My modern FAIRY TALE

Malorie Blackman has written a new version of Bluebeard with a modern twist. Here she remembers the gory stories she loved as a child

The distinction between good and evil in fairy stories is always very clear, and though good doesn’t always win, evil is, if not vanquished, then at least exposed for what it is. However, the fairy stories I grew up with were very different to the ‘softer’ variations that are currently told. When I was a child, they were much darker, far more brutal.

Cinderella story I read, the Prince was tricked into believing that each of Cinderella’s stepsisters was his missing bride-to-be by them cutting off their toes or their

Cinderella’s glass slipper. As he escorted each in turn back to his palace, the Prince had to have his attention drawn to the blood gushing out of the glass shoe before he knew he’d been duped. And though a number of these tales scared me, I devoured them. I read them over and over again until I could recite my favourite ones by heart.

Bluebeard that featured not just domestic violence but a serial killer – before I even knew either of those terms.

Throughout my childhood, I read a number of versions of this story, each of which told the tale of a woman warned

in her newly-wed husband’s absence. I felt the story was grossly unfair! If Bluebeard really didn’t want his wife to go into a locked room while he was away on business, then why give her the key? Was it merely a test to see if his wife was trustworthy? Or was he deliberately setting her up to fail? Did he really love her or was he simply seeking yet another victim?

In those stories I read, Bluebeard’s behaviour was never questioned, that was just who and what he was. A given. The plight of his new wife, however, always got to me. What must it have been like to open the door to the locked room and be confronted by the bodies of all the other women Bluebeard had

In the original story, Bluebeard’s wife

drops the room key in the chamber of horrors, and it falls into a blood puddle. No matter how hard she tries, the blood can’t be wiped or washed off because the key Bluebeard has given her is magic. The stain disappears from one side, only to appear on the other.

Upon his return Bluebeard will have visual proof that his wife disobeyed his instructions. Even the inanimate objects are conspiring to bring about his wife’s death. Yes, Bluebeard was killed with the help of his wife’s brothers (I don’t think I ever read a version where the wife was actually given a name), but the story was presented as a cautionary tale against women’s curiosity. Victim-blaming.

So, is it any wonder that when I was invited to write my own version of a fairy story, Bluebeard immediately sprang to mind? Not a watered-down version, but the Bluebeard of my childhood, retold. There was so much material to work with! As I considered the setting for my retelling – the past or the present – I weighed up the advantages and disadvantages each option would give me. I decided to go for a more modernday retelling, but with a viper’s twist in the tale. In the present I wouldn’t need magic keys, I could use technology instead to the same purpose. Don’t get me wrong, I love magic! But I felt using it in this story without having it introduced as an everyday, ordinary occurrence would jar. I was also very interested in presenting a couple existing within a relationship that becomes increasingly more controlling, and its consequences for all those involved.

The story I wanted to write had some questions

against that which we deplore, how do we stop ourselves from becoming deplorable? Was Heraclitus correct? Is a person’s character truly their fate? Can the ends ever justify the means? I love stories that ask questions! I hope my version of Bluebeard does exactly that.

‘Bluebeard was the first story I read that featured not just domestic violence, but a serial killer’

✣ Extracted from Blueblood by Malorie Blackman (Vintage Children’s Classics).