Table of Contents

List of Illustrations xi INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1: The Attractions of "Bluebeard": The Origins and Fortunes of a Folktale 11 CHAPTER 2: "Have You ever really been afraid? ... of a man?... of a house?... of yourself?": Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, and Modern Gothics 67 CHAPTER 3: Investigative Pleasures: Bluebeard's Wife in Hollywood 89 CHAPTER 4: Rewriting "Bluebeard": Resisting the Cult of Death 108 CHAPTER 5: Monstrous Wives: Bluebeard as Criminal and Cultural Hero 132 CHAPTER 6: The Art of Murder: Bluebeard as Artist and Aesthete 152 EPILOGUE 169 APPENDIX Cultural Variants of "Bluebeard" 175 Charles Perrault,"Bluebeard" 175 Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm,"The Robber Bridegroom" 179 Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm,"Fitcher's Bird" 182 Joseph Jacobs,"Mr. Fox" 185 Thomas Frederick Crane,"How the Devil Married Three Sisters" 187 Peter Christen Asbjornsen and Jorgen Moe, "The Hen Is Tripping in the Mountain" 190 Gaston Maugard,"The White Dove" 194 Richard Chase,"Mr.Fox" 198 Guy Wetmore Carryl, "How the Helpmate of Blue-Beard Made Free with a Door" 202 Rose Terry Cooke,"Blue-Beard's Closet," 1861 205 Edna St. Vincent Millay, Untitled Bluebeard Sonnet 207 Notes 209 Bibliography 225 Primary Literature 225 Secondary Literature 229 Films 239 Index 241

Promotional Information

Learned. Readable. Entertaining. This is a fascinating exploration of a story that in one sense never changes, but at the same time is always changing, illuminating shifting cultural attitudes about marriage, secrecy, enterprising women and withheld men. Tatar has produced a vivid kaleidoscope of curious women and the mistrust they arouse. -- Nina Auerbach, University of Pennsylvania A brisk, often breezy survey of one of the foundational stories of modern culture and its sexual mythologies. Tatar's book traces the changing, but still robust, reputation of Bluebeard's wife from its first wide dissemination in fairy tale and folklore to its later reworkings in literature, film, opera and cultural criticism. Tatar herself has been indefatigably curious in collecting various versions of the tale and in sighting otherwise almost invisible references to Bluebeard and his wife in contemporary literature. -- Maria DiBattista, Princeton University

About the Author

Maria Tatar is Dean for the Humanities in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the John L. Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. She is the author of The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales, Off with Their Heads! Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood; and Lustmord: Sexual Murder in Weimar Germany (all Princeton).

Reviews

"In this fine book, which both scholars and ordinary readers enjoy, as I did, [Tatar] casts her net wide. She reprints several versions of 'Bluebeard,' and discusses not only these tales and their many variants, but also the reappearance of the story in fiction, film, opera, and poetry."--Alison Lurie, The American Scholar "A respected critic of fairy tales, Tatar takes on Bluebeard and the result is a deeply resonant, fascinating study of intertextuality... [S]he persuasively demonstrates how the Bluebeard tale shifts its shape century by century, revealing the secret anxieties of the age regarding sexuality, coming of age, romance, marriage, and marital discord."--Choice "Secrets beyond the Door is full of transmutations and sublimations. Harvard professor Maria Tatar ... returns with a scintillating account of what generations of high and low culture have done to the Bluebeard folktale."--John Leonard, Harper's "A book that unlocks the reasons of transgression in the chambers of the mind."--Alex Moore, Foreword Magazine