LaBarbe Bleue, from the painting made Specially for the 1913 Christmas edition of “The Illustrated London News,” by Kay Nielsen* (Photo credit: Google Images)
As you have noticed,Bluebeardis reminiscent of many folktales and other works of literature, not all of which belong to what we now call children’s literature. Yesterday, we looked at Charles Perrault’s Bluebeard. Perrault’s first audiences were persons who gatheredin French seventeenth-centurysalons, a more refined and sophisticated environment than court: the Louvreand, later in the century, Versailles. Children may have been Perrault’s very last audience.
I also mentioned that in French seventeenth-century literature, one could not combine comedy and tragedy. Like comedies, fairy tales end well, but there may be a “happy ending” to a comedy that does not seem a real comedy. Such is the case with some ofMolière‘s comedies. The best examples are Le Misanthrope, TartuffeandDom Juan. Molière nearly broke the rules as didPerraultin his fairy tales. We know that Bluebeard’s young wife will be saved, but by the time her brothers arrive, we are out of breath. Would that a message-carrying dog had been sent to fetch the brothers!
However, Charles Perrault, a modernein the famousQuerelle des Anciens et des Modernes,has chosen riveting suspense. Here, rulesare being challenged by a member of theAcadémie françaiseitself. Other than the stained key, there is very little enchantment in Bluebeard, in which respect it resembles Puss in Boots. The young wife and Anne are clever girls, but where is the young wife’sfairy godmother?Well, she does not have one. Is this a fairy tale? One wonders.
A Fairy tale “bursting out,” but saved
As for motifs and instances ofintertextuality, seldom have they been as abundant than in Bluebeard. In fact, motifs and intertextualité seem to override genre. Although, “all’s well that ends well,” this is a fairy tale I would call “éclatée” or bursting out. Perrault is taking the new genre to its very limit. Moreover, there is something biblical about this fairy tale: the stain cannot be removed, except miraculously. That stain seems of remembrance of la tache [stain] originelle, the original sin. Moreover, the brothers arrive at the verylast-minute. So not only the young bride, but the genre itself, i.e. fairy tales, are saved. Thisis an “in extremis,” intervention.
Bluebeard
As for Bluebeard, he is not the mean second wife who turns her husband’s beautiful daughter by a first marriage into a chimney sweeper. Bluebeard is more than an “animal,” he is a monster. He’s Goethe’s Faust: Mephistopheles.
Conclusion
Having written the above, I can say no more than I did yesterday: “All’s well that ends well.”
Both images are by Danish illustratorKay Nielsen(12 March 1886 – 21 June 1957)
Kay Nielsen
For Students
For those of you who are students of folklore, I have provided Alishman’s extremely useful cross-referencing, complete with links to the tales he mentions. Motifs overlap in this surprisingly rich “fairy tale,” so I have listed them.
Particularly helpful is Alishman’s page devoted to the Grimm Brothers. It is entitled:Grimm’s Fairy Tales. The brothers Grimm have a classification system of their own: KHM.
To access D. L. Alishman’s page, click on How the Devil Married Three Sisters ATU 311and other folktales of Aarne-Thompson-Uther type 311translated and/or edited by D. L. Alishman
Illustration in The Fairy Tales of Charles Perraultby Harry Clarke (1889-1931), illustrator. London: Harrap (1922) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Charles Perrault‘s (1628-1703) Bluebeard, La Barbe bleue (seeGallica.BnF), is an exceptionally rich source of motifs.InAarne-Thompson-Uther, Bluebeard is classified as ATU 312, ATU 312A:The giant-killer and his dog– Bluebeard. The U in ATU stands forHans-Jörg Uther.[i]Charles Perrault‘s Barbe bleue, Bluebeard,features a killer, butthere is no reference to a dog. However, Bluebeard is rooted in a popular and largely oral tradition. In the more traditional tales, a dog or a bird is sent to warn our heroine’sfamily, her brothers especially.[ii]This element has been removed by Perrault. However, ProfessorD. L. Alishman specifies that folktales classified as ATU 312 and ATU 312A are stories “about women whose brothers rescue them from their ruthless husbands or abductors.” Such is the case with Bluebeard. So, to begin with, the motif of Bluebeard is AT 312 and 312A .
