"The Bloody Chamber" by Angela Carter is a retelling of the legend of Bluebeard. I had never heard this story of Bluebeard before, though I have seen Bluebeard's Castle, a hotel named after the legend in St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands. Before reading this, I thought Bluebeard was a pirate. I guess I was confusing him with Blackbeard.
I thought it was an interesting and gothic story and a great read to read during Halloween weekend when I expect to be scared by films and music. It was very suspenseful because the husband was so creepy, being such a cat, trying to seduce, trap, and kill his bride, his mouse. Bluebeard reminded me of Charles Boyer's character, Gregory Anton, from the movie Gaslight, because they both are hauntingly trying to make their wives go insane, when the husbands are the ones who are crazy.
Angela Carter keeps all the characteristic details of Bluebeard and his bride the same as the tradition legend, but cuts out minor characters and changes a couple of the key scenes of the plot. Bluebeard is described as rich and "older" than his bride, who his bride sees as a "lily," which is a weird metaphor for the horrible man. The bride seems naive at first, not knowing what she is getting herself into, describing her experiences with him as feeling "disheveled by the loss" of her pureness. After she gets to know him, she describes him as a "white" lily, that will leave a "stain", seeming like she knows he will kill her and rotten her soul.
His castle has "turrets of blue," in Carter's version, but is not described in the legend summary, so I don't know if that is traditional or not. I would imagine if someone had a bluebeard, he would decorate his house with blue as well. I thought her version was more sexual which made Bluebeard seem more aggressive and cruel to his wife. The legend summary from Wikipedia doesn't mention the original legend as being overly sexual, so I don't know if it traditional or not. Carter's version starts out with the wedding night with a back story of the wedding, but not how she came to marry him.
There's a lot of references to the keys in Carter's version as well as the legend. I wondered if it is a metaphor for throwing back the curtain and finding out who and what the person you are married to, really is who he says he is. I think any bride would have been curious what lies in lock rooms, she is "forbidden" to enter. She wants to go through his stuff, to see what he is hiding and see why he is so secretive. In Carter's version, the bride finds the previous wives bleeding in coffins instead of hanging on hooks like the legend says. I think her finding them on hooks would be even more terrifying to the bride and would have sent her screaming from the castle, to get as far away as possible. With her finding them in coffins, it is more subtle and makes the bride only question if he killed them or not. The hooks would have been more obvious.
In Carter's version, the bride has no siblings and she hides with the piano tuner instead of a sister. In Carter's version, the bride's mother shoots Bluebeard, while in the legend, the bride's brothers kill Bluebeard with a sword. I don't think who kills Bluebeard, really matters. The story makes women seem weak, marrying evil men for money, who take advantage of them sexually. These weak women have to have their mothers or siblings fight their battles and bail them out. If the bride was the one who killed Bluebeard, it would have made more sense, because it would make us as readers believe the bridge had grown as a character and would be able to stand up for herself.
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