My name is Juleidah for my coat of skins,
My eyes are weak, my sight is dim,
My ears are deaf, I cannot hear.
I care for no one far or near.
When it was day and the city gate was unbarred, she shuffled out until she was beyond the walls. Then she turned her face away from her father’s city and fled.
Walking and running, one foot lifting her and one foot setting her down, there was a day when, with the setting of the sun, the princess came to another city. Too weary to travel a step farther, she fell to the ground. Now her resting place was in the shadow of the wall of the women’s quarters, the harem of the sultan’s palace. A slave girl, leaning from the window to toss out the crumbs from the royal table, noticed the heap of skins on the ground and thought nothing of it. But when she saw two bright eyes staring out at her from the middle of the hides, she sprang back in terror and said to the queen, “My lady, there is something monstrous crouching under our window. I have seen it, and it looks like nothing less than an Afreet!”2 “Bring it up for me to see and judge,” said the queen.
The slave girl went down shivering with fear, not knowing which was the easier thing to face, the monster outside or her mistress’s rage should she fail to do her bidding. But the princess in her suit made no sound when the slave girl tugged at a corner of the leather. The girl took courage and dragged her all the way into the presence of the sultan’s wife.
Never had such an astonishing creature been seen in that country. Lifting both palms in amazement, the queen asked her servant, “What is it?” and then turned to the monster and asked, “Who are you?” When the heap of skins answered—
My name is Juleidah for my coat of skins,
My eyes are weak, my sight is dim,
My ears are deaf, I cannot hear.
I care for no one far or near.
—how the queen laughed at the quaint reply! “Go bring food and drink for our guest,” she said, holding her side. “We shall keep her to amuse us.” When Juleidah had eaten, the queen said, “Tell us what you can do, so that we may put you to work about the palace.” “Anything you ask me to do, I am ready to try,” said Juleidah. Then the queen called, “Mistress cook! Take this broken-winged soul into your kitchen. Maybe for her sake God will reward us with His blessings.”
So now our fine princess was a kitchen skivvy, feeding the fires and raking out the ashes. And whenever the queen lacked company and felt bored, she called Juleidah and laughed at her prattle.
One day the wazir3 sent word that all the sultan’s harem was invited to a night’s entertainment in his house. All day long there was a stir of excitement in the women’s quarters. As the queen prepared to set out in the evening, she stopped by Juleidah and said, “Won’t you come with us tonight? All the servants and slaves are invited. Aren’t you afraid to stay alone?” But Juleidah only repeated her refrain,
My ears are deaf, I cannot hear.
I care for no one far or near.
One of the serving girls sniffed and said, “What is there to make her afraid? She is blind and deaf and wouldn’t notice an Afreet even if he were to jump on top of her in the dark!” So they left.
In the women’s reception hall of the wazir’s house there was dining and feasting and music and much merriment. Suddenly at the height of the talk and enjoyment, such a one entered that they all stopped in the middle of the word they were speaking. Tall as a cypress, with a face like a rose and the silks and jewels of a king’s bride, she seemed to fill the room with light. Who was it? Juleidah, who had shaken off her coat of leather as soon as the sultan’s harem had gone. She had followed them to the wazir’s, and now the ladies who had been so merry began to quarrel, each wanting to sit beside the newcomer.
When dawn was near, Juleidah took a handful of gold sequins from the fold of her sash and scattered them on the floor. The ladies scrambled to pick up the bright treasure. And while they were occupied, Juleidah left the hall. Quickly, quickly she raced back to the palace kitchen and put on the coat of leather. Soon the others returned. Seeing the heap of hides on the kitchen floor, the queen poked it with the toe of her red slipper and said, “Truly, I wish you had been with us to admire the lady who was at the entertainment.” But Juleidah only mumbled, “My eyes are weak, I cannot see …” and they all went to their own beds to sleep.
