Bluebeard Charles Perrault

Literature

Other versions of Bluebeard include:[43][44]

• Commentaires Apostoliques et Théologiques sur les Saintes Prophéties de l'auteur Sacré de Barbe-Bleue (1779), a satire by Frederick the Great
• Die Sieben Weiber des Blaubart ("The Seven Wives of Bluebeard") (1797), a novel by Ludwig Tieck
• "Blaubart" ("Bluebeard") (1850), a fairy tale by Alexander von Ungern-Sternberg[45]
• "Captain Murderer" (1860), a short story by Charles Dickens[46]
• "Le Sixième Mariage de Barbe-Bleue" ("Bluebeard's Sixth Marriage") (1892), a short story by Henri de Régnier
• "Bluebeard's Keys" (1902), a short story by Anne Thackeray Ritchie
• "The Seven Wives of Bluebeard" (1903), a short story by Anatole France
• Chevalier Blaubarts Liebesgarten ("Knight Bluebeard's Love Garden") (1910), a novel by Joseph August Lux
• Ritter Blaubart ("Bluebeard the Knight") (1911), a short story by Alfred Döblin
• The Blue Castle (1926), a novel by L. M. Montgomery
• Sister Anne (1932), a novella by Beatrix Potter
• The Robber Bridegroom (1942), a novella by Eudora Welty
• "The Bloody Chamber" (1979), a short story by Angela Carter[47]
• Bluebeard (1982), a novel by Max Frisch[48]
• "Bluebeard's Egg" (1983), a short story by Margaret Atwood in a collection of the same name[49]
• Blaubarts Letzte Reise ("Bluebeard's Last Journey") (1983), a short story by Peter Rühmkorf
• "Bluebeard", (1986), a short story by Donald Barthelme
• Bluebeard (1987), a novel by Kurt Vonnegut[50]
• "Blue-Bearded Lover" (1987), a short story by Joyce Carol Oates[51]
• Blaubarts Schatten ("Bluebeard's Shadow") (1991), a novel by Karin Struck
• "Bluebeard in Ireland"' (1994), a short story by John Updike[52]
• Fitcher's Brides (2002), a novel by Gregory Frost[53]
• Barbe-Bleue ("Bluebeard") (2012), a novel by Amélie Nothomb
• Mr. Fox (2011), a novel by Helen Oyeyemi
• How to be Eaten (2022), a novel by Maria Adelmann[54]
• Bluebeard's Castle (2023), a novel by Anna Biller

In Charles Dickens' short story "Captain Murderer", the title character is described as "an offshoot of the Bluebeard family", and is far more bloodthirsty than most Bluebeards: he cannibalises each wife a month after marriage. He meets his demise after his sister-in-law, in revenge for the death of her sister, marries him and consumes a deadly poison just before he devours her.[55]

In Anatole France's The Seven Wives of Bluebeard, Bluebeard is the victim of the tale, and his wives the perpetrators. Bluebeard is a generous, kind-hearted, wealthy nobleman called Bertrand de Montragoux who marries a succession of grotesque, adulterous, difficult, or simple-minded wives. His first six wives all die, flee, or are sent away under unfortunate circumstances, none of which are his fault. His seventh wife deceives him with another lover and murders him for his wealth.[56]

In Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber", Bluebeard is a 1920s decadent with a collection of erotic drawings, and Bluebeard's wife is rescued by her mother, who rides in on a horse and shoots Bluebeard between the eyes, rather than by her brothers as in the original fairy tale.[47]

In Joyce Carol Oates' short story, "Blue-Bearded Lover", the most recent wife is well aware of Bluebeard's murdered wives: she does not unlock the door to the forbidden room, and therefore avoids death herself. She remains with Bluebeard despite knowing he is a murderer, and gives birth to Bluebeard's children. The book has been interpreted as a feminist struggle for sexual power.[57]

In Helen Oyeyemi's Mr. Fox, Mr. Fox is a writer of slasher novels, with a muse named Mary. Mary questions Mr. Fox about why he writes about killing women who have transgressed patriarchal laws, making him aware of how his words normalize domestic violence. One of the stories in the book is about a girl named Mary who has a fear of serial killers because her father raised her on stories about men who killed women who did not obey them and then killed her mother.[58]

