Horror in Bluebeard Tales

I think that in most of the Bluebeard stories horror functions as a way to reinforce the image of the husband as evil. In Perrault’s “Bluebeard” and the Grimm’s “Fitcher’s Bird,” the room that the wife is forbidden to enter is described in a manner seemingly designed to shock the reader. Perrault describes the room as covered in blood with dead women hanging on the walls, while the Brothers Grimm story depicts a basin filled with chopped up people. Both stories seem to want to horrify the reader and thus make him reflect on the evil nature of a man who would commit such acts. Similarly the Brothers Grimm story “The Robber Bridegroom” and Jacobs’ “Mr. Fox” describe the gruesome acts of a husband-to-be who cuts up girls, including cutting off their fingers to obtain the ring on it. The horror in these two stories seems essential to the plot in order to validate the woman’s refusal to marry the man in question. After telling the story of atrocities she sees her future husband commit, which she frames as a dream in both tales, she is no longer obligated to marry him and her family takes care the bridegroom for her.

One story that stands out as different from the others in its use of horror is “Bluebeard’s Ghost” by Thackeray. Thackeray seems to use horror as the device to prompt Bluebeard’s widow into making a decision between Mr. Sly and Captain Blackbeard. The horror manifests itself in the visits made by Bluebeard’s “ghost” to his widow during the night. When the widow finds out the real source of these supposedly supernatural visits, she learns the true nature of Mr. Sly and is able to pick Captain Blackbeard without any qualms. In “Bluebeard’s Ghost” the horror provides almost the only action in the story and also propels the most important conflict in the story to its resolution in the widow’s picking of Blackbeard.