When the queen woke up next day, the sun was high in the sky. As was his habit, the sultan’s son came in to kiss his mother’s hands and bid her good morning. But she could talk only of the visitor at the wazir’s feast. “O my son,” she sighed, “it was a woman with such a face and such a neck and such a form that all who saw her said, ‘She is the daughter of neither a king nor a sultan, but of someone greater yet!’ ” On and on the queen poured out her praises of the woman, until the prince’s heart was on fire. Finally his mother concluded, “I wish I had asked her father’s name so that I could engage her to be your bride.” And the sultan’s son replied, “When you return tonight to continue your entertainment, I shall stand outside the wazir’s door and wait until she leaves. I’ll ask her then about her father and her station.”
At sunset the women dressed themselves once more. With the folds of their robes smelling of orange blossom and incense and their bracelets chinking on their arms, they passed by Juleidah lying on the kitchen floor and said, “Will you come with us tonight?” But Juleidah only turned her back on them. Then as soon as they were safely gone, she threw off her suit of leather and hurried after them.
In the wazir’s hall the guests pressed close around Juleidah, wanting to see her and ask where she came from. But to all their questions she gave no answer, whether yes or no, although she sat with them until the dawning of the day. Then she threw a fistful of pearls on the marble tiles, and while the women pushed one another to catch them, she slipped away as easily as a hair is pulled out of the dough.
Now who was standing at the door? The prince, of course. He had been waiting for this moment. Blocking her path, he grasped her arm and asked who her father was and from what land she came. But the princess had to be back in her kitchen or her secret would be known. So she fought to get away, and in the scuffle, she pulled the prince’s ring clean off his hand. “At least tell me where you come from!” he shouted after her as she ran. “By Allah, tell me where!” And she replied, “I live in a land of paddles and ladles.” Then she fled into the palace and hid in her coat of hides.
In came the others, talking and laughing. The prince told his mother what had taken place and announced that he intended to make a journey. “I must go to the land of the paddles and ladles,” he said. “Be patient, my son,” said the queen. “Give me time to prepare your provisions.” Eager as he was, the prince agreed to delay his departure for two days—“But not one hour more!”
Now the kitchen became the busiest corner of the palace. The grinding and the sieving, the kneading and the baking began and Juleidah stood watching. “Away with you,” cried the cook, “this is no work for you!” “I want to serve the prince our master like the rest!” said Juleidah. Willing and not willing to let her help, the cook gave her a piece of dough to shape. Juleidah began to make a cake, and when no one was watching, she pushed the prince’s ring inside it. And when the food was packed Juleidah placed her own little cake on top of the rest.
Early on the third morning the rations were strapped into the saddlebags, and the prince set off with his servants and his men. He rode without slackening until the sun grew hot. Then he said, “Let us rest the horses while we ourselves eat a mouthful.” A servant, seeing Juleidah’s tiny loaf lying on top of all the rest, flung it to one side. “Why did you throw that one away?” asked the prince. “It was the work of the creature Juleidah; I saw her make it,” said the servant. “It is as misshapen as she is.” The prince felt pity for the strange half-wit and asked the servant to bring back her cake. When he tore open the loaf, look, his own ring was inside! The ring he lost the night of the wazir’s entertainment.
Understanding now where lay the land of ladles and paddles, the prince gave orders to turn back.
When the king and queen had greeted him, the prince said, “Mother, send me my supper with Juleidah.” “She can barely see or even hear,” said the queen. “How can she bring your supper to you?” “I shall not eat unless Juleidah brings the food,” said the prince. So when the time came, the cooks arranged the dishes on a tray and helped Juleidah lift it onto her head. Up the stairs she went, but before she reached the prince’s room she tipped the dishes and sent them crashing to the floor. “I told you she cannot see,” the queen said to her son. “And I will only eat what Juleidah brings,” said the prince.
The cooks prepared a second meal, and when they had balanced the loaded tray upon Juleidah’s head, they sent two slave girls to hold her by either hand and guide her to the prince’s door. “Go,” said the prince to the two slaves, “and you, Juleidah, come.” Juleidah began to say,
My eyes are weak, my sight is dim,
I’m called Juleidah for my coat of skins,
My ears are deaf, I cannot hear.
