SOURCE:“Bluebeard's Brides: The Dream of the Blue Chamber,” in Grand Street, Vol. 9, No. 1, Autumn, 1989, pp. 121-30.

In the following essay, Warner analyzes the themes of the color blue and forbidden knowledge in the “Bluebeard” tale, and suggests that the prevalence of death in childbirth was one context for the story.

In 1697 Charles Perrault, poet, courtier, deviser of pageants for His Majesty Louis XIV, published a collection of stories, under the title Tales of Olden Times, or Mother Goose Tales (Contes du temps passé, ou Contes de ma mère l’Oye). This firm attribution of the stories to an ancient oral tradition, to Mother Goose—the epitome of old women, nurses and grandmothers—was emphasized by the frontispiece, which showed a crone in apron and cap, spinning by the fireside, as three children listen enraptured at her knees.

In a preface, Perrault also renounced creating the stories...