From Charles Perrault to Amélie Nothomb

Although Amélie Nothomb’s Bluebeard story resembles Perrault’s to some degree, the differences between them are striking. Masculine and feminine roles are completely reversed. Perrault’s Bluebeard is a wealthy man who is bestial and monstrous. He forbids his wife to open the door of a secret closet. Inexperienced and helpless, she gives in to her curiosity, and escapes being murdered only thanks to her brothers. Conversely, Don Elemirio, the hero of Amélie Nothomb’s Bluebeard novel, is a Spanish aristocrat: an aesthete who loves gold the way an alchemist would. Like Perrault’s Bluebeard, he explicitly tells his female roommate, with whom he falls in love, that the darkroom is off limits to her. As a rational feminist, she refuses to obey him and, even when she begins to love him, brings about his death. Mysteriously, she too loses her life. Archaic violence, present in all of us, is always a source of dread and fascination.