Kurt Vonnegut's Bluebeard features a painter who calls himself Bluebeard, and who considers his art studio to be a forbidden chamber where his girlfriend Circe Berman is not allowed to go.[59]

In Donald Barthelme's Bluebeard, the wife believes that the carcasses of Bluebeard's previous six wives are behind the door. She loses the key and her lover hides the three duplicates. One afternoon Bluebeard insists that she open the door, so she borrows his key. Inside, she finds the decaying carcasses of six zebras dressed in Coco Chanel gowns.[60]

In theatre

• Ritter Blaubart ("Knight Bluebeard") (1797), a play by Ludwig Tieck
• Bluebeard (1895), a ballet by Georges Jacobi, choreographed by Carlo Coppi
• Bluebeard (1896), a ballet by choreographer Marius Petipa to the music of composer Pyotr Schenk.[61]
• Ariane et Barbe-bleue (1899), a symbolist play by Maurice Maeterlinck
• Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1921), a French farce by Alfred Savoir
• Saint Joan (1923), a play by George Bernard Shaw, features Gilles de Rais, nicknamed Bluebeard for his tinted beard and believed by some to be a source of the legend
• Bluebeard (1941), by Jacques Offenbach, choreographed by Michel Fokine
• Blaubarts Traum (Bluebeard's Dream) (1961), a ballet by Harold Saeverud, choreographed by Yvonne Georgi
• Bluebeard (1970), an off-Broadway absurdist comedy by Charles Ludlam, adapted from The Island of Dr Moreau
• Blaubart: Drama giocoso (1985), a play by Martin Mosebach
• Bluebeard (2015), a ballet based on the novel The Seven Wives of Bluebeard by Anatole France, directed and choreographed by Staša Zurovac and composed by Marjan Nećak
• Bluebeard's Friends (2019), one of three short plays by Caryl Churchill
• Blue Beard (2024), a play by Emma Rice[62]

In music

• Raoul Barbe-bleue (1789), an opera by André Grétry
• The Grand Dramatic Romance Blue-Beard, or Female Curiosity, a 1798 opera by George Colman the Younger, composed by Michael Kelly.
• Barbe-bleue (1866), an operetta by Jacques Offenbach
• Blue Beard, Jr. (1889), musical with a libretto by Clay M. Greene and music by Fred J. Eustis, Richard Maddern, and John Joseph Braham Sr.
• Ariane et Barbe-bleue (1907), an opera by Paul Dukas
• Bluebeard's Castle (1918), an opera by Béla Bartók and Béla Balázs
• "Bluebeard" (1993), a song by the Cocteau Twins, on the album Four-Calendar Café
• "Go Long" by Joanna Newsom (2010), on the album Have One on Me[63]
• "Aoki Hakushaku no Shiro" ("The Blue Marquis' Castle"), a song by Sound Horizon, on the album Märchen
• "Mrs. Bluebeard", a song by They Might Be Giants, on the album I Like Fun
• "Bluebeard" (2019) a song by Patty Griffin, on the album Patty Griffin
• "Nightmares by the Sea", a song by Jeff Buckley on the album Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk
• Predator, a song by Toni Childs from her album The Woman's Boat.
• "Eve, Psyche & the Bluebeard's Wife" (2023), a song by Le Sserafim, on the album Unforgiven