Bluebeard is feared by most women. He owns many properties, in town and in the countryside, “gold and silver dishes, beautifully upholstered (embroidered) furniture and golden carriages: de la vaisselle d’or et d’argent, des meubles en broderie, et des carrosses tout dorés.” (Gilbert Rouger)[iii]However, his blue beard makes him so ugly and terrifying that women run away when they see him. Moreover, despite his blue beard, this colourful but brutal character has married several times, but every wife has disappeared. The moment Perrault reveals this fact, we enter the realms of mystery and suspense. What has happened to the former wives? There will be a moment of revelation.
Bluebeard’s neighbour, a Lady, has two beautiful daughters and is looking for suitable husbands. When they first see Bluebeard, the daughters find him repulsive. However, Bluebeard organizes a feast and invites the young women and a few of their friends (first image). As they go from pleasure to pleasure, the younger daughter begins to see Bluebeard as a less frightening man and marries him.
Bluebeard marries and goes on a trip: forbidden room
Once he has married the younger daughter, Bluebeard tells her he must go away on a trip, but to invite friends (second image). He then starts distributing keys and warns his wife not to enter a certain room yet gives her the key to this room. The telltale key and the forbidden room are motifs dating to the story of Adam and Eve. Eve is tempted by the serpent and bites into the forbidden apple. When collecting folktales, the Brothers Grimm were told the story of Marienkind, Mary’s Child, in which a girl enters a forbidden thirteenth room, sees the Trinity and is then burdened with a telltale gold finger. Marienkind will not confess that she did enter the forbidden room until she is condemned to burn at the stake. As the flamesstart engulfing her, she finally tells the truth and is saved. The motifs of that tale, the forbidden room and the telltale stain, link it to Bluebeard.
Disobedience: the stained key
Likethe archetypal Eve, women are considered curious and, despite their fears,they want to unlock forbidden rooms, closets and cabinets. Again, “folk versions of the tale do not fault the heroine for her curiosity?”[iv] Bluebeard’s young wife trembles, but she unlocks the hidden cabinet (third image). Here we think of the deceptive closet that leads to other rooms. That is another motif. Next, when the young wife sees the bloodstained floor and the bodies of dead women, she drops the key and it gets stained by the blood on the floor of the room. This element seems a variation on the “tache [stain] originelle,” or the original sin. Therefore, our main motif could well be that of the indelible stain. Babies are born “entachés,” stained with the original sin. The young wife cannot clean the key. It is, therefore, an enchanted key.
Bluebeard returns
Bluebeard returns that very evening and is received with open arms. His bride hopes to delay the moment when he will ask for the keys to be returned, one of which is the stained key. The young bride therefore entertains her husband as doesScheherazade, the Persian Queen of theOne Thousand and One Nights who has studied sufficiently to know that fiction, entertainment in the form of storytelling, might save her from death, which it does.
However, the next morning, our poor young wife is asked to return all the keys her rich and ruthless husband has entrusted to her. He sees the stained key and tells her she will join the wives who have died due to their indiscretion. She, of course, falls to her knees begging for forgiveness. Bluebeard was testing her and she has failed the test. She is yet another Eve who has yielded to temptation.
Tests are a common element in fairy talesas are the three requirements that will turn a toad into a prince. But Bluebeard is a one-test, or trap, narrative that resembles the Pandora’s Box narrative. Pandora is given a jar named pithos which she is instructed not to open, but curiosity, the villain, is as irresistible as the serpent. She opens the jar and releases all the bad things in the world. Evil is born and women are to blame. They are the scapegoats.
Fortunately, Bluebeard’s young wife inhabits fairyland. Her sister Anne has not yet returned home. So the young bride has a stand-in, so to speak, and uses a common a ruse. She asks to be allowed to pray for one half of a quarter-hour and goes upstairs to alert her sister. This recourse is reminiscent of Shakespeare’sDesdemona‘s (Othello) request. This is yet another motif or, possibly, an instance of intertextuality, texts that mirror one another. Usually, folktales contain motifs, just as music contains themes. Shakespearean theater is otherwise classified, but the stained finger could be designated as a motif in the broader world of fiction. Our terrifiedhéroïne asks her sister Anne to go to a tower and to watch because their brothers have promised to visit and Bluebeard has returned earlier than expected. Anne is instructed to alert them from her tower. This is ATU type 312 and 312A.