I care for no one far or near.
But the prince told her, “Come and fill my cup.” As she approached, he drew the dagger that hung at his side and slashed her leather coat from collar to hem. It fell into a heap upon the floor—and there stood the maiden his mother had described, one who could say to the moon, “Set that I may shine in your stead.”
Hiding Juleidah in a corner of the room, the prince sent for the queen. Our mistress cried out when she saw the pile of skins upon the floor. “Why, my son, did you bring her death upon your neck? The poor thing deserved your pity more than your punishment!” “Come in, Mother,” said the prince, “Come and look at our Juleidah before you mourn her.” And he led his mother to where our fine princess sat revealed, her fairness filling the room like a ray of light. The queen threw herself upon the girl and kissed her on this side and on that, and bade her sit with the prince and eat. Then she summoned the qadi to write the paper that would bind our lord the prince to the fair princess, after which they lived together in the sweetest bliss.
Now we make our way back to the king, Juleidah’s father. When he entered the bridal chamber to unveil his own daughter’s face and found her gone, and when he had searched the city in vain for her, he called his minister and his servants and dressed himself for travel. From country to country he journeyed, entering one city and leaving the next, taking with him in chains the old woman who had first suggested to him that he marry his own daughter. At last he reached the city where Juleidah was living with her husband the prince.
Now the princess was sitting in her window when they entered the gate, and she knew them as soon as she saw them. Straightway she sent to her husband urging him to invite the strangers. Our lord went to meet them and succeeded in detaining them only after much pressing, for they were impatient to continue their quest. They dined in the prince’s guest hall, then thanked their host and took leave with the words, “The proverb says: ‘Have your fill to eat, but then up, onto your feet!’ ”—while he delayed them further with the proverb, “Where you break your bread, there spread out your bed!”
In the end the prince’s kindness forced the tired strangers to lie in his house as guests for the night. “But why did you single out these strangers?” the prince asked Juleidah. “Lend me your robes and head-cloth and let me go to them,” she said. “Soon you will know my reasons.”
Thus disguised, Juleidah sat with her guests. When the coffee cups had been filled and emptied, she said, “Let us tell stories to pass the time. Will you speak first, or shall I?” “Leave us to our sorrows, my son,” said the king her father. “We have not the spirit to tell tales.” “I’ll entertain you, then, and distract your mind,” said Juleidah. “There once was a king,” she began, and went on to tell the history of her own adventures from the beginning to the end. Every now and then the old woman would interrupt and say, “Can you find no better story than this, my son?” But Juleidah kept right on, and when she had finished she said, “I am your daughter the princess, upon whom all these troubles fell through the words of this old sinner and daughter of shame!”
In the morning they flung the old woman over a tall cliff into the wadi.4 Then the king gave half his kingdom to his daughter and the prince, and they lived in happiness and contentment until death, the parter of the truest lovers, divided them.
* * *
† This Egyptian folktale appears in Arab Folktales, trans. and ed. Inea Bushnaq (New York: Pantheon, 1986). Copyright © 1986 by Inea Bushnaq Books. Used by permission of Pantheon Books, an imprint of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
1. Judge of an Islamic court of justice.
2. A cunning demon or spirit from the Djinn world.
3. Minister or chief courtier.
4. Riverbed or ravine.
INTRODUCTION: Bluebeard
“Bluebeard” is the stuff of nightmares: raised scimitars, forbidden chambers, corpses hanging from hooks, bloody basins, and dismembered bodies. The tale made its literary debut in Charles Perrault’s seventeenth-century Tales of Mother Goose, a collection that took the lead in transforming the oral narratives from adult storytelling cultures into bedtime reading for children. Over the years it has served as a master-narrative about the perils of marriage and continues to haunt cinematic culture in particular, sometimes explicitly, as in Catherine Breillat’s Bluebeard (2009), sometimes covertly, as in Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (2015). Like many of the fairy tales in Perrault’s collection, “Bluebeard” has a happy ending: the heroine marries “a very worthy man, who banished the memory of the miserable days she had spent with Bluebeard” (see here). Yet most readers—even those willing to suspend disbelief about the pleasures of the next marriage—will find themselves unable to erase the graphic impressions left by the “miserable time” of the first marriage. In the narrative economy of Perrault’s text, the verbal energy is invested almost exclusively in exposing Bluebeard’s wife to horrors of extraordinary vividness and power.
