ipl-logo

Summary Of Bluebeard's Fairy Tale

1749 Words7 Pages

A Proposal of Bluebeard’s Fairy Tale as Gothic Tale by Analysing its Illustrations.

“Fairy Tales are often viewed as innocent stories that people read to their children as a bedtime story. “The fairy tale proceeds in a manner which conforms to the way a child thinks and experiences the world;” this is why the fairy tale is so convincing to him” (Bettelheim 45).

But can Fairy Tales be considered Gothic? If we look closely at fairy tales written throughout the centuries, we will find some correlations between the genre gothic and this short stories. But for this essay I will only concentrate on Perrault’s story of Bluebeard Tale, by analysing three key illustrations from and French illustrator Edmund Dulac (1882 - 1953), …show more content…

Often, a Gothic novel or story will revolve around a large, ancient house that conceals a terrible secret or that serves as the refuge of an especially frightening and threatening character ” (Kennedy web).

And the fairy tale Bluebeard, as well as its variants, is about a conflict between a serial killer groom and his bride, who discovers his secrets. It has the possession factor between the men towards the female characters, it has transfiguration, from a mysterious husband to a sadistic serial killer. Moreover, it has Fear, Terror, Gore, Deadness and a flair for the grotesque, showed through death threats that escalated to murder and dismemberment of its victims and theirs concealment under lock and key.

But still this story is still not considered gothic, this tale is inside a box that is fairy tales, only for children! But this couldn’t be more inappropriate.
Even in Breillat’s interpretation, all these gothic symbols are still maintained, with the only difference that in this case the female is empowered to the place of villainess so that she could escape her captor, with the final scene of having her husband decapitated in a silver …show more content…

…, a self-consciously Gothic narrative, expands upon the "Bluebeard" story by granting the fairy-tale characters complex psychological motivations and justifications” (Pyrhönen 277).

I started this essay with the intention of proving that Perrault’s Bluebeard’s tale was allegeable to be called gothic by analysing its illustrations drawn by different illustrators. And I can say my intention was accomplished. Even with three illustrations drawn by three different artists at separate times, they kept that grim scary side of what a gothic tale should entail.
The subject matter and message of the fairy tale “Bluebeard” and its variants are thought-provoking and have struck a chord with everyone that reads or sees it. It deals with issues such as victim-blaming, gender equality, and the relationship between power and violence remain important to people, these multifaceted fairy tales will surely continue to be discussed, rewritten and

Show More
Related
821 Words | 4 Pages

2.2 The Gothic Monster As my main focus of this paper is the motif of the double and transformation in the film Black Swan, Fin de Siècle Gothic is of most interest here. In these turn of the century Gothic works, the monster is a recurring and very integral theme. Gothic monster as such are Doubles, Vampires, and Shape Shifters or other forms of transformed part humans.

Read More
621 Words | 3 Pages

In the aged version of gothic romanticism, the gloomy aspects are still found; however, they are depicted in different manners. An example of modified gothic romanticism is seen in Washington Irving’s “The Devil and Tom Walker” by its supernatural conflict, and setting in the mysterious, abandoned Native American Fort. Irving’s

Read More
635 Words | 3 Pages

Lately, there have been a variety of classic fairy tales that have been renovated to appeal to an audience of the twenty-first century on the big screen. However, such revisions occur not only in movies, but in literature as well. Through the use of literary devices, we have the ability to connect classic tales to the modern world. In Edward Field's poem "Icarus", the author employs imagery and extended metaphor to adapt the Icarus myth to a contemporary setting.

Read More
649 Words | 3 Pages

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has become the archetypal gothic novel. With its combining of gothic and romantic themes set the tone of the narrative. While DC Comics the Batman being known as one of the more darker and popular of their superhero line up. Sparking many movies and TV shows based on the adventures of the caped crusader; including the 2005 movie Batman Begins. This movie, retelling the origins of Batman shares many of the same themes with the novel of Frankenstein.

Read More
1041 Words | 5 Pages

The Bloody Chamber, like all the other pieces in the anthology was meant to "reveal the latent truths" within the original stories and put her feminist twist on them. While Bluebeard champions obedience and tempering the influence of the wife, The Bloody Chamber centers around dismantling the patriarchy and relationships between women. From the beginning, the structure separates itself from the folktale by being explicitly from the heroine's point of view. Whereas Bluebeard in the original is a horrifying monster in a cautionary tale, the modern Bluebeard more of a sexual deviant, who is displayed as more twisted and pathetic. Right before Bluebeard's attempt to murder the heroine, she even laments "the atrocious loneliness of that monster!"