Anne, ma sœur Anne, ne vois-tu rien venir ?
Bluebeard grows increasingly impatient, but the younger wife keeps asking her sister Anne whether or not she can see the brothers. This is a summit of suspense: Anne, ma sœur Anne, ne vois-tu rien venir ? Anne, my sister Anne, can’t you see anything coming? Anne answers twice. Je ne vois rien que le Soleil qui poudroie, et l’herbe qui verdoie. All I see are flurries of the Sun and grass turning green. The third time, however, Anne reports that she sees men on horseback riding in their direction. As you know, the number three is a common element of fairy tales.
At his wits end, Bluebeard starts screaming so loudly that the house shakes (fourth image). He goes upstairs and grabs his young wife by the hair, holding a knife. Once again, she asks to pray, but he will not let her pray. At this point, the reader or listener fears that all is lost, except that we are in fairyland. There has to be a savior, and there is.
Kairos: the opportune moment
At the opportune moment, kairos, the brothers make a racket at the door. The door is forced open and Bluebeard sees one brother, a dragoon, and the second, a musketeer. Bluebeard runs away from them, but the brothers catch him when he reaches the porch and they drive a sword through his body (fifth image).
The younger sister inherits her husband’s possessions. She provides her sister with the dowry that will enable her to marry a kind man she has known for a long time. She buys her brothers appointments as captains and, for her part, she marries a gentleman.
The Morals
There are two moralités. One is the moral ofcautionary tales. It is anexemplum. The tale tells about the dangers of curiosity:
La curiosité malgré tous ses /attraits,Coûte souvent bien de regretsOn en voit /tous les jours exemples paraître.Curiosity, despite all its /appeal /Often costs many regrets /One sees /everyday examples appear. (literal translation)
However, Perrault uses a second moral that is not altogether a moral, but a form reassurance. He writes that those who have common sense know that this story happened a long time ago. There are no longer such terrible husbands, nor husbands who asks for the impossible, even when they are displeased or jealous, etc.
In other words, he tells readers that he has written a fairy tale.
Comments
Criticism of Bluebeard
There has been criticism of Bluebeard. For instance, help is so slow in coming that this fairy tale, nearly fails the “happy ending” rule fairy tales. However, Perrault’s suspense is acceptable in storytelling. It adds piquancy to the tale. In seventeenth-century France, one could not mix comedy and tragedy. Tragedy inspires pity and fear. Featuring a dog or a bird carrying a message would have lessened the degree of suspense, not to mention pity and fear. In more traditional tellings of Bluebeard, the heroine “insists on donning bridal clothes, and they prolong the possibility of rescue by recounting each and every item of clothing.”[v]
As mentioned above, curiosity is not a factor in more traditional tellings of Bluebeard.
Bruno Bettelheim[vi]situates Bluebeard in the animal-groom cycle (Aarne-Thompson), except that our heroine marries the animal before a curse is lifted that transforms him into a kind and beautiful person, which is usually the case in fairy tales. In Beauty and the Beast, Beauty learns to love Beast as Beast is, which lifts the curse. She marries a beautiful man, the appropriate ending of a fairy tale.
Classification
Bluebeard is an ATU 312 or ATU 312A type, but it is related to the Brother’s Grimm’s Fitcher’s Bird(number or KHM 46, Grimm),Aarne-Thompson-Uther type 311, and theRobber Bridegroom(KHN 40, Grimm),Aarne-Thompson-Uthertype 955.Marienkind(KHM 3) is ATU 710. So it seems that Professor Alishman’s above-mentioned list could include Marienkind, Fitcher’s Bird and the Robber Bridegroom, depending on his criteria for selection. Margaret Atwood is the author of The Robber Bride (1993) and Angela Carter, the author of The Bloody Chamber(1979). It would appear this story therefore combines many ATU types. Moreover, this tale and its variants have been told many times.
