Murders in Charles Perrault’s “La Barbe Bleue”: Crime or Justice?
Rritwika Roychowdhury
Postgraduate Student
Department of English
Presidency University
Kolkata, West Bengal, India
Abstract:
Folk tales are more
than just “happily ever after” stories. They can be gruesome and depict death
and suffering in a variety of forms. Death in such a narrative, while deployed
to build tension and mystery, also serves to increase the story’s focus on
the justice sought. Folk tales are extensively read to and by children, despite
the fact that it is debatable whether they are meant for young readers. Due to
the modern notion of childhood in which children are expected to absorb a
“sanitized” form of fairy tales, it is more important than ever for the texts aimed
at young readers to do justice to the victim, in order to convey a moral
lesson. Children are influenced by traditional beliefs that criminalize the
deaths of “good” characters, while justifying that of the “bad” ones. The
author of this research work argues that the distinction between crime and
justice in folk tales and fairy tales is rather ill-defined, using the case of
the centuries-old tale, “La Barbe
Bleue”or“Bluebeard”, whose most prominent surviving version was penned
down by Charles Perrault in 1697. The paper also looks at other stories based
on the tale of Bluebeard, including Grimm Brothers’ “Fitcher’s Bird,” and
Angela Carter’s “The Bloody Chamber” in order to examine how murder, the most
heinous of all crimes, is justified for children in folk tales through social
biases and rationales.
Keywords: Bluebeard; Folktales; Justice;
Murder; Social prejudice
Folktales are regional stories that are passed down orally
through generations and play an important role in familiarizing people with their
culture. Despite the fact that it is debatable whether folk tales are meant for
young readers, they are extensively read to children as bedtime stories and are
among the first stories children learn to read on their own (Dorsey 1).
Elizabeth Tucker claims, “children are both conservative and creative; once
they learn traditional texts, they will pass them along to others, adding some
creative changes of their own” (4). As a result of the early integration into
people’s culture, these narratives have a considerable impact on the formation
of ethical, social, and aesthetic values of the regional community at large.
Folk tales, according to Ruth Bottigheimer, are
reflections of the lifestyle and belief systems of their intended audience,
therefore the characters are heavily inspired from the everyday world, and the
plots are based on real-world issues (211).Hikmat Dahal and Balaram Bhatta
expresses themselves to the same effect where they observe these tales to be
“powerful tools for teaching children about diverse cultures” (32). Children’s
societal ideas and cultural attitudes can be shaped through their exposure to
folk stories from around the world (Smith and Wiese 69), which enriches them
with the knowledge of various traditions. Hence, folk tales form an
essential component of the genre of Children’s Literature. Folk tales paint a
simplified image of the world and convey a lesson that virtuous people deserve
a happy ending to their stories, but there are more to those
“happily-ever-after” finales. These tales can be gruesome and depict death and
suffering in a variety of forms. Death resulting from a criminal act in such a
narrative, while deployed to build tension and mystery, also serves to
increase the story’s focus on the justice sought. In most folk narratives,
there are “good” and “evil” characters, and it is commonly observed that
justice for the former includes violence against the latter. The violence
committed against “evil” characters is rarely considered inappropriate, and it
is instead excused by the social prejudices that have already been ingrained in
the minds of the readers. The purpose of this paper is to question this
violence — the crimes that are committed in order to provide social justice for
the “good” characters. In doing so, it analyzes the centuries-old tale,“La
Barbe Bleue”or “Blue Beard” (1697) by Charles Perrault. The paper also
looks at other stories based on the tale of Blue Beard, including Grimm
Brothers’ “Fitcher’s Bird,” and Angela Carter’s “The Bloody Chamber” in order to
examine how murder, the most heinous of all crimes, is justified for children
in folktales through social biases and rationales.
Classified into various subgenres, folktales include
myths, legends, tall tales, fables, trickster tales, fairy tales and so on. Myths
are traditional stories, with religious overtones. They account for superhuman
beings engaged in superhuman activities. Legends are orally transmitted stories
that are believed to be based on real, larger-than-life people, who strived to
resist a powerful negative force, hence glorifying their way of life. Tall
tales are fictional stories that exaggerate unrealistic events. Fables commonly
include animals with human qualities in them, and convey a moral lesson, either
directly or indirectly. Trickster tales also feature anthropomorphized animals
as protagonists, who exhibit attributes such as intellect, deception, and
boastfulness while playing harmless pranks on others, and serve as a folkloric
target onto whom the insecurities and flaws of the source culture are
projected. Fairy tales are fantastical stories usually intended for children.
These stories often include magic, specifically stresses on the triumph of good
over evil, and finally lead to a happy ending.