Just who was Bluebeard and how did he come by his bad name? As Anatole France reminds us in his story “The Seven Wives of Bluebeard,” Perrault composed “the first biography of this seigneur” and established his reputation as “an accomplished villain” and “the most perfect model of cruelty that ever trod the earth.”1 Cultural historians have been quick to claim that Perrault’s “Bluebeard” is based on fact, that it broadcasts the misdeeds of various noblemen, among them Cunmar of Brittany and Gilles de Rais. But neither Cunmar the Accursed, who decapitated his pregnant wife, Triphine, nor Gilles de Rais, the marshal of France who was hanged in 1440 for murdering hundreds of children, present themselves as compelling models for Bluebeard. This French aristocrat remains a construction of collective fantasy, a figure firmly anchored in the realm of folklore.
Perrault’s “Bluebeard” recounts the story of an aristocratic gentleman (known in Italy as “Silver Nose,” in England as “Mr. Fox”) and his marriage to a young woman whose desire for opulence conquers her feelings of revulsion for blue beards. The French tale contains what folklorists have identified as the three distinctive features of Bluebeard narratives: a forbidden chamber, an agent of prohibition who also metes out punishments, and a figure who violates the prohibition. From Perrault’s time onward, the tale has been framed as a story about transgressive desire, as a text that enunciates the dire consequences of curiosity and disobedience.
Perrault presents Bluebeard’s wife as a figure who suffers from an excess of desire for knowledge of what lies beyond the door. Bluebeard’s wife enters the forbidden chamber and sees a pool of clotted blood in which are reflected the bodies of her husband’s wives, hanging from the wall. Horrified, she drops the key (in some versions it is an egg, a straw, or a rose) into the pool of blood and is unable to remove the telltale stain from the key. But Bluebeard’s wi
fe, both in Perrault’s rendition and in its many cultural inflections, is a canny survivor. Her husband may try to behead her for her act of disobedience, but she succeeds in delaying the execution long enough that her brothers, summoned by Sister Anne, arrive in time to rescue her and to cut Bluebeard down with their swords.
“Bluebeard” stands virtually alone among fairy tales in its depiction of marriage as an institution haunted by the threat of murder. While canonical fairy tales like “Cinderella,” “Snow White,” and “Beauty and the Beast” begin with unhappy situations at home, center on a romantic quest, and end in visions of marital bliss, “Bluebeard” stories show us women leaving the safety of home and entering the risky domains of their husband’s castles. In these tales, mothers, sisters, and brothers mobilize to rescue the heroine rather than to do her in. Family solidarity triumphs over stranger danger.
While “Bluebeard” may not necessarily be an appropriate story for children, it remains a powerful text challenging the myth of romantic love encapsulated in the “happily ever after” of fairy tales and presenting a message with a social logic compelling for Perrault’s day and age. Anxious fantasies about sex and marriage would hardly be surprising in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe, where women married at a relatively young age, where the mortality rate for women in childbirth was high, and where a move away from home might rightly be charged with fears about isolation, violence, abuse, and marital estrangement. While it is tempting to promote stories that stage the joys of heterosexual romantic unions and to banish grisly stories about murderous husbands (especially once the venue for the tales shifted to the nursery), it is important to preserve our cultural memory of this particular story and to understand exactly what is at stake in it. “Bluebeard” may not appear with great frequency between the covers of twentieth-century anthologies of fairy tales, but it is a story whose cultural resilience becomes quickly evident when we enter the arena of contemporary literary and cinematic production for adults.
The Classic Fairy Tales (Second Edition) (Norton Critical Editions) Page 28