The indelible stain seems a particularly important motif. I have mentioned the Bible. Curiosity leads to the original sin, called stain in French: la tache. But it also reminds us of the stain on Lady Macbeth’s hand. It will not wash away: “Out, damn’d spot! out I say!” (Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 1, line 35). Lady Macbeth has killed and the stain on her hand is as permanent as the original sin. She must atone. In this regard, Bluebeard is reminiscent of William Shakespeare‘s Macbeth. But we are reading a fairy tale. The genre itself demands a happy ending, as do comic texts. Moreover, the indelible stain could be a motif, and the original sin, to which it can be compared, an instance of intertextualité.
The indelible stain motif also appears in Le Roman de Perceforest, a medieval narrative usually associated with SleepingBeauty. Blanchette’s fairy godmother has asked her not to touch Lyonnel. But she does, briefly and accidentally. The finger that has touched Lyonnel turns black.
In the Brother’s Grimm’sMarienkind,Marienkind opens the thirteenth door, or the forbidden door. It seems the number thirteen has long been an unlucky number, but the more important element, the motif, is that of the telltale stain.
Conclusion
Let it be short: “All’s well that ends well.” Tout est bien qui finit bien.
Sources and Resources
Perrault fairy tales are the Project Gutenberg [EBook #29021]
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[i] The AT-number system was updated and expanded in 2004, the yearHans-Jörg Uther published his Types of International Folktales: A Classification and Bibliography.Hans-Jörg Uther calls types some of the elements formerly named motifs, but some motifs are types. The telltale stained key is a motif, but brothers saving a sister would be a type.[ii] Maria Tatar in Jack Zipes, editor, The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2000).[iii]Gilbert Rouger, editor. Les Contes de Perrault (Paris: Editions Garnier, 1967).[iv]Op. cit.The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales.[v] Ibid.[vi] The Uses of Enchantment (New York: Vintage Books Edition, 1989 [1975, 1976]), p. 182.Franz Schubert (31 January 1797 – 19 November 1828; aged 31)Piano Sonata in B Flat Major, D. 960Alfred Brendel, KBE(born 5 January 1931,Wiesenberg)
Animals play many roles in literature. We have seen them in fables, beast epics, bestiaries, and high fantasy literary works, but we haven’t looked at animals inhabiting fairy tales.
By and large, in animal fairy tales, a witch, or a fairy godmother has transformed a prince or a princess into a frog or a toad. Usually, if three conditions are met, the curse is lifted and there appears a prince or a princess. There are exceptions to this scenario, yet it remains a common narrative.
Magical cats
However there are other narratives. For instance, we have magical cats, and our best example is Charles Perrault’s Puss in Boots. In Puss in Boots, the protagonist, or main character, is the third son of a miller. One of his brothers has inherited the mill, the other a donkey, but Puss’ master has inherited a mere cat, nothing more. His fate could be worse. He’s not a prince who has been turned into a frog or toad, but he feels he has been cheated. However, proud Puss does not consider himself an inferior inheritance and sets about to take his master from rags to riches.
ANTECEDENTS
Puss in Boots has made earlier appearances in Giovanni Francesco Straparola (c. 1480 – c. 1557). Straparola is considered the father of the literary form of the fairy tale in Europe, but fairy tales constituting Charles Perrault‘s Tales of Mother Goose (1697) are the versions we know and belong to literature. Between 1550-1555, Straparola wrote Le piacevoli notti or The Facetious nights.
Charles Perrault also drew his content from Giambattista Basile (c. 1575 – 23 February 1632), the author of Lo cunto de li cunti overo lo trattenemiento de peccerille (Neapolitan for “The Tale of Tales, or Entertainment for Little Ones”), a work also known as the Il Pentamerone, published posthumously in two volumes,in 1634 and 1636. But this is a story that may date back a thousand years or more and has been transmitted orally. A fairy tale enters literature, or the “learned tradition,” when it is presented in writing.[i]
Fairy tales and seventeenth-century French salons
To recapitulate, although Puss in Boots may date back thousands of year, the immediate known sources of French 17th-century fairy tales are Italian. However, these fairy tales could not be told to children, unless they had been translated and refined to meet the expectations of salonniers and salonnières (see Salons, Wikipedia).
