The key of knowledge

Abstract

Keys are used to gain access, knowledge, and power but what happens when these everyday items are transformed into supernatural objects? Do they, in turn, become a source of knowledge and power? Charles Perrault played with this concept by portraying a key as a magical lie detector in his infamous ‘Bluebeard’ fairy tale (1695). In this story, the husband is portrayed as a serial killer who uses the lure of forbidden knowledge to manipulate his wife and instigate a series of events to justify her murder. This structuring of crime and punishment within the framework of marriage makes this fairy tale unique. The scholarship attached to Bluebeard’s key includes an examination of this object as a metaphor for female sexual curiosity and infidelity (Bettelheim 1991: 301), and a means of accessing feminine consciousness (Estes 2017: 40). In his 1796 English translation of the French text, R.S. Gent writes that the ‘key was a Fairy’ (28). Gent’s words stirred my imagination; What if the key had been a woman, magically entrapped as a key? Would she tell a different story? This creative interrogation explores the gendered violence and power structures in Perrault’s ‘Bluebeard’ narrative. ‘The key of knowledge’ uses a socio-historical, Foucauldian framework and creative writing research methodology to examine Perrault’s ‘Bluebeard’ as a discourse of disciplinary punishment.