Anatole France's "The Seven Wives of Bluebeard"

I find myself drawn to the tale “The Seven Wives of Bluebeard” by Anatole France because it takes me back to an amusing story I enjoyed as a child – The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, written by Jon Scieszka and illustrated by Lane Smith. As I was reading “The Seven Wives of Bluebeard” in Zipes’ Spells of Enchantment, I was amused by the author’s way of blending a historical analysis of the real lives of the Marshal de Rais and Guillaume de Flavy (and possible others) with the tale of Monsieur de Montragoux in order to do justice to the big, bad wife-killer, “Bluebeard.”

To quote a famous saying, “The winner writes history.” In this way, the popularly propagated tales of “Bluebeard” – from Perrault to the present – have been told from the side of the “winner.” In the “Bluebeard” tales, it is instead the final wife, who we could think of as being like the “Final Girl” paradigm from the horror genre. In “her” story, her antagonistic husband is a heartless beast with a penchant for killing wives.

However, the rhetoric of France is important in order to understand how his tale might help demystify and accredit the name of “Bluebeard.” Several times, France highlights how he assembled historical documents and old tales that follow the “Bluebeard” myth. The use of historical documents implies fact, or what France calls “irrefutable proofs” (France 567). Therefore, in order to make his tale seem credible, he refers to his historical documents for evidence.

Moreover, he critiques Perrault’s own use of language in writing “Bluebeard,” noting how certain word choices are equivocated. He also questions Perrault’s objectivity in writing the tale, claiming that his intuitions lead him to believe that Perrault may have been partial to the wife in telling his version of “Bluebeard.”

In any case, France’s unabashed defense of history’s “loser,” “Bluebeard,” is particularly amusing since it plays on the motifs and actions readers recall from the popularly disseminated versions of “Bluebeard” and then provides alternative – and equally compelling – explanations for them. This kind of parody has amused me since childhood when I first read: “Everybody knows the story of the Three Little Pigs. Or at least they think they do. But I’ll let you in on a little secret. Nobody knows the real story, because nobody has ever heard my side of the story” (from The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, pg. 1).

In the case of “Bluebeard,” whose tale is the right one? Was “Bluebeard” a raging, homicidal maniac? Or was “Bluebeard” an unjustified historical figure who was a victim of being “in wrong place at the wrong time”? We may never know.

…But France’s passion sure makes me wonder.