Tangled Up in Blue

BY KRISTINE MCINTYRE, DIRECTOR

I have a small confession to make. Apparently, I am obsessed with Bluebeard. I see him everywhere—and, dear reader, you do too, though you may not realize it. Even if you didn’t read the fairy tale as a child, you know the story: young woman marries rich, older, mysterious man with a secret involving his previous wives and a forbidden chamber of some sort. Bluebeard has maintained a powerful hold on our imaginations for centuries “whatever the medium, whatever the date,” to quote scholar Marina Warner. Even two of my favorite novels turn out to be Bluebeard stories, which I only realized recently, despite having read them over and over.

The story of Bluebeard in its most familiar form was first published by Charles Perrault in 1697 in The Tales of Mother Goose, though it is no doubt much older. “Barbe-bleu” is dark, suspenseful, horrifying, and probably more suited to adults than children. Two versions appear in the original Grimm's Fairy Tales, “The Robber Bridegroom” and “Fitcher’s Bird,” though neither made it into the revised and more widely-published Grimm collection. Perhaps the story was just too different or too subversive: it begins with marriage, rather than ending with it, and seems to expose deeply-rooted fears about sexuality, power, gender dynamics, and both a deep mistrust and celebration of female curiosity. In almost all versions of the story, the plucky young bride survives, often going on to happily-ever-after with a different man of her own choosing.

Given that it is not included in most fairy tale anthologies, Bluebeard should have been consigned to cultural oblivion. And yet Bluebeard survives in modern retellings like Angela Carter’s “The Bloody Chamber” and Margaret Atwood's “Bluebeard’s Egg,” and thematically in films as diverse as Secrets Beyond the Door, Gaslight and Notorious. But two of its most successful retellings—and my favorites—are Jane Eyre and Rebecca

As a devotee of Victorian literature and all things Brontë, I have read, written about and even directed an opera based on Jane Eyre, but I never really focused on the heavy debt it owes to the Bluebeard legend. The broodingbut-attractive Rochester would seem to have more in common with Mr. Darcy than the murderous Bluebeard, but one can't deny the parallels, what with Bertha locked upstairs in the forbidden attic.

Similarly, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca—my summertime guilty pleasure—is a rather brilliant rendition which reveals its Bluebeard nature in slow and surprising ways, and features a young heroine who becomes fascinatingly complicit in her husband’s crime. In both, Bluebeard is wounded, but not destroyed, and ultimately rehabilitated. The young Mrs. Bluebeard triumphs, even if the victory is somewhat muted, and legend lives on, seeping into our cultural imagination and finding ever-new and more modern expressions. Bluebeard endures, terrifying and alluring, and the hidden chamber calls to us. We just can’t help wanting to know what's behind that door.