Probing the Unconscious: "Bluebeard's Egg" by Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood’s “Bluebeard’s Egg” is a fascinating contemporary rendering of the classic fairy tale. Glaringly absent from this version are the elements of stupefying horror we find in the older tales--the haunting images of dead women hanging limply from chains, the pools of splattered blood. Rather, in her tale, Atwood takes us on a psychological journey through the deep, unexplored realms of the unconscious. The tale is told from the perspective of Sally, a middle-aged wife who obsessively tries to unlock the mystifying mind of her frustratingly unreadable husband, Ed.

Atwood’s take on Bluebeard reminded me of Bartok’s operatic adaptation of the tale. In Bartok’s decidedly pessimistic one-act opera, Judith’s insistent attempts to pry into the deepest chambers of her husband’s psyche ultimately destroy the couple’s prospects for achieving eternal satisfaction and happiness. The opera seems, in many ways, to suggest that a woman who dogmatically strives to possess her husband’s mind risks losing him. Similarly, Sally’s dogged desire to decipher her husband’s inner world leads to disaster, casting her relationship in an atmosphere of paranoia and distrust. In the end, she deduces that her husband is having an affair with her best friend. Whether this assumption is correct remains unanswered, but it is likely that her conclusion is simply the product of a paranoid mind, a grossly exaggerated misinterpretation of an otherwise harmless gesture. In this way, both Bartok and Atwood’s renditions of “Bluebeard” caution against forceful curiosity—not a sexual curiosity, as in Perrault’s version, but a curiosity of the psychological variety. Both tales, to some degree, imply that certain regions of a companion’s mind are best left undisturbed, and to encroach upon these forbidden regions is to unleash a torrent of catastrophe.

If we are to assume, however, that Sally’s deductions prove correct—that her husband is, indeed, engaging in an affair—then Atwood’s version represents an interesting inversion of the classic Bluebeard tales. Steeped in sexual imagery, Peraullt’s version of the tale can be read as a metaphor for sexual curiosity and loss of virginity; after all, the woman’s trespassing into the “forbidden” chamber leads to an irrevocable bloodstain on the key, a development rich in sexual implications. Slapping a moral onto the end of the tale, Perrault essentially shifts the blame onto the woman for “succumbing” to curiosity. Atwood, however, subverts Perrault’s warnings against female sexual curiosity--in her version, it is the husband, not the wife, who strays. Assuming Sally's interpretations of her husband's behavior are correct, here we have a case of a male's infidelity spelling dire consequences for a couple's marriage.

Atwood’s “Bluebeard’s Egg” is a densely layered, complex short story that lends itself to varied interpretations. Eliminating the Hitchcock-esque horror that defines the classic Bluebeard tales, Atwood opts instead for a rich exploration of the human mind.