Bluebeard

Over the centuries, academics and analysts have offered many suggestions for why the beard is blue. As an unusual color for hair that causes people to see him as “so ugly and frightful that there was not a woman or girl who did not run away at the sight of him” (70), it implies Blue Beard’s lack of humanity early on in the fairy tale and hints at his unnatural desires. This unusual aspect of his appearance has also been taken to suggest he is not French or European, which makes his behaviors and secrets all the more alluring for Perrault’s era.

Another explanation for the blue color of the villain’s beard is that it is meant as either a mark of nobility or the desire to attain it. If the former, the connotation is a warning that even high-born men can be suspect (a fact that Perrault knew in his jockeying as a commoner for political position against aristocrats). If the latter, it is crucial that the young bride’s mother is “a lady of high degree” (70) as Blue Beard could receive a title by marrying into the aristocracy, a coldly pragmatic yet common

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