Bluebeard!

It's a long time since we looked at fairy tales, but I have been doing some (gruesome) reading about the life and times of Gilles de Rais - "The Real Bluebeard" by Jean Benedetti (Sutton publishing 2003).  Not for the fainthearted, and yet another child murderer - but one who's rank and wealth gave him both the opportunity to kill and immunity from the justice system.

I found this intriguing image from Georges Melies 1901 Bluebeard film.  It was with a blog article on films about Bluebeard at the link below.

In (one of) the original versions of the story, Bluebeard hangs his ex's by their hair in the cellar, and there seems to be a similar fascination with hair in other tales - Rapunzel being the most obviouse, but Jack the Giant Killer also finds the Giant's wives hanging by their hair too.http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/tag/bluebeard/

And here's the link to the film itself - the scene is about 5mins in.

There are some quite gruesome things about shoes in fairytales as well... another blog.