The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales by Tatar Maria;

Author:Tatar, Maria;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2018-11-28T16:00:00+00:00

7

TAMING THE BEAST

Bluebeard and Other Monsters

Curiosity is a valuable trait. It will make the simians learn many things.

—CLARENCE DAY, This Simian World

“OF ALL the irrational incidents of folk-tales,” one anthropologist grumbles, “none is more irrational than that in which a human being is wedded to a beast.” The erotic persecution of fairy-tale heroines by their fathers, another critic of fairy tales adds, may be “needlessly repulsive to the feelings of every European nation,” but it at least appears to have its roots in a stage of civilization when marriage between a widowed father and his orphaned daughter was not necessarily taboo. That critic may not have his facts right, but he has asserted the principle correctly. Few would be prepared or, for that matter, would want to concede a factual basis for marriages between princesses and pigs, girls and bears, or peasant women and hedgehogs. Yet such couplings are prominent in fairy tales. That marriage vows are, in some cases, not exchanged until after a beast has been disenchanted does not diminish the oddity of such matches.1

As irrational as these tales may seem (even to an anthropologist), most collectors and interpreters of folklore have never had much trouble identifying their aims and messages. Take the case of the lessons afforded by the two most celebrated tales of beast marriages. In one, the heroine marries Bluebeard, a beast in all but the literal sense of the term; in the other, the heroine weds Beast, a beast in all but the figurative sense of the term. There is no lack of consensus, as we shall see, about the moral offered by each story. One warns us about curiosity and its consequences; the other alerts us to the dangers of disobedience. So we are told.

Let us look first at “Bluebeard,” in the version formulated by Charles Perrault. In Perrault’s tale, which was included in variant form in the Grimms’ first edition but subsequently eliminated on the grounds that it showed too many signs of its French origins, the newly wed heroine learns from her husband that she may open everything, go anywhere, and do whatever she pleases. Under no circumstances, however, may she enter “the small room at the end of the long passage on the lower floor” (the directions could not be more explicit). Needless to say, the many attractions of Bluebeard’s castle fail to divert the heroine’s attention from the one “inconsequential” room, and she soon gives in to the temptation to unlock the forbidden chamber. To her horror, upon opening the door to the room, she sees a pool of clotted blood in which are reflected the corpses of Bluebeard’s wives, each with her throat slashed. Overcome by terror, she makes the nearly fatal error of dropping the key into the pool of blood, thereby staining it and furnishing her husband with telltale evidence of her transgression. Rescue at the eleventh hour by her two brothers saves her from sharing the fate of Bluebeard’s earlier victims.

The Grimms’ version of this tale (“Fowler’s Fowl”) is no less grisly.

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