The Bluebeard: Difference between revisions

''then cut their throats with knives.''|Excerpt from [[Bluebeard]]}}

 

 

Unlike the [[Black Widow]], the Bluebeard is rarely motivated by [[Greed]], though in [[Real Life]], historically that was a fairly common motivation. Often, he just does it for [[Monster Misogyny|kicks]] or as the epitome of [[Domestic Abuse]].

** In a few versions, the story itself gets inverted to serve this message: specifically, the wife successfully resists the temptation to look, and this somehow grants her power over her husband to make him do whatever she says when he returns from his trip and finds himself deprived of his excuse to kill her.

** A variation of this tale appears in many versions of "The Robber Bridegroom."

*** So does the bride in the ballad ''The Outlandish Knight''. "Six pretty maidens have you drowned here/And the seventh has drowned thee."

** Another version completely subverts the story with a [[Perspective Flip]]. Bluebeard strictly forbids his wife from entering a particular room, but when she does, she finds that the room is perfectly normal and empty. It turns out that Bluebeard simply uses the room as a private place to rest when he doesn't want to be disturbed. He's understandably pissed when he finds out that his wife entered the room when he asked her not to, and ends up divorcing her and kicking her out of the house for her lack of trust.

 

== [[Live Action TV]] ==

** I assumed that {{spoiler|he just stuck them in the closet and left them, though, since his goal was to bring his creator's wife back.}}

* Naturally, shows up on ''[[Tales from the Crypt]]'', with the expected comeuppance: {{spoiler|his now-dead wives lure him to their graveyard, declaring they can't live... or die... without him}}.

* [[Domestic Abuser|Michael Dobson]], played by Larry Miller on ''[[Law and Order|Law & Order]]'', had his wives killed by hitmen on two separate occasions for the insurance money.

* Henry VIII, who had [[wikipedia:Wives of Henry VIII|six wives]], is often considered to be a Bluebeard despite the fact that "only" two of said wives (second wife Anne Boleyn and fifth wife Catherine Howard) got the axe, the first for failing to produce a male heir, the second for adultery.<ref>Although the king was [[Double Standard|no stranger to adultery himself]]. It wasn't producing a male heir that was the problem; it was producing a ''legitimate'' male heir who would actually be able to become king. This led to some zany schemes like planning to marry his illegitimate son to his legitimate daughter.</ref> Two of the others (first wife Catherine of Aragon and fourth wife Anne of Cleves) were divorced, the third (Jane Seymour) [[Death by Irony|died of natural causes after producing a male heir]], and the last one (Catherine Parr) survived him. His reputation in this area is augmented by the fact that he had plenty of ''other'' people executed over the political and religious complications involved in his [[High Turnover Rate]] of wives.

* "Bluebeard" is the ''official'' FBI designation for this type of [[Serial Killer]].

 

{{reflist}}