Bluebeard

Though a marriage is the central relationship in “Blue Beard,” it deviates from the majority of fairy tales in that this marriage is neither the solution nor the conclusion to the conflict of the story. Instead, it is the source of danger, highlighting the vulnerability of women under Patriarchal Control. At its core, the story is about a bride who ignores her husband’s wishes for privacy and discovers that he is a serial killer, igniting his desire to kill her, too. Though Perrault did not invent the story of “Blue Beard,” his version remains prominent due to the stylistic choices he made.

Perrault’s primary tool in writing this fiction is suspense, specifically created by mysterious details, delays, and foreshadowing. As the conflict between Blue Beard and his wife is not introduced until a fourth of the way into the narrative, the reader’s interest is captured not by plot but by the symbolic strength of the unnatural, “ugly and frightful” (70) blue beard, as well as the ominous phrasing “no one knew what had become of them” (70) in reference to Blue Beard’s former wives.

Though Perrault uses