Charles Perrault’s Puss in Boots is a well-written Puss in Boots, a product of late seventeenth-century French salons. As we know from earlier blogs, Charles Perrault had worked at Versailles, he was an habitué of salons and a member of the French Academy.
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Summary of the story
The third son of a miller is disappointed because all he has received as his inheritance is a cat. However, he will soon know otherwise. First, Puss asks the third son to provide him with a sack and with boots.
Deep within the human psyche lies the wish to travel quickly and, particularly, to fly. In Puss in Boots, no one has wings. But fairy tales also feature magical boots called bottes de sept lieues, or seven-league boots. They allow extraordinary mobility. It could be therefore that Puss has been provided with bottes de sept lieues, but I doubt it. The boots seem a prop befitting the genre, a signature. Puss does not need them, except to appear human.
The Marquis de Carabas
Yet, Puss does put on the boots, but what he shows is exceptional ingenuity, which is a characteristic of Reynard the Fox who succeeds in talking himself out of a death sentence. As for Perrault’s Puss in Boots, he starts killing game, putting it in his sack, and offering it to the King on behalf of a his renamed master.
Puss has therefore transformed the third son a miller into the Marquis de Carabas. But this is not an instance of metamorphism, but one of ingenuity. It is Puss, a clever cat, and not a fairy godmother, who has turned the third son of a miller into an aristocrat.
Puss in Boots, by Fred Marcellino
The River
Next, when Puss in Boots hears that the King and his daughter will ride along a river, he asks the new Marquis to get into the water. He then screams out that the Marquis is drowning. So the King stops, the Marquis de Carabas is saved, he is given appropriate clothes, and the King’s daughter falls in love with him. Clothes make the man.
The Land
Puss then reflects that a Marquis has to be a landowner. He sees peasants mowing a meadow and does so at the right moment: kairos – explained further down – and asks them to tell the King, when he passes by, that these fertile fields are the property of the Marquis de Carabas. Puss uses a ruse worthy of Reynard, the cunning fox.
The Ogre’s Castle
Puss in Boots and the Marquis de Carabas then come to a castle, kairos as opposed to chronos. In this castle, resides the landowner: an Ogre. This Ogre claims he can transform himself into other animals and, to prove it, he turns himself into a lion. Puss being very clever quickly asks the Ogre to turn himself into a mouse. The Ogre, who is not very clever, does as he is asked and Puss in Boots eats him up.
The Banquet
Just then, at the opportune moment, kairos, the King happens to come to the beautiful castle. The moment is in fact all the more opportune since the Ogre has a banquet ready for guests. When the Ogre’s guests arrive and see the King’s carriage, they flee. Consequently, a banquet is ready for the King. The King is so delighted with the events of the day that he tells the Marquis de Carabas that if he, the Marquis, says the word, he, the King, will take him for his son-in-law.
So, after renaming his master and three ruses: the river, the land, the castle, the third son of the miller has become a rich landowner who lives in a beautiful castle, and will marry the King’s daughter. Fairy tales end as comedies do. There is a marriage. The banquet is the dénouement or outcome.
A few comments
Note that the number three is important. The miller has three sons. As for events, the first could be the river, the second, the ruse concerning ownership of the land, and the third, the acquisition of the castle. But the first could also be renaming the third son of the miller, except that renaming his master perhaps encompasses the three events, or the name of the strategy.
Moreover, it should be pointed out that, in Ancient Greece, time was seen in both its vertical, kairos, and chronological, chronos, dimensions. Æon (Latin for the Greek word koine) was time eternal, which was sometimes represented by the same figure as chronos. In Buss in Boots, as in most fairy tales, things are there when they are needed and events happen at the opportune moment. That is kairos, time in its vertical dimension and time which could be called magical. We have finally shed light on the word kairos.
It is also true that the Ogre can transform himself, which is the stuff of fairy tales. But Puss in boots can’t. Puss is not an Ogre, he is simply very smart and resourceful. And it is because of these qualities that Puss can be considered a magic wand or fairy godmother, which gives this one fairy tale a lovely new twist.
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[i] I am using Malcolm Arthur’s translation of Le Chat botté, illustrated by Fred Marcellino (Farrar Straus Giroux, 1990).
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