Some scholars believe that these stories are based on
ordinary life and that they teach life lessons (Bottigheimer 211, Dahal and
Bhatta 32), but the scope for forming cultural and psychological notions
through folk tales independent of social prejudices, is relatively limited. The
multiplicity of folk tales and the distinctions within those categorizations,
reveal that a distorted reality is projected via them—the seemingly
conventional portrayals of humankind through these narratives conceal something
more than just an image of the social reality (Fischer 239). Although folk
tales serve as a guiding factor for children in learning about the
social complexities and developing their belief systems, the ideas cannot
be formed without assistance from adults. When adults, such as parents, governesses
or teachers, become the interpreter and conveyor of the social or moral message
imparted through a folk tale, such interpretations of the narrative may or may
not respect the tale’s original aim or purpose (Dahal and Bhatta 33). As a
result, the children’s ability of reimagining and generating fresh
perspectives, independent of those of adults, is no longer possible. The most
prominent outcome of this practice is the pertinence of the good and evil binary.
Folk tales recounted to children are assessed for a moral lesson and in
essence, viewed through a lens that stresses the dichotomy of good and evil. It
is ironic that readers accept a narrow and restrictive understanding of one of
the most dynamic literary genres for the sake of tradition, and pose no
question. They internalize the tales and their morals as a part of their psyche
without questioning their validity (Robbins 102). The central characters in the
tales, who are essentially good, become ideals for the readers (Baruah, et al.
3), and they seek social justice for them in the end — the hardships these
characters had to go through should now be compensated for, and they should be
free to live happily ever after. The antagonists, on the other hand, must be
punished for their evil deeds at all costs. The expectations of the readers are
fulfilled by these works.
Before authors such as Charles Perrault (regarded as one
of the first writers of the fairy tale genre) began to pen them down during the
seventeenth century, there was no written record of folk tales, and their
evolution and survival over time mostly depended on the oral traditions. Folk
tales are structurally very flexible and versatile, since the oral traditions
do not allow them to have a rigid structure and storyline. The narratives
change significantly over the course of time due to the innumerable retellings
and cultural translations they undergo. Perrault’s book, Contes de ma
mèrel’oye (French title) or Tales of Mother Goose (1697), contains
few of the most popular fairy tales including “Cinderella; or, the Little Glass
Slipper,”“The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood,” “Puss in Boots,”“Little Red
Riding-Hood,” and “Blue Beard.” Likewise, Kinder- und Hausmärchen (German
title) or Children’s and Household Tales (1812), a collection of folk
tales written by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, depict similar stories but with
notable differences. In addition to oral storytelling, folk tales and fairy
tales have been popularized and notably modified by media companies such as
Walt Disney, which produce films based on regional folklores, while tailoring
them to suit the interest of their target audience, that is children and their
parents, omitting portions in an attempt to make them age-specific, thus
pushing the plot even further from the original storyline. The stories are
revised time and again to meet the expectations and demands of each time
period. The initial edition of Children’s and Household Tales, for
example, was not intended for children. There were sexual references abound in
stories like “Rapunzel” and “The Little Red Cap,” or what is now known as
“Little Red Riding Hood.”The prince impregnated Rapunzel before their marriage,
and Gothel discovered the secret when her garments tightened. The wolf in
“Little Red Riding Hood, ”dressed as the grandma got into the bed, and
persuaded the little girl to join him, projecting the wolf as a man who wishes
to entice a little girl into bed. These references were removed from subsequent
editions because they were deemed inappropriate for children who were now
getting exposed to these texts.
The modern folk tales have been “sanitized” for the
children to make them more fanciful. But this process was carried out only to
conceal the possible violence perpetrated against the protagonists. The
villains, however, are left to suffer the consequences of their actions because
they deserve the punishment. Therefore, no matter how unpleasant the images
become for them to experience, the children wish for the evil people to be
punished in the most horrific manner possible, and the adults find nothing
wrong with this. Such a conflict of opinions stems from social prejudice. Exposure
to multiple cultures through folk tales cause children to develop prejudices
(Santi, et al. 208), that are usually overlooked. Children acquire their
opinions toward specific social groups through “direct training” or by
imitating their parents’ verbal and nonverbal behavior, possibly because
imitative behavior is rewarded (Nesdale 2). It is a common notion in social
psychology that parents wish to leave an impression on their children, who also
aspire to be like the parents; the social prejudices continue to exist.
Perrault’s “La Barbe Bleue” tells the story of a
man who, despite his wealth, was feared by women due to his blue beard. He
wished to marry one of the daughters of a widow, but neither of the girls
agreed to marry him because his multiple wives had mysteriously disappeared,
and no one knew what had happened to them. Blue Beard then invited the two
sisters, their mother, and their friends to spend a week in his mansion, which
they overtly enjoyed, and at the end of it the youngest of the sisters agreed
to marry him. About a month after the wedding, Blue Beard left his wife at the
mansion and went for business. Before leaving, he gave her the keys of all the
rooms of his mansion. She was allowed to access all rooms except a closet,
which was forbidden for her to open. The bride could only think of the
forbidden closet since the husband had departed. Unable to contain
her curiosity, she eventually opened it, where she discovered the floor laden
with clotted blood, and dead bodies of several women littered across it. When
Blue Beard returned, he asked for the bunch of keys from his wife, and quickly
spotted a small blood stain on the little key. Realizing that his wife had
disobeyed him, he threatened to behead her. However, she was saved at the last
moment by her brothers, who killed Blue Beard. Angela Carter’s “The Bloody
Chamber” follows similar storyline, except that it is told from a feminist
perspective. Here, the story concludes with Marquis, the villain, being shot by
the heroine’s mother. Although “Fitcher’s Bird” by the Grimm Brothers is a bit
different from that of “Blue Beard” in terms of plot, it ultimately concludes
with the antagonist’s death. The plot revolves around a nefarious wizard and
three sisters who fall victim to the wizard’s evil tricks. The youngest sister
rescues her elder sisters with great dexterity, and plans to kill the wizard.
