Bluebeard

A vast room inside Bluebeard’s castle

Judith has married a Duke named Bluebeard, against her family’s will. Still wearing her wedding dress, she discovers her new house, a cold, dark and damp castle. She gave up everything dear to her out of love for her husband, and yet she can’t help but feel frightened by these walls, which are so humid that they seem to be weeping.

She then realises that the place contains seven closed doors and asks her husband to open them all so light can flow in. Bluebeard tries to talk her out of it but the young woman insists and her curiosity prevails. The only condition is that she can look, but is not allowed to ask any question.

The first door opens to reveal a torture chamber, the second one a storehouse of weapons, the third one a treasure chamber stained with blood, and the fourth one opens on a luxuriant garden with an earth soaked in blood

Bluebeard begs her to stop and not go any further, but Judith is growing anxious and demands to have all the keys. She then discovers a landscape threatened by blood-red clouds and a deep lake filled with tears.

She is now facing the seventh door and, once more, Bluebeard begs her to stop there. The young woman, however, is now convinced that this last door is hiding the tombs of her husband’s former wives. She plies him with many questions: who did he love before her?

Her insistence is such that Bluebeard hands over the last key. In the room are three women dressed in sumptuous clothes. Bluebeard then tells Judith that they are his wives of dawn, midday and dusk, as he spent his dawn with the first one, his midday with the second and his dusk with the third one. Judith, the fairest of them all and the fourth, met him on the night and will be the wife of his darkness.

Bluebeard dresses her in a heavy mantle, a crown and jewels. The young woman disappears through the seventh door, and as the door closes, the Duke is left to his solitude once again.