Day 28 of #AScareADay – ‘Bluebeard’s Wife’ by T. Kingfisher

Today’s story is another Fireside publication, T. Kingfisher’s ‘Bluebeard’s Wife’ which you can read here. It’s not the only Bluebeard retelling that T. Kingfisher has written. I recommend checking out the book The Seventh Bride for a darker Gothic world (with an adorable hedgehog familiar!)

The Bluebeard narrative is at the heart of many Gothic plots: the mysterious master of the house, a young ingenue, a terrible secret, a house filled with danger and horror. I’m far from the first person to point out how central this basic plot structure is to many famous Gothic texts, including, perhaps most famously Jane Eyre and its hidden attic room. A key component of the original story is the curiosity of the bride and this is also frequently echoed in Gothic texts although, rather than being punished for curiosity, the Gothic heroine is often rewarded with a truth, the reality behind the facade. For example, in Ann Radcliffe’s A Sicilian Romance, the two young sisters begin to think their mansion is haunted but the real secret is a woman in a locked room who turns out to be their mother. Wrongs are righted by their curiosity (rather than death being dealt out).

The twist that T. Kingfisher brings to the Bluebeard narrative is reimagining it through the eyes of his final wife who, rather than sneaking a look at the secret room, makes a point of respecting his privacy. Privacy has been an issue for her throughout her life due to her prying sisters and her marriage to Bluebeard was not a romance but an escape from the confinement of her life (and the curiosity of her sisters) which turned into a long and fairly loving friendship. The story’s exploration of her coming to terms with the revelation of his crimes after his death is moving and somewhat haunting.

She still missed her husband sometimes. Every time it felt like a betrayal of those women — those other wives — and yet it was what she felt. Twenty-seven years of living with someone, sharing their bed and crying on their shoulder, were not so easily erased. There was a great deal of guilt and fury as well — enough to fill an ocean, enough to make her pound her fists on the walls and howl — but there was no one she could talk to. No one else had ever been in this situation. The one person she could always talk to, the one who would have listened, was dead. And a murderer. But mostly dead.

But mostly dead.

If you’re interested in Bluebeard stories, there are lots of options. Here are a few that I’ve found interesting but there are so many more to go at (SO many)

1. The most famous reimagining of Bluebeard is, of course, Angela Carter’s ‘The Bloody Chamber’ and it’s hard to leave it off a list. It reimagines Bluebeard in a world of French decadence, with a sensual erotica collector and a story of sexual desire, power and control.
2. I really enjoyed Rana Dasgupta’s whole collection Tokyo Cancelled. It’s a short story cycle and one of the stories is ‘The House of the Frankfurt Mapmaker’ is a Bluebeard like tale which ends in tragedy in a modern world of human trafficking.
3. Edna St. Vincent Millay’s short sonnet ‘Bluebeard’ (which you can read here) gives another take on curiosity, privacy, and loss.
4. Bluebeard has equivalents in other folk tale traditions, one of which is the English fairytale ‘Mr Fox’. It’s a tale in which our heroine outwits the horrible protagonist. You can read a version here.
5. Helen Oyeyemi’s Mr Fox is a modern riff on the idea of the Mr Fox (and Bluebeard story). An author is confronted by his creation who asks why it is he kills off so many women in his books.
6. A rather fun (although incredibly macabre) version of the story is found in Charles Dicken’s ‘Captain Murder’, which is a tale, he says, that was told him by his nurse. You can read it here.
7. ‘The White Door’ by Lindsay King-Miller is found in the Unspeakable: Queer Gothic Anthology and is a fun take on Bluebeard with a sapphic perspective and vampires!

8. ‘The Seven Wives of Bluebeard’ (1903) by Anatole Frances reimagines Bluebeard as the victim of a scheming wife who lost the earlier six more by error than malice. You can read it here.

9. ‘What the Dead Birds Taught Me’ by Laura Blackwell reimagines Bluebeard in a modern world with the seventh potential victim as a necromancer. Suffice to say, things do not end well for him. Read it here.

10. I’ll finish with a song. Patti Griffin’s ‘Bluebeard’ seems to be a fairly straight retelling of the story but I particularly like the ending where the whole world turns against him – the sea, the sands, the tide. You can listen to it here.

What are some of your favourite Bluebeard retellings or ones that you’ve found interesting?