Blog Entry #9

“The Robber Bridegroom”, “Fitcher’s Bird” and “Bluebeard” are all fairytales with similar storylines. In all of them, a young bride arrives to her husband or soon-to-be-husbands house. Where she then comes to discover that her husband has actually murdered many other women. But through her own cleverness, she is always able to escape and the husband ends up dead in the end. “Fitcher’s Bird” and “Bluebeard” are the most similar, as the young bride is given a set of keys to every room in the house and told that she can enter any room except one. But of course, temptation begets the best of her and she discovers the dead bodies of the former wives. She is shocked and drops the key in “Bluebeard” and the egg in the ‘Fitcher’s Bird” and it becomes stained with blood that marks her guilty. When her husband comes home and asks for the object back, he discovers it covered in blood and is enraged and wants to kill her. But this is where the stories divert. In “Bluebeard”, the bride asks for some time to pray and is granted a short period. She uses this time to send her sister to watch for her brothers’ arrival and signal them to hurry up. Bluebeard begins to kill her, but does not succeed as her brothers show up and save the day. Meanwhile, in “Fitcher’s Bird” the bride is immediately killed and the sorcerer marries the second sister.

“The Robber Bridegroom”, while sharing some similarities to these stories is quite different. A young woman is promised to marry a man but the man insists that she should visit his house in the woods before the wedding. She follows a trail of ashes that he leaves her and sprinkles peas on the ground on either side to find her way back. When she arrives, the house is empty and she sees an old woman who tells her to hide. She does as the old woman says and she sees the man arrives with a band of robbers and a young woman. They procced to cook her into stew, and as soon as they are all asleep, she makes her escape with the old woman. The next day at the wedding, she tells the story of what she saw and the men are killed. Where in this tale, she was not given a test of temptation, she still saves herself and the man gets what he deserves.

I liked “The Robber Bridegroom” the best out of the three tales because it was different then the other two. I liked how the old woman helped her out and she was able to see the truth and expose him the next day at the wedding. So, she had the upper hand whereas in the other tales, it felt more as though the men had the upper hand.