Bluebeard Again

That's no way to treat your wife.

Hello, reader. I've looked at Bluebeard on this blog before, but I just couldn't resist using that little key to open up this story again. As before, we'll look at Perrault's version of this story.

Last time, I focused on Bluebeard's wife. She is certainly an important character, but so is Bluebeard. And it's time he had some time in the sun.

To begin with, he must have been very careful not to have any of the previous murders blamed on him, and he must have been very rich for anyone to be willing to marry their daughters to him. I have to wonder about the magic in his house as well. Of course there is the key that his wife couldn't wash the blood off of. That is obviously magic. However, I am also curious about the room where his previous wives were stored. Without getting too graphic, it would stink. A lot. It's amazing no one noticed the complete stink in his house, especially since the bride's friends ran all over the place. There was something different about that room, and I think it was magical as well.

So, Bluebeard has a magic key and a magic room that work together to help him kill his wives and not get caught. Either he is a magician, or he used one to set all of that up. It doesn't seem likely that Bluebeard would be a magician. If that were the case, he wouldn't have needed to use a saber to behead his wife and he wouldn't have needed to wait for her to get to him before he killed her. He also probably wouldn't have let the brothers kill him. So, if that seems unlikely, someone else would have had to enchant that key and that room.

Whoever had enchanted those items would probably have known what they were used for. Bluebeard could have justified a room that didn't stink for all sorts of reasons, particularly before indoor plumbing existed. What would have been more difficult to explain would be the key. If that was a room for chamber pots, why lock it? If it was a room for any ordinary use, why make the key impossible to clean when it gets blood on it? I think whoever enchanted that room and that key knew what they were used for. So, someone else did that magic for Bluebeard.

Now for the final piece: how to make sure they didn't tell anyone about the murder room. It's possible that Bluebeard hired a heartless wizard to cast the spells and paid him to keep quiet about it. The only problem with this is that the wizard would have the perfect blackmail material forever. Bluebeard doesn't seem to be stupid, so he wouldn't have done that. The only way to be sure this mage wouldn't have told anyone would be if Bluebeard killed them afterwards. If this is what he did, where better than to put this corpse in the murder room? That also sets the trap for his next wife. Stay with me, this is where it gets interesting.

When the bride in this story looks into the murder room, there are only Bluebeard's previous wives in there. No one else. I think Bluebeard managed to get his first wife to cast these enchantments and then killed her. If she was such a strong mage, it is hard to think he could have killed her, but maybe casting those spells weakened her. Or maybe he slowly poisoned her. There are many ways he could have done it, but it has a kind of neatness about it. He uses his first wife to set the trap for his second wife's curiosity to kill her and on it goes until his wife kills Bluebeard instead.

The moral of the story is to watch your back if you're making a murder room for someone. Alternatively, don't murder your wives or you will end up dying for it. Eventually. And people say fairy tales are only for kids.

What do you think? Do you think someone else cast those spells? Have a different moral? Have a story you want me to over analyze? Comment below!