Read More
930 Words | 4 Pages

Edgar Allan Poe’s frightening gothic style poetry and short novels about fear, love, death and horror are prominent to Gothic Literature and explore madness through a nerve-recking angle. The incredible, malformed author, poet, editor and novelist is recognized for his famous classical pieces such as “The Raven”, “Berenice” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”, pieces of work that mystically yet magnificently awakens readers with a gloomy spirit. Awakening the subject of madness through written work was viewed as insane during Poe’s times. Yet Poe published some of the worlds most magnificently frightening pieces of literature throughout history. In the following essay I will examine and cautiously analyze

Read More
1009 Words | 5 Pages

In Daphne du Maurier’s gothic-style novel, Rebecca, develops one of her main characters, Maxim de Winter, into a classic gothic hero. A gothic hero possesses certain features including: some degree of a tragic life experience, high social rank, constant foreshadowing of doom, a strong sexual element, etc. du Maurier’s character development of Mr. de Winter is excellent because he portrays all of the features of a gothic protagonist. Throughout Rebecca, Maxim de Winter exhibits the characteristics of a gothic hero: having some degree of tragic stature, having a tendency to be influenced by past events, and having an occasional association with what is non-human. Having a tragic event occur in their lifetime is a trademark for gothic-type

Read More
1025 Words | 5 Pages

In Margaret Atwood’s poem “There Was Once”, Atwood uses irony to point out the societal problems within the genre of fairy tales. Charles Perrault, the author of the short story “The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood”, writes about fantastic creatures, magic, and love, following the generic conventions of fairy tales. When compared to Perrault’s short story “The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood”, Atwood’s poem both compliments and contrasts Perrault’s. These two texts, although similar, offer different views on the genre of fairy tales. Margaret Atwood’s satirical poem, “There Was Once”, aims to disrupt the generic conventions of a traditional fairy tale.

Read More
1029 Words | 5 Pages

Gothic Literature is a genre that was popular between 18th to 19th centuries in North Germany. It is always being associated with Dark Romanticism which the emphasize was more on nature, terror and death, horror and many more. It involves dark and gloomy setting and also unexplainable things that are beyond human senses and reason such as ghosts and monsters. The main characters, on the other hand, are always ineffectual which they do not give much effect on the story plot. This can be seen through Washington Irving’s “Rip van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” which can be considered as American gothic work in terms of its description of setting, the involvement of supernatural element in the story and also the characteristics of the main character.

Read More
1276 Words | 6 Pages

Most of the children read about many fairy tales, especially Snow Whites, Sleeping beauty, and Cinderella when they grew up. It is a surprising fact that to discover a hidden, unexpected political intention in the simple plot of fairy tales. That is a feminization of woman. The fairy tale world suggests a male-centered patriarchy as an ideal basic society and impliedly imply that man and woman need to have a proper attitude toward this opinion. However, Jewett’s A White Heron describes a new perspective of fairy tale’s plot.

Read More
996 Words | 4 Pages

For Poe, this genre might have offered him the chance to write about his sorrows, since, at the time The Raven was written according to Joy Lanzendorfer of Mental Floss6, his wife was deathly ill, he had already lost many to tuberculosis and he must have known, in his bosom’s core, that he was to sadly let another one of his beloved go. This is where both the genre and a dark, ebony omen come into play. It can be said that the gothic genre allows us to discuss quite painful subjects through use of copious symbols and parallels and that we can see the effects of such heartbreaking things on the human mind, that we can gradually follow the decline, the decay one might go through after the traumatising event of losing someone close to oneself. The raven, further, is of importance for it, according to Poe, symbolised “mournful and never-ending remembrance. ”7, the type we see in the poem when the bird repeats ‘nevermore’.

Read More
1056 Words | 5 Pages

Gothic Elements in the “The Tell Tale Heart” The classic short story of “The Tell-Tale Heart”, written by one of the all time masters of horror, Edgar Allen Poe, has always been used as an excellent example of Gothic fiction. Edgar Allen Poe specialized in the art of gothic writing and wrote many stories that portrayed disturbing events and delved deeply into the minds of its characters. In "The Tell-Tale Heart," Poe revolves the plot around a raving individual who, insisting that he is sane, murders an old man because of his` “vulture eye”. The three main gothic elements that are evident in this story are the unique setting, the theme of death and decay, and the presence of madness.

Read More
787 Words | 4 Pages

“The Bloody Chamber” is Angela Carter`s retelling of the classic grim fairy tale “Bluebeard”. The passage analyzed in this essay is used in the story to identify the strange dynamic between the Marquis and his soon-to-be bride. In it the young heroine recounts the Marquis`s visage, his past wives and their wedding night. In order to establish the heroine and the Marquis`s abnormal relationship, Carter uses key literary devise such as theme to establish the idea of the Marquis`s dominance over the heroine, imagery to show an owner versus object exchange and foreshadowing to allude to the tale`s bloody end. Theme is used to portray the Marquis`s complete control over the heroine akin to an adult child dynamic.

Read More
942 Words | 4 Pages

The theme in this narrative is supported by various gothic elements, such as the dim and derry setting and the supernatural aspect of this piece of literature. The gothic allusions’ a dark and gloomy setting and supernatural

Read More
1087 Words | 5 Pages

In the early 18th century a new genre of fiction prose, named "Gothic Novel" was introduced. The term ”Gothic” used to refer to the German tribe of the Goths. The Gothic novel spread over the 19th century and had the popular theme of haunted places such as castles, crypts, gloomy monasteries; supernatural elements having the role to intensify the atmosphere. The characteristic motifs of the gothic genre were the strange places, the supernatural, magic objects, monsters, demons, science used for bad purposes. And many of them appear also in "The Picture of Dorian Gray".

Read More

More about Summary Of Bluebeard's Fairy Tale

Related Topics

Open Document