The Story Of The Blue Beard Story By Charles Perrault

The story the Blue Beard story by Charles Perrault

Summary

The story is about rich man who had a long blue beard. He was greatly feared by the community members due to her physical comportment of ugliness and the fact that he had a blue beard. He had married several wives and murdered them one by one. He proposed to a neighbour’s daughter and after a heavy convincing, the mother accepted the marriage proposal. The wife enjoyed the lovely man contrary to the perception held by people against him. One day he was travelling for business in a distant country and left his wife in charge of everything except a small cubicle in the house which she was not allowed to open but she disobeyed, opened and found the dead bodies of his past wives. On return, the key to the cube which was blood stained was requested by the husband but the clever wife played tricks but finally gave it to him. He pronounced a similar fate as then former wives to this wife. She was given a moment to pray but the wife contacted her sister to ask her brothers to come in haste. The brothers came at the moment when Blue Beard was struggling his wife. He went for the door and immediately the y smelt the rat and killed him. Then wife shared the fortune estate wealth amongst relatives and got herself a husband (Charles,1697).

Response to the story

I liked the story especially the climax of the story when the man returns to find that his wife had disobeyed his orders. The part when the wife plays tricks an him about the misplacement of the keys to the small room makes the story lives and very interesting.

• What should the society look at in a person in an attempt to categorise him or her a good or bad?

• In what ways does the writer invite the reader to condemn the ...

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...the story he is inviting the reader to condemn the mistreatment of women and lack of freedom in the family particularly under the institution of marriage. The attitude of the author gives the story a condemning tone. The tone is appropriate for the theme which is a strained relations in the family and specifically in marriage relations.

Symbolism

There is effective usage of symbols in the story. Symbols are used to represent various things. For instance Blue Ballard himself is a symbol representing evil, oppressive and misunderstanding men in the contemporary society. This is justified by the action of murderinghis wives and not showing any guilt feeling concerning the issue. His wife is also a symbol representing the reactive women in the society who are out to ensure a transformation regarding the place of women in the society and in their marriages (Stith,1977).