In film

• Barbe-bleue, a 1901 short film by Georges Méliès
• Bluebeard's 8th Wife, a 1923 silent comedy film directed by Sam Wood and starring Gloria Swanson
• Miss Bluebeard, a 1925 silent comedy film directed by Frank Tuttle and starring Bebe Daniels, based on the play Little Miss Bluebeard
• Barbe-bleue, a 1936 claymation short film directed by Jean Painlevé
• Bluebeard's Eighth Wife, a 1938 remake of the Swanson silent film, directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starring Claudette Colbert and Gary Cooper
• Bluebeard, a 1944 film directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, starring John Carradine
• Gaslight, Rebecca, and Suspicion are classical Hollywood cinema variations on the Bluebeard tale.[64][65]
• Monsieur Verdoux, a 1947 black comedy film directed by and starring Charles Chaplin
• Secret Beyond the Door, a 1948 contemporary adaptation directed by Fritz Lang, starring Michael Redgrave and Joan Bennett
• Bye, Bye Bluebeard a 1949 Warner Brothers cartoon by Arthur Davis
• Bluebeard's Six Wives, a 1950 Italian comedy film directed by Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, starring Totò
• Barbe-Bleue (titled Bluebeard in the U.S.), a 1951 German-French film directed by Christian-Jaque, starring Hans Albers
• Juliette, or Key of Dreams, a 1951 French film based on the 1930 play of the same name
• Bluebeard's Ten Honeymoons, a 1960 British thriller directed by W. Lee Wilder and starring George Sanders
• Landru (titled Bluebeard in the U.S.), a 1963 French drama directed by Claude Chabrol starring Charles Denner, Michèle Morgan, and Danielle Darrieux
• Herzog Blaubarts Burg ("Duke Bluebeard's Castle"), a 1963 film directed by Michael Powell
• Bluebeard, a 1972 film directed by Edward Dmytryk, starring Richard Burton, Joey Heatherton, Raquel Welch, and Virna Lisi
• Очень синяя борода [Ochen' siniya boroda] (Very Blue Beard), a 1979 Soviet animated film
• La Barbe-bleue, a 1986 French TV movie adaptation directed by Alain Ferrari
• The Piano, a 1993 film directed by Jane Campion
• Barbe Bleue, a 2009 film directed by Catherine Breillat[66]
• Ex Machina, a 2015 film directed by Alex Garland
• Crimson Peak, a 2015 Gothic horror film
• Elizabeth Harvest, a 2018 film directed by Sebastian Gutierrez

In poetry

• "Bluebeard's Closet" (1888), a poem by Rose Terry Cooke[67]
• "Der Ritter Blaubart" ("The Knight Bluebeard") (1911), a poem by Reinhard Koester
• "I Seek Another Place" (1917), a sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay[68]
• "Bluebeard", a poem by Sylvia Plath[69]
• The story is alluded to in Seamus Heaney's 1966 poem "Blackberry Picking":[70] "Our hands were peppered/With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's."

References in literature

• In Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel Jane Eyre, the narrator alludes to her husband as Bluebeard, and to his castle as Bluebeard's castle.[71]
• In The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy, the story of Bluebeard is referred to in Chapter 18, with Sir Percy's bedroom being compared to Bluebeard's chamber, and Marguerite to Bluebeard's wife.[72]
• In William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, the character Benedick exclaims, "Like the old tale, my lord: It is not so nor 'twas not so but, indeed, God forbid it should be so." Here, Benedick is quoting a phrase from an English variant of Bluebeard, Mr. Fox,[73] referring to it as "the old tale".
• In Machado de Assis’s story "The Looking Glass" the main character, Jacobina, dreams she is trying to escape Bluebeard.
• In The Blue Castle, a 1926 novel by Lucy Maude Montgomery, Valancy's mysterious new husband forbids her to open one door in his house, a room they both term "Bluebeard's Chamber".
• In Vladimir Nabokov's novel Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle, the main character Van and his father Demon are both referred to as Bluebeards.
• In Stephen King's The Shining, the character Jack Torrance reads the story of Bluebeard to his three-year-old son Danny, to his wife's disapproval. The Shining also directly references the Bluebeard tale in that there is a secret hotel room which conceals a suicide, a remote 'castle' (The Overlook Hotel), and a husband (Jack) who attempts to kill his wife.
• In Javier Marías’ 1992 novel, A Heart So White, the narrator’s father is called "worse than Bluebeard" for having lost three wives in succession.[74]
• In Fifty Shades of Grey, by E. L. James, Mr. Grey has a bloody S & M chamber where he tortures Anastasia, and she refers to him at least once as Bluebeard.[75]
• "Bones", a short story by Francesca Lia Block, recasts Bluebeard as a sinister L.A. promoter.[76]
• The short story Trenzas (Braids) by Chilean writer María Luisa Bombal has some paragraphs where the narrator comments on Bluebeard's last wife having long and thick braids that would get tangled in Bluebeard's fingers, and as he struggled to undo them before killing her, he was caught and killed by the woman's protective brothers.[77]
• In Carmen Maria Machado's In the Dream House, the author uses the story of Bluebeard to illustrate tolerance in domestic abuse situations.

