Why do the same themes repeat in folklore — are they accidental? Do they reflect transmission of ideas? Or do they emerge out of a common social pattern? The tale of Bluebeard, first famously inscribed by Charles Perrault in 1697, tells a story featuring the trope of “young beautiful women whose curiosity results in bad and horrible things.” And Eve, Pandora, Snow White, and all the doomed women who go to check out the mysterious noise in American horror films all belong to this same tradition.
In Bluebeard’s case, the very young bride of the older wealthy Bluebeard is given the keys to every room in her new husband’s mansion. Bluebeard had a legacy of marrying women who had disappeared, but he treated his new wife well. There was only one key, he told her, that she was not to use. Of course, when Bluebeard left the house one day, his wife used the key to open the lock to a chamber, and when she entered she found the murdered corpses of all the former wives hanging upon hooks, as the painting here shows. Terrified, she dropped the key which landed in a puddle of blood.
Later, Bluebeard’s wife couldn’t get the blood off the key, because it was magically enchanted. When her husband discovered that she had disobeyed him, Bluebeard tried to kill her. Fortunately, her sister and brothers entered the scene of the crime and stopped Bluebeard’s attempted murder. A lot of other incarnations of “the curious woman” folktale end much worse.
One interpretation of the Blackbeard story is that the key represents a phallic symbol and the blood on it his wife’s sexual infidelity. True or no, the way these legends treat women’s curiosity as something dangerous might suggest cultures that didn’t want young women to challenge authority, no matter from when it came.
The second and third photos are from Mercer’s Fonthill Castle. One of the bedrooms featured here has the entire story of Bluebeard represented in tile (you see the moment the woman enters the chamber of horrors). The last shows an enormous built-in cabinet for holding all of Mercer’s keys. Coincidence?
P.s.not to suggest Mercer was secretly a murderer, but rather that he might have had a thing about keys.
Source(s): First picture is 1887 illustration of Bluebeard’s Chamber by Hermann Vogel. Folklorist Bruno Bettelheim for the key interpretation.
