The ‘Bluebeard’ Dream – the Affinity between Female Dream Narratives and Fairy Tales

Abstract

This article presents the affinity existing between the female dream narrative and the fairy tale genre. Although a large body of material has al- ready been written about the connection between fairy tales and dreams, it has never been examined empirically using the tools and methods with which fairy tales have been studied. This article focuses on one dream narrative, docu- mented in the framework of a PhD dissertation, in which seventy-eight dream narratives were recorded, told by fifty-two single women. This article presents typological, formalistic, structural and esthetic approaches. In addition, this work compares how characteristics relating to time and space function within both dream narratives and fairy tales. The dream narrative is compared to tale type AT 311, called Bluebeard. From the focal point of this affinity, this work relates to the question of the feminine voice in fairy tales and the gaps between the female dream narrative and the masculine versions of the Bluebeard tales. This article presents the affinity existing between the female dream narra- tives - that is, the story a woman tells about a dream she had - and the fairy tale genre. In order to present the methods and ideas at the center of this article, I chose to focus on one dream narrative only, which should help to make the affinity between dream narratives and fairy tales clearer in a more general manner. The dream narrative presented in this article was taken from the framework of my doctoral thesis, which deals with the affinity between feminine dream narratives and fairy tales. 1 Even though the article deals with only one narrative, it is important to note that many of the other dream narra- tives gathered during the research possess characteristics similar to those presented in the chosen dream narrative regarding their affinity with fairy tales. This affinity, as it is discussed regarding the dream narrative, focuses on tale type AT 311, called Bluebeard. From the focal point of this affinity, this work relates to the question of the feminine voice in fairy tales and the gaps between the female dream narrative and the masculine versions of the Bluebeard fairy tales.