ABSTRACT
One of the distinctive features of the Bluebeard tale is a party. The party or festivity may take place at any point in the narrative, and sometimes there may even be a succession of parties. At the outset of Perrault’s “Bluebeard,” for example, an extravagant week-long party serves to seduce a young woman into accepting the marriage proposal of a wealthy man despite his ill-omened beard and the mysterious disappearance of several previous wives. Subsequently, another social gathering punctuates the discourteously impetuous behavior of the hostess-bride, who leaves her guests and rushes off to open a forbidden door. In the Grimms’ “The Robber Bridegroom,” a wedding feast held at the end of the tale provides the occasion for the public exposure of the rapacious groom; similarly, in the Grimms’ “Fitcher’s Bird,” a climactic feast is the occasion for reckoning with the villain and his cohorts. Whether the guests be convened to inaugurate, to celebrate, or to terminate a marriage, some type of party usually takes place in these tales.
