In Angela Carter’s titillating re-telling of Charles Perrault’s Bluebeard, a wealthy, three-times widowed French nobleman marries a seventeen-year-old virtuoso pianist and rushes her away to his secluded castle for a “honeymoon”. When browsing the library, she is shocked to discover his penchant for sadistic pornography. After a passionless consummation that satisfies his desire to have married a virgin, he lays a deadly trap designed to end the marriage. While he is away on business, the woman’s dark newborn curiosity springs the trap, which leads her into his bloody chamber. Themes: manipulation, sexual awakening, depravity, loneliness, curiosity, violence, death.
An alternative way of interpreting the story is from a feminist standpoint. A mother defiantly beggared herself for love. In order to banish the spectre of poverty from its habitual place at [their] meagre table, her heroic daughter “sacrifices” herself by marrying a wealthy, much older man she does not love. The man showers her with expensive gifts, emphasizing the power imbalance by which he effectively “buys” her virginity. After defiling the poor girl, he sets a trap in order to add her mutilated body to his growing display of trophy corpses. Instead of a handsome Prince, her “warrior mother” rides into his castle like an avenging knight and saves the day. Additional themes: sacrifice, patriarchy/male domination, sexual objectification, identity, gender role reversal.
Original Text / PDF / Audio (16,350 words)