Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Elements of Horror
The Bluebeard stories are unlike others we have read so far. This is mainly because of the degree of violence represented. In the stories, there is a chamber of some kind of dead, bloody maidens. In "The Robber Bridegroom" and "Mr. Fox" a hand or finger is cut off out of greed. These stories contain murder, greed, cannibalism and other unpleasant deeds. They seem to be very strict warnings rather than other more subtle insinuations.
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The Bluebeard stories are unlike any stories we have read. The only one that even remotely reminds me of Bluebeard is "The Juniper Tree" because of the element of cannibalism. But "Bluebeard" is taken to a whole new level: the blood and carnage of many, many women. The fact that Bluebeard is rendered so robotic, as opposed to the mother in The Juniper Tree, who has clear motivations for wanting to kill the son, it is way creepier that the only reason Bluebeard has for murdering is to "punish" the woman, as someone would punish a child. It is enormously belittling women, as opposed to The Juniper Tree, where it is the son who dies. Murder is horrible and wrong in general, but Bluebeard takes it up a knotch, in the male figure murdering a multitude of women so heartlessly.
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ReplyDeleteWhat I find ironic is that in one of the Grimm's versions, the third wife "passes" and is allowed to marry the man. In other stories, three girls could marry a repugnant pig who kills them for not sleeping with him, and the third happily "passes" and all is well. I almost expected the same to happen here, but I suppose its wrong to kill a woman only sometimes.
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