Horrified, she drops the key in the blood and flees the room. She immediately discovers that the room is flooded with blood and the murdered corpses of Bluebeard's previous six wives hanging on hooks from the walls. However, she is eventually overcome with the desire to see what the secret room holds, and she sneaks away from the party and ventures into it. She invites her sister, Anne, and her friends and cousins over for a party. He then goes away, leaves the palace, and the keys in her hands. She is able to open any room with them, each of which contain some of his riches, except for an underground chamber that he strictly forbids her to enter lest she suffer his wrath.

After hosting a wonderful banquet, the youngest decides to be his wife and goes to live with him in his rich and luxurious palace in the countryside, away from her family.īluebeard announces that he must leave for the country and gives the palace keys to his wife. When he visits his neighbor and asks to marry one of his daughters, they are terrified. In one version of the story, Bluebeard is a wealthy and powerful nobleman who has been married six times to beautiful women who have all mysteriously vanished. Plot īluebeard, his wife, and the key in a 1921 illustration The verb 'bluebearding' has even appeared as a way to describe the crime of either killing a series of women, or seducing and abandoning a series of women. The notoriety of the tale is such that Merriam-Webster gives the word 'Bluebeard' the definition of 'a man who marries and kills one wife after another'. ' The White Dove', ' The Robber Bridegroom' and ' Fitcher's Bird' (also called 'Fowler's Fowl') are tales similar to 'Bluebeard'. The tale tells the story of a wealthy man in the habit of murdering his wives and the attempts of the present one to avoid the fate of her predecessors. ' Bluebeard' ( French: Barbe bleue, ) is a French folktale, the most famous surviving version of which was written by Charles Perrault and first published by Barbin in Paris in 1697 in Histoires ou contes du temps passé. The Robber Bridegroom How the Devil Married Three Sisters Fitcher's Bird Histoires ou contes du temps passé, by Charles Perrault Bluebeard gives his wife the keys to his castle.ĪTU 312 (The Bluebeard, The Maiden-Killer)

The Red Sea Bride by Sylvia Fowler