In television

• Bluebeard is featured in Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics as part of its "Grimm Masterpiece Theater" season. The bride is the peasant teenage girl Josephine, raised by her three woodworker brothers; she is deliberately chosen by Bluebeard for her beauty, her naivete and her desire to marry a prince. The character design for Bluebeard strongly resembles the English King Henry VIII.
• Bluebeard is featured in Sandra the Fairytale Detective as the villain in the episode "The Forbidden Room".
• Bluebeard is featured in Scary Tales, produced by the Discovery Channel, Sony and IMAX, episode one, in 2011. (This series is not related to the Disney collection of the same name.)
• Bluebeard was the subject of the pilot episode of an aborted television series, Famous Tales (1951), created by and starring Burl Ives with music by Albert Hague.
• A Korean stage play of the Bluebeard story serves as the backstory and inspiration for the antagonist, a serial kidnapper, in the South Korean television show, Strong Woman Do Bong-soon (2017).
• In Hannibal, Season 3 episode 12 "The Number of the Beast is 666", Bedelia Du Maurier compares herself and the protagonist Will Graham to Bluebeard's brides, referring to their relationships with Hannibal Lecter.
• You, Season 1 episode 10 is called "Bluebeard's Castle", and the heroine Guinevere Beck compares the character Joe Goldberg to Bluebeard and his glass box to Bluebeard's Castle.[78]
• It's Okay to Not Be Okay is a South Korean Drama in which this tale is narrated in episode 6.
• The TV series Grimm, episode 4, season 1, "Lonely Hearts", is based on Bluebeard. The antagonist is a serial rapist who keeps all of his (living) victims in a secret basement room.
• Succession, season 2, episode 9 when Rhea called Logan 'bluebeard' because she thinks he is trying to kill her by putting her up for the CEO position and takes the fall for the Cruise coverup.

In other media

• The fairy tale of Bluebeard was the inspiration for the Gothic feminine horror game Bluebeard's Bride by Whitney "Strix" Beltrán, Marissa Kelly, and Sarah Richardson published by Magpie Games. It is centered on the premise of the fairy tale with players acting out emotions and thoughts from the shared perspective of the Bride, each taking on an aspect of her psyche.[79]
• Image of Bluebeard, a story published in 1965 in issue no. 7 of the comics magazine Creepy, is about a woman who suspects her husband is a modern incarnation of Bluebeard.
• In DC Comics' Fables series, Bluebeard appears as an amoral character, willing to kill and often suspected of being involved in various nefarious deeds.
• Bluebeard is a character in the video game The Wolf Among Us by Telltale Games, based on the Fables comics.
• Bluebeard's Castle, and its sequel Bluebeard's Castle 2: Son of the Heartless, is a hidden object puzzle video game created by Fanda Games and published by Big Fish Games, based on the fairytale Bluebeard.
• Dark Romance: Curse of Bluebeard is a hidden object puzzle video game created by DominiGames and published by Big Fish Games as part of their Dark Romance series.
• In the Japanese light novel and manga/anime Fate/Zero, Bluebeard appears as the Caster Servant, where his character largely stems from Gilles de Rais as a serial murderer of children.
• The Awful History of Bluebeard consists of 7 original drawings by William Makepeace Thackeray from 1833, given as a gift to his cousin on her 11th birthday and published in 1924.[80]
• A series of photographs published in 1992 by Cindy Sherman illustrate the fairy tale Fitcher's Bird (a variant of Bluebeard).
• Bluebeard appears as a minor Darklord in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (2nd ed.) Ravenloft accessory Darklords.[81]
• In the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering, created by Wizards of the Coast, the card "Malevolent Noble" in the Throne of Eldraine expansion depicts Bluebeard.
• BBC Radio 4 aired a radio play from 2014 called Burning Desires written by Colin Bytheway, about the serial killer Henri Désiré Landru, an early 20th-century killer of women, often called a "Bluebeard".[82]
• The 1955 film The Night of the Hunter includes a scene at the trial of serial wife killer in which the crowd/mob chants "Bluebeard!" repeatedly.
• A mausoleum containing the remains of Bluebeard and his wives can be seen at the exit of The Haunted Mansion at Walt Disney World.
• Ceramic tiles tell the tale of Bluebeard and his wives in Fonthill Castle, the home of Henry Mercer in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.
• Bluebeard and a variation of his tale appears in the manga Ludwig Kakumei.