Story Bluebeard, By Charles Perrault

They were married, her husband went out of town and his wife decided to look into the room that he had told her not to enter. In the room she found the dead bodies of his previous wives. When Bluebeard returned he knew that she had looked into the room because the key she had used was stained. He decided that he would have to kill her because she found out about his secret. However, her brothers arrived to rescue her just before he killed her.

This story was particularly intriguing because of the perceived moral teachings against female curiosity and marrying someone with a questionable past.

The research article called “One Bad Husband: What the Bluebeard Story Tells Us About Marriage by Alison Lurie” goes into detail about rethinking the importance of secrets in a marriage and how cultural changes have altered how marriage functions. In her research article, Alison Lurie examines how the story of Bluebeard has changed from culture to culture along with the difference in time periods.

She also argues about how secrets in a marriage are sometimes necessary and how historically women were marrying men they barely knew. She first looks at the Seventeenth Century and how “well-to-do and aristocratic women often married relative or even total strangers” . She next examines the 1940s and how ‘women in great numbers were marrying men who were real strangers – soldiers going off to war. … It was also a time when women were realizing that the men to whom they had been married were becoming strangers.

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After experiencing the dark horrors of combat, veterans returned home disaffected and alienated”. She continues to show how two strangers were marrying and then having disastrous secrets come out that ruined their marriage. She finalizes her research by saying that secrets are often necessary in a marriage in order to protect it. I personally think that she did an excellent job of examining past trends with marriage and connecting that to the importance of secrets. However, I disagree on the importance of secrets and think that marriage should be based on a trust between two people. The differences between time periods is extremely important to examine when looking at the role of secrets in a relationship. Perhaps the most important factor when examining different marriage norms is the Women’s Rights Movements.

The change from arranged marriage to consensual marriage has resulted in women being in a more equal partnership. Due to this, there is an increased importance placed on disclosing past mistakes in order to build trust. The impact of not willingly divulging past mistakes that are eventually exposed can be very damaging to the relationship by both people no longer being open or fully trusting the other person. In order to fully understand the differences in past relationship standards, studying the differences between the perception of what marriage should be and the cultural attitude towards women would be vital. We can’t be bound by the social conventions of the past and the normal deception in relationships when marriage is now a mutual partnership between two equal people.