Is The Objectification Of Women In Charles Perrault's 'Bluebeard'?

In literature and the genre of fairytales, the aspect of time has the potential to play a particularly influential role in the portrayal of a story. Through generations, an author may rewrite a story and modify certain characteristics of it so that it is better suited for a certain era. These modifications can be dependent on the authors’ beliefs and values, the current events of that time period, stylistic language, or serve the purpose of conveying a message to the readers. For example, the original version of the story “Bluebeard,” written by Charles Perrault in the year 1697, has since been adjusted and rewritten by others in a more contemporary setting and era. In Angela Carter’s 1979 version of the story, “The Bloody Chamber,” the author

On various occasions, the girl is depicted as having an almost toy-like quality, in which she can only be controlled and manipulated by her husband. On page 10, the text remarks, “he had invited me to join this gallery of beautiful women” (Carter 10). Such is only one instance in the story when the female character is being demonstrated as an object simply for show and display to the rest of the world. When the couple is about to have sex, the description of the wife in terms of her husband’s actions, corresponds to the qualities of other objects. For example, it is described, “as if he were stripping the leaves off an artichoke,” and that “he closed my legs like a book” (Carter 15). Both of these examples are in regards to inanimate objects, which can be utilized and controlled. This mimics the assertive and manipulative quality that the husband male figure has over the objectified woman. Nevertheless, in both stories, the classic by Perrault and the modern by Carter, this idea of objectification reaches it’s culminating point in the sense that the husbands’ murders of their wives are a way of literally collecting them and holding them in a room for their