The heroine’s plan is executed by her brothers, who kill the antagonist by
locking him in his house and setting it on fire to burn him alive.
All three versions of the tale meet a similar ending—the
villains are murdered by the heroes. Murder, the most heinous of all crimes, is
committed by the supposedly “good” and virtuous people. These seemingly
simple folk tales about the triumph of good over evil are created upon a
terrifying substratum of violence, a method chosen to provide social justice to
the protagonists, while also transmitting a moral message. In all three
versions of the story, the violence committed by the antagonists are recounted
in great detail in order to highlight the evilness of their characters. The
readers perceive a gory picture of the forbidden closet in “Blue Beard” when
the heroine describes its floor to be “covered with clotted blood, on which the
bodies of several dead women were lying” (Perrault 2). In “Fitcher’s Bird,” the
wizard “threw [the eldest sister] down, dragged her thither by her hair, cut
her head off on the block, and hewed her in pieces so that her blood ran on the
ground” (Grimm and Grimm 122). Carter reveals what the nameless heroine sees in
the bloody chamber in a two-page long, very elaborate and dramatic exposition:
Each time I struck a match to light those candles round
her bed, it seemed a garment of that innocence of mine … fell away from me …
The opera singer lay, quite naked, under a thin sheet of very rare and precious
linen … my eyes accustomed themselves to the gathering darkness, I at last —
oh, horrors! — made out a skull; … With trembling fingers, I prised open the
front of the upright coffin, with its sculpted face caught in a rictus of pain
… She was pierced, not by one but by a hundred spikes… (32-33)
In contrast to the accounts for the villain’s crimes, the
details of what leads to their deaths at the conclusion are minimal. The
brothers of the female protagonist murder Blue Beard by “plunging their swords into
his body” (Perrault 4). When the wizard and all his wedding guests in
“Fitcher’s Bird” had gone into the house, “the brothers and kinsmen of the
bride, who had been sent to rescue her … locked all the doors of the house, set
fire to it, and the wizard and all his crew had to burn” (Grimm and Grimm 123).
In Carter’s story, the heroine’s mother raised her “father’s gun, took aim and
put a single, irreproachable bullet through [her] husband’s head” (48). One of
the animated adaptations of this tale by Manga Sekai Mukashi Banashi or
Manga Fairy Tales of the World, does not show the murder of the antagonist at
all, though his wails can be heard off-screen shortly after he is chased by the
two brothers of his wife and it is made apparent that he has been killed
(11:32).It is almost as if addressing the antagonist’s death as a result of
murder committed by the supposed heroes, was not as important as it was to
detail his evil deeds. If the climax of each of the stories is examined
objectively, without the morality attached to it, the murders of the evil
characters would appear just as horrible as any other. In Brothers Grimm’s
story, the brothers of the bride murder not only the wicked Wizard, but also
his guests who were invited to his house. The act of murder being narrated in
only one sentence distracts the readers from an in-depth analysis of it. Such a
biased perception of crimes in folk tales is the product of a morally corrupt
culture. In a sense, children are taught to rationalize crimes that occur right
in front of their eyes in the name of morality.
The distinction between crime and justice in folk tales
and fairy tales is rather ill-defined: Perrault’s Blue Beard, Carter’s Marquis,
and Grimm Brothers’ Wizard are criminals for murdering their wives, but so are
the brothers and the mother of the brides, because they, too, commit the same
crimes when they murdered the antagonists. The way a folk tale is told can make
a big difference. When young readers are led by the adults’ views, which are
based on absolutes, social and moral prejudices continue to have a significant
influence on those who are only beginning to be exposed to these stories. Society
is a multi-layered, complex structure, which cannot be defined in absolutes
such as the good-versus-evil dichotomy. Folk tales, being the mirrors of
society (Dahal and Bhatta 37), have the potential to shape the collective worth
of all social networks, but it is the process of storytelling that has a great
significance, since it determines how the story will be perceived. With social
prejudice already embedded in the storytellers’ thoughts, the folk tales get
influenced, thus modified, passing on the notion of absolutes. It is easier to
convey a moral lesson to young readers by addressing how the evil people get punished
in the end, but it is also necessary to address how crimes are defended only to
preserve those moral lessons.
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