30 pages • 1 hour read
Charles PerraultBluebeard
Fiction | Short Story | Middle Grade | Published in 1697A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Charles Perrault
Charles Perrault was born in 1628, one of seven siblings in a wealthy bourgeois family residing in Paris. Benefiting from King Louis XIV’s tendency to choose public servants from the “common” class rather than the aristocracy, Perrault began his career as an administrative politician in 1663. His abilities as a prolific writer helped him gain influence both in his work and as a member of the Académie Française (French Academy), a cultural council that exists to this day. Dedicating himself to literary pursuits after being ousted from his political career by a rival in 1682, Perrault began writing poetry on Christian and monarchical themes, strands of which also appear in his fairy tales. In 1687, Perrault became involved in a debate about the value of classic literature versus that of contemporary literature known as The Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns. Perrault was on the side of the Moderns in this argument, despite the fact that later in life, he would become a writer of traditional children’s stories. In 1891, he released his first tale in verse entitled “Griselidis,” followed by “Donkey-skin” in 1894 and an early version of his Tales or Stories of Times Past containing “Blue Beard” in 1895.
Though few personal details are known about Perrault’s life, he married in 1672 and had at least three sons and possibly a daughter before his wife died in 1678. Sources from the time record that he was an unusual man in that he took an active interest in the raising of his children, which may be related to his work with fairy tales. He died in Paris in 1703.
Literary Context: Folk and Fairy Tales in the 17th and 18th Centuries
The late 17th century marked the beginning of a movement to record and improve upon the tales told by rural and often female oral storytellers. Wealthy city dwellers and the nobility became fascinated by this genre of narrative, and Perrault’s Paris saw fairy tales become quite fashionable. People from high society began writing their own versions of these traditional stories and sharing them with each other in literary salons, which were private gatherings of intellectuals in the drawing-rooms of the wealthy. His society’s fascination with such folk tales is likely part of why Charles Perrault began writing his Tales or Stories of Times Past—and why he subtitled them Tales of Mother Goose, Mother Goose being a character symbolizing those rural tale spinners. Part of the oral tradition was that each storyteller added their own flourishes to classic stories, and so Perrault and his contemporaries did the same. Though Perrault’s version of “Blue Beard” now tends to be the authoritative one, many other variants exist, originating not only from France but all over Europe.
Fairy tales continued to be popular in the 18th century, giving rise to the Brothers Grimm’s project of recording Germany’s folk narratives. While early editions of the Grimms’ Children’s and Household Tales included a “Blue Beard” entry, contemporaries accused them of basing it on Perrault’s version and thereby betraying the essentially Germanic quality of their collection. In later editions, “Blue Beard” was left out; however, the Grimms included two variations on the tale, “The Robber Bridegroom” and “Fitcher’s Bird.” These most differ from “Blue Beard” in that the young heroine rescues herself, rather than awaiting rescue by her brothers.
Critical Context: “Blue Beard” as a Western Cultural Touchstone
The tale of “Blue Beard” has never faded from the Western literary consciousness since Perrault’s publication of it in 1697. Every intellectual era applies its own lens to analyzing and critiquing the fairy tale. For example, in the Victorian era (approximately 1820-1914), “Blue Beard” became primarily a didactic tool for indoctrinating children against curiosity, rather than an entertaining horror story told in literary salons. Victorian commentators blamed the wife for her inquisitiveness and found ways to pardon Blue Beard for his deadly anger.
In the first half of the 20th century, psychology became a common tool for understanding fairy tales. Though there was no distinction in Perrault’s time between stories for adult audiences and those for young audiences, scholars began to see the symbolic power of fairy tales as appealing to children’s psychological needs. Austrian psychologist Bruno Bettelheim wrote an influential book called The Uses of Enchantment in 1976, claiming that fairy tales help children process their anxieties by allowing them to imagine their own dangerous or frightening emotional impulses. Multiple Freudian and Jungian analyses of “Blue Beard” exist, in addition to later examinations from Feminist and Gender Studies perspectives.
Reflecting this perennial obsession with “Blue Beard,” there are many adaptations of the story in forms ranging from opera to film. The most well-known include Angela Carter’s short story “The Bloody Chamber,” the film Gaslight directed by George Cukor, and a novel by Kurt Vonnegut entitled Blue Beard.
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