The Theme Of The Story. Bluebeard Studies

The bluebeard folktales are spreaded widely in the western world. Noted writers and folks are rewriting or retelling them for hundreds of years. Today we can also see its continual cultural enchantment and hearty life-force.Restricted by language and research condition, the paper can't tell the headstream of bluebeard and the folk varieties specifically. Five representative texts written by different authors in different times and areas are chosen to be studied. They are bluebeard writed by Charles Perrault in the seventeenth century, Fitcher's Bird writed by Grimm Jacob and Grimm Wilhelm in nineteenth century, the bloody chamber writed by Angela Carter, bluebeard's egg writed by Margaret Atwood, bluebeard writed by Donald Barthelme in twentith century.The matological theory and the intertextualitical theory are both applied in this study. In addition, feminism theory is used in analyzing the texts. The paper discusses the five texts and detects their transformations and themes that reflect characters of different times, social matters and the writers'intentions. The paper aims at exploring the various themes of bluebeard and the unchanged motif. By analyzing the variant texts, new discoveries and understandings are gined. The purpose of rewriting this old folktale is to make it suit new time and express new theme. Perrault called for the returning of old moral. The Grimm Brothers eulogized bourgeois'braveness, wisdom and revolt. Cater called for female self-awareness, anticipated the forming of union to revolt the patriarchism and yearned for harmonious relationship between male and female. Atwood reminded men and women to strengthen communication, face the situation together, and change the relationship which is closed and isolated. Barthelme overthrew both the patriarchism and the feminism. His story had no theme, or it is anti-theme.The same taboo motif exists in the variant texts of bluebeard. These five writers deal with the same motif differently. By analysing, we can discover that Perrault, the Grimm brothers and Cater look forward to the reform of their society and the old system. The taboo in bluebeard's egg is put into subconsciousness, then it becomes harder to break, thus leading to difficulties in communication between men and women. The taboo in Barthelme's story is eliminated deliberately.In China We haven't seen any integrated research on the story's different varieties and themes which is the focus of my paper. The matological theory and the intertextualitical theory provide a new angle of view. The paper exposes the profound historical and cultural contexts, anylse the themes and consider all these texts and the contexts together so as to achieve some new understandings and discoveries.