On Charles Perrault's "Bluebeard"
I don't think that any piece of media is or isn’t feminist™️ in the contemporary sense but I've always found the construction of Charles Perrault's Bluebeard to be proto-feminist in a way most fairy tales aren’t due to its forcible and admittedly likely unintentional subversion of both Cassandra of Troy and Scheherazade from One Thousand and One Nights .
In Greek mythology, Cassandra was the Trojan princess of Troy that was granted the gift of prophecy by the Greek god Apollo, who then scornfully curses with never being believed when she rejects his advances. In The Iliad, Cassandra predicts the Trojan defeat at the hands of the Greeks but is derided and ignored. Of course, she’s correct, Troy is decimated, and Cassandra herself is repeatedly raped, taken captive by Agamemnon, the king of Mycenae, and then is murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra, as detailed in Aeschylus’ trilogy, The Oresteia.
In Bluebeard, the eponymous Bluebeard, a wealthy man whose previous 6 wives died under mysterious circumstances, comes to a small town in search of a wife. Understandably, parents, who have heard stories about Bluebeard, are terrified of their daughters marrying Bluebeard, but one young woman steps forward, offering to marry him because she believes that she can solve the mystery of his wives.
He marries the young woman, takes her far away from her family to his manor home in the mountains, and gives her a key that opens every door, but expressly forbids her from entering one particular room. One day, when he goes on a trip, Bluebeard’s seventh wife seizes her opportunity and promptly opens the door, behind which she discovers the murdered corpses of his six prior wives. She's completely horrified, and in her effort to leave the room, drops the key in blood, and due to the key’s magical properties, is unable to clean the blood off, which is how her husband learns of her perfidy.
As Bluebeard advances to kill her, his seventh wife frantically begs him to permit her to pray with her sister one last time, knowing full well that her sister would never be permitted to travel so far without their brothers as chaperones. Bluebeard consents, and when they arrive, her brothers kill Bluebeard and free their sister. She then honors her predecessors with proper burials, and eventually remarries; she has children of her own, and grows old, living a long and happy life.
In a sense, Bluebeard’s final wife reminds me of Scheherazade, the Grand Vizier’s beautiful, intelligent, and extraordinarily well-read daughter in One Thousand and One Nights that volunteers to marry King Shahryar who, after discovering his first wife’s infidelity, adopted the practice of marrying a different woman each sunset and beheading her the next sunrise. Scheherazade’s father, who is responsible for finding the women to marry the king, begs her to not do it, but Scheherazade stands firm in her decision.
After marrying the king, Scheherazade asks for permission to tell her beloved sister, Dunyazad, one last story, and Shahryar remains to listen as well, enthralled by her storytelling. But, Scheherazade stops at the climax of the story just as the sun is rising, and the king allows her to live another day so he can hear the conclusion. The next night, Scheherazade finishes the story and then begins a second, even more exciting tale, which she again stops partway through at dawn, and again, the king spares her life for another day.
Every subsequent night for 1001 nights, a period of over two and a half years, Scheherazade tells stories, timing them such that as the sun rises, she reaches the climax of each story so the king allows her to live another day. In this manner, she saves her own life as well as the lives of all the other young women that would otherwise have been married and executed by the king. Eventually, Scheherazade runs out of stories and tells the king that she has no more, but Shahryar has fallen in love with her and instead of killing her, coronates her as his permanent queen.
In a sense, One Thousand and One Nights reminds me of Shakespeare’s “problem plays” (among these are A Merchant of Venice, All’s Well That Ends Well, and my personal favorite, Measure for Measure), which end in a way that’s intended to make the audience uncomfortable even if the conclusion is ostensibly happy, ending with a betrothal or marriage. Although Scheherazade remains alive and the story ends with her formal coronation, is it truly a happy ending given the meaningless deaths of so many innocent young women and their perpetrator essentially getting away with it?Shahryar is never punished for his murdering countless nameless young women because of one woman’s wrongdoing, and in fact, he’s rewarded with marriage to Scheherazade. Shahryar’s treatment within the story is akin to the Christian condemnation of all women for Eve’s betrayal in the Garden of Eden since well, the patriarchy is both eternal and universal.
Conversely, Bluebeard’s last wife doesn’t end the cycle of male violence by reforming and forgiving its perpetrator, she ends it by killing him. Bluebeard isn't a cautionary tale about the danger inherent in women believing in their own intellectual capabilities and taking the initiative to act on their curiosity and instincts. The story validates its heroine's convictions instead of punishing her for them. To this day, women like Bluebeard’s wife, steadfastly convinced of their own intellect and unconditionally trusting their instincts and believing in the power of their convictions, are pathologized and demonized, and it’s rewarding to see that sometimes, we’re allowed to unequivocally triumph.
There is no narrative forgiveness for Bluebeard like there is for King Shahryar, there is no narrative punishment for Bluebeard’s final wife like there is for Cassandra. Unlike Cassandra before her, Bluebeard's last wife isn't raped and murdered for her belief in her convictions; unlike Scheherazade, Bluebeard's last wife isn’t doomed to a life at the mercy of a man with the blood of countless other women on his hands.
Instead, Bluebeard’s final wife begins and ends the story with complete agency: Nobody forces her to marry Bluebeard, she chooses to do so in order to right a perceived wrong; she defies and actively lies to her older and much more powerful husband, she engineers his death at the hands of her brothers, and she gets her happy ending without feeling an ounce of remorse.
In other words, she gets to win.