's exposure of women's legal and social precarity within patrimonial systems, and psychoanalytic readings highlight symbols of secrecy, the unconscious and the power of forbidden knowledge. The striking image of a locked chamber, an incriminating key, and the motif of the murderous domestic space have inspired painters, playwrights, operas and filmmakers who either reproduce Perrault's moralizing voice or subvert it to explore psychological horror, gendered violence, or social critique.
Perrault's narrative remains a touchstone for studies of folktale transmission, symbolic motifs, and the ways literary tales intersect with broader cultural anxieties about trust, appearance, and authority. For readers interested in variants and historical commentary, editions of Perrault's collection and comparative folktale studies provide detailed notes and cross-references to related material.
Primary sources and comparative references include the original manuscript and the printed Contes de ma mère l'oye, modern critical editions, and scholarship that explores how courtly patronage (royal contexts), military reputations (military service) and contemporary reports about young boys and other alleged victims have shaped the tale's reception and speculative historicizing.
Content
A rich man with all kinds of possessions in town and country would like to take one of the two charming daughters of a neighbour of good standing as his wife. He leaves it up to the woman and her daughters to decide which one should marry him, but neither of them wants to marry him because they find his blue beard so ugly. Also, it is creepy to them that no one knows what happened to his previous wives. However, after he has invited the mother, her daughters and friends to the country for lively parties and all kinds of entertainment, the younger daughter decides to marry Bluebeard, since his beard is not so blue after all and he is a very decent man.
Soon after the wedding, Bluebeard informs his young wife that he must go to the country for six weeks on important business. He hands her a bunch of keys and tells her that she is free to move about the house and should quietly enjoy herself while he is away. Under no circumstances, however, should she use a certain small key and unlock the associated chamber on the ground floor with it, unless she wants to expose herself to his most terrible wrath.
No sooner has Bluebeard departed than the wife's friends hurry to Bluebeard's house, marvel at the various treasures in the various rooms and envy the young wife. The latter, however, is too restless to be pleased by the compliments, and, secretly and driven by curiosity, hurries down the stairs to the little chamber so quickly that she almost breaks her neck. She hesitates for a moment whether she should not rather respect the prohibition and not provoke Bluebeard's wrath, but then unlocks the door, trembling. In the chamber she finds Bluebeard's former wives murdered. Horrified, she drops the key into a pool of blood, picks it up, and locks the chamber again. Her attempts to clean the key of the bloodstains fail because it is an enchanted key.
Bluebeard returns unexpectedly quickly, having been told in a letter that the journey was no longer necessary, and immediately notices the disregard for his prohibition because of the traces of blood on the key. He becomes very angry and condemns his wife to instant death, that she may keep company with the corpses in the chamber. The woman succeeds in gaining time and sends her sister Anne to the tower to signal her two brothers to hurry up as soon as they arrive for their announced visit.
At the very last moment, before Bluebeard can decapitate his wife with a knife, the armed brothers appear and kill Bluebeard. The young widow inherits all Bluebeard's riches, thus providing her brothers with officer's patents, helps her sister to marry a man she has long loved, and happily marries an honorable man herself, so that she soon forgets Bluebeard.
Perrault ends his tale with two moral verses, denouncing the curiosity of women and the weakness of male henpecked heroes in his day:
Morale
Curiosity, for all its charms,
often costs plenty of regrets;
Every day you see a thousand examples of this happening.
That, if the women like it too, is a pretty fleeting pleasure,
as soon as you give in to it, it fades away,
and it always costs too much.
Other morality
If one had even so little acumen,
...and would scarcely understand the magic book of the world..,
you'd quickly see that this story..,
is a fairy tale from a bygone era.
There are no such terrible husbands anymore,
and not one who demands the impossible,
if he's unhappy or jealous.
With his wife, he is seen making flattering speeches,
and whatever color his beard may be,
it's hard to tell which one is the master.
Bechstein's Tale of the Knight Bluebeard
Ludwig Bechstein's version simplifies and shortens Perrault's descriptions. Instead of being invited to one of his country houses, Bluebeard is invited to his castle; her sister herself visits the woman and urges her to open the chamber. Bechstein may have felt little enthusiasm for the rather unimaginative adoption of the French fairy tale: "Shaken by death, the women and their sister (meaning the wife and her sister) now recoiled." He judged it was common, but probably only from books. According to Hans-Jörg Uther, his source was Perrault's Bluebeard in Friedrich Justin Bertuch's Die blaue Bibliothek aller Nationen I, 1790. To the same type of fairy tale belongs in Bechstein Die schöne junge Braut, cf. also Die drei Bräute and Das goldene Ei.
Ernst Heinrich Meier included a variant in the collection Deutsche Volksmärchen aus Schwaben (1852).
Cf. the motif of the forbidden door in Giambattista Basile's Pentameron II,8 The Little Slave, IV,6 The Three Crowns.
In Janosch's parody, Bluebeard is just laughed at by all the women until his beard turns white, at which point a beggar woman takes him and inherits his land. In Kaori Yuki's manga Ludwig Revolution, too, he is a poor fellow. Judith Kuckart transfers the plot to the present, with a convertible and a lonely villa estate.
Margaret Mahy's young adult book The Other Side of Silence uses the forbidden door motif with reference to Bluebeard.
A treatise by George Steiner on shadowy aspects of old European life is entitled In Bluebeard's Castle.
Questions and answers
Q: Who wrote the fairy tale "Bluebeard"?
A: Charles Perrault wrote the fairy tale "Bluebeard".
Q: When was it first published?
A: The fairy tale "Bluebeard" was first published anonymously in January 1697.
Q: In what collection of stories did it appear?
A: The fairy tale "Bluebeard" appeared in a collection of eight fairy tales by Perrault titled Histoires ou contes du temps passé (English: Stories or Tales of Past Times).
Q: What is the story about?
A: The story is about a cruel man who murders his wives so that he will inherit their wealth and puts their corpses in a secret room opened only by a magic key.
Q: Who believes that the story is original with Perrault?
A: Jacque Barchilon believes that the story is original with Perrault because there are no close antecedants.
Q: What elements from Eastern literature can be found in the story?
A: Elements from Eastern literature such as the taboo of the forbidden room can be found in "Bluebeard".
Q: Who may have been an inspiration for Bluebeard's character?
A: Medieval murderer of children Gilles de Rais may have been an inspiration for Bluebeard's character.
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AlegsaOnline.com Bluebeard (Perrault) — the tale of the forbidden room Leandro Alegsa
URL: https://en.alegsaonline.com/art/12388