Domestic violence is nothing new. Consider the centuries-old folk tale of Bluebeard, a violent nobleman who marries and murders a series of wives before finally meeting his own end.
Casie E. Hermansson, a member of the Pittsburg State University faculty, has spent years considering him and recently published her second book on Bluebeard, titled “Bluebeard: a Reader’s Guide to the English Tradition.” It is published by the University of Mississippi Press.
The New Zealand native’s first book, “Reading Feminist Intertextuality Through Bluebeard Stories,” was a scholarly work written while she was working on her doctorate at the University of Toronto.
“My dissertation was published and I thought I was done,” she said. “But, after a break to teach and have children, I realized that I wasn’t done.”
During her research she had compiled 400 years worth of examples of the Bluebeard story, which seems to have originated in France and may have been based on Gilles de Rais, a 15th century aristocrat who was, by his own admission, an active serial killer.
The English put their own spin on the character.
“The English turned Bluebeard into a pirate and a Turk in a 1797 play,” Hermansson said.
Bluebeard was the subject of numerous stories, plays and books. The basic story usually deals with the attempts of his latest wife to avoid the fate of her predecessors after she discovers their remains in a secret room.
Oddly enough, this gruesome story was a staple of children’s literature for many years in Victorian England.
“Charles Dickens told of being terrorized by his governess with stories of Bluebeard,” Hermansson said.
Her book includes full-color illustrations from children’s books, showing the room where Bluebeard stashed the bodies of his victims.
“There’s always lots of blood on the floor, and decapitated women,” the author said, pointing out examples. “These illustrations, with all that blood, would have been hand-colored by children.”
Bluebeard even crossed the Atlantic. A musical version of the tale, “Mr. Bluebeard,” started in England, but became very popular in the United States as well. Sadly, a matinee performance of the show also resulted in tragedy on Dec. 30, 1903, at the Iroquois Theater in Chicago. Fire broke out late in the second act, and led to the deaths of 603 people, most of them women and children. It was the largest theater fire and the largest single building fire in American history.
“That fire changed theater law in the United States,” Hermansson said.
She noted that certain aspects of the production contributed to the deadliness of the fire.
“They were trying to outdo the English production, and they had 200 gauze flats on stages,” Hermansson said. “These were highly combustible. A line they had put in for an aerialist blocked the asbestos fire curtain from coming down. The fire, which started on the stage, exploded out into the audience.”
Bluebeard’s influence was felt in Hollywood as well.
“Films in the 1940s were full of murderous husbands,” Hermansson said. “I watched 20 movies, which came out to three pages in the book.”
She did extensive other research as well.
“I was used to dealing with 20th century sources,” she said, “but the old, rare books don’t travel. I went to the British Library, the Harvard Library and the Rare Book Collection at the University of Indiana at Bloomington.”
Some of the materials Hermansson studied were so rare and fragile that she was not allowed to put her hands on them.
“In some libraries, you can’t carry your book to the table — they carry it in for you,” she said.
She had particular difficulty with a very old newspaper that had been carefully spread out on a table.
“I couldn’t put my hands on it, and it was so large that there was no way I could read the middle of it,” Hermansson said. “I would have had to be suspended over it like Tom Cruise in ‘Mission Impossible’.”
In 2008 she was invited to the first-ever international colloquium on Bluebeard at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.
“Twenty scholars were invited, and we spent three days just talking Bluebeard to each other,” she said.
In all, it took her six years to complete research for the book.
“I feel very proud of this,” she said. “There are nuggets of fascinating historical details, brought together for the first time.”
Ironically, the book about the wife-murdering Bluebeard is dedicated to Hermansson’s own husband, Gil Cooper, a member of the PSU communication faculty.
Hermansson is still writing, but is now concentrating on stories and chapter books for elementary school children. And yes, she has done her own version of Bluebeard for youngsters.
“I wrote it in an Appalachian folk tale style, and I use animal characters,” she said. “I have Mr. Fox and Clever Millie, a chicken.”
“Bluebeard: a Reader’s Guide to the English Tradition” is available at Barnes and Noble and on Amazon.com.
PITTSBURG —
