"Bluebeard" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as she looked around her, "that I should ever find myself inside this house. It has always seemed to me like one great bluebeard's chamber. If ever my father spoke of it at all, it was as of a place which he intended to convert into a sort of ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... tan jacket twisted around to view the pilgrims on the last seat. The other passengers she had absorbed; the seat behind her was her Bluebeard's chamber. ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... beginners as them's An insult, so shivver my soul! Yow! In every port o' the whole seven seas I 'ave two or three wives on the rates, For I'm free wi' my fancy an' fly wi' my picks, And I've promised 'em plenty, an' given 'em nix, But have left ev'ry one in a 'ell of a fix! 'Ooever said Bluebeard was brother to me's Either jealous ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... to say upon the subject—I have said you were to go. You act as if I were sending you to some place where you might catch the scarlet fever or the mumps. You amuse me; upon my word you do. Rex is not dangerous, neither is he a Bluebeard; his only fault is being alarmingly handsome. The best advice I can give you is, don't admire him too much. He should be labeled, 'Out of ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... and mingled somewhat freely with the popular life of the great city. She was taken to Drury Lane, the Covent Garden theatres, and to other places of amusement, but she could not "like plays." She saw some good actors; witnessed "Hamlet," "Bluebeard," and other dramas, but confesses that she "cannot like or enjoy them"; they seemed "so artificial." Then she somewhat oddly says that when her hair was dressed "she felt like a monkey," and finally concluded that "London was not the ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... remind me of Bluebeard's wife," Grace laughed hysterically. "I thought you were going to say, 'Sister Anne, Sister Anne, do you ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... could show: Bold, subtle, adventurous, his tail A banner flaunted in disdain Of human stratagems and shifts: King over All the Catlands, present and past And future, that moustached Artificer of fortunes, Puss-in-Boots! Or Bluebeard's Closet, with its plenishing Of meat-hooks, sawdust, blood, And wives that hung like fresh-dressed carcases - Odd-fangled, most a butcher's, part A faery chamber hazily seen And hazily figured—on dark afternoons And windy nights was visiting of the best. Then, too, the pelt of ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... acquaintance with the theatre loosened her tongue, as she describes it, and gave opportunity and expression to a faculty which became the ruling passion of her life. At home, as a child, she took part in an operetta founded upon the story of "Bluebeard," and played Selim, the lover, with great applause, in a large attic chamber of her father's house before an enthusiastic audience of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... curiosity. And this feminine weakness, which dates from Eve, is a common motive in the stories of our oldest literature and Folk-lore. What made Fatima so anxious to know the contents of the room forbidden her by Bluebeard? It was positively nothing to her, and its contents caused not the slightest annoyance to anybody. That story has a bad moral, and it would, in many ways, have been more satisfactory had the heroine been left to take ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... said about it, and he had agreed. Are you going to tell me that he won't go out with you, and yet dislikes your going out without him? Is he such a Bluebeard ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... and again he said and did things which perturbed her. It was as if she had gradually become complete mistress of a house, and then had suddenly discovered a new room into which she peeped for a minute before it was lost to her again and the door shut. It was no Bluebeard's chamber into which she looked; it was much more that she had a suspicion that the room contained a live mistress who might come out one day and dispute her own title. She could tell how Peter would act nine times out of ten; she knew ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... distinct hook for each and every one of my most obscure garments. I tried to spread them out. I used two hooks to every petticoat, and three for my kimono, and when I had finished there were rows of hooks to spare. Tiers of shelves yawned for hat-boxes which I possessed not. Bluebeard's wives could have held a family reunion in that closet and invited all of Solomon's spouses. Finally, in desperation, I gathered all my poor garments together and hung them in a sociable bunch on the hooks nearest the door. How I should have loved to have shown that closet to a ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... are again, the old, old stories, the very best; dear Cinderella, wicked old Bluebeard, tiny Thumbling, beautiful Beauty and the ugly Beast, and a host of others. But the old stories, I may tell you, are always new, and always must be so, because there are new children to read ...
— My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales • Edric Vredenburg
... captains "an army of shining and generous dreams," an army that is easily routed, an army that the wife too often puts to flight with an injudicious criticism. It is said that since Prohibition came in the cases of cruelty to wives have increased greatly in number. We do not disbelieve this. Bluebeard was ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... and several moues behind his back, she accepted him. A brilliant marriage ceremony followed, conducted by a Bishop and an Archdeacon. And then Arbella was carried off to live in a Bluebeard's Castle he possessed ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... good offices of a man he knew who played a flute in the orchestra, that he gained admittance behind the scenes. Going to the men's dressing-room, he found there all the male performers. Some were changing their clothes, others were painting their faces, others were smoking. Bluebeard was standing with King ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... there is to be found the genuine amateur, the orgiastic flogging schoolmaster or the nagging warder, who has sought out a cruel profession for the sake of its cruelty. But it is the genuine routineer who is the bulwark of the practice, because, though you can excite public fury against a Sade, a Bluebeard, or a Nero, you cannot rouse any feeling against dull Mr. Smith doing his duty: that is, doing the usual thing. He is so obviously no better and no worse than anyone else that it is difficult to conceive that the things he does are abominable. If you would see public dislike ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... dull an instrument to measure a woman's reason; even my own fails sometimes to deal with all its delicate shades; but I think I must have run away chiefly to taste the pleasure of being pursued and brought back. If it is necessary to your happiness that you should explore all the Bluebeard chambers of my being, I will confess further that it has taken you nearly three weeks to accomplish what I supposed you would ...
— The Diary of a Goose Girl • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... wrong," replied Helen. "No superman ever said 'I want,' because 'I want' must lead to the question, 'Who am I?' and so to Pity and to Justice. He only says 'want.' 'Want Europe,' if he's Napoleon; 'want wives,' if he's Bluebeard; 'want Botticelli,' if he's Pierpont Morgan. Never the 'I'; and if you could pierce through him, you'd find panic and emptiness ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... seem to be extremely doubtful whether he ever saw Anne of Cleves at all, and we suspect him here of being no more than a slavish echo of the common voice, which attributed Cromwell's downfall to the ugliness of this bride he procured for his Bluebeard master. To the common voice from the brush of Holbein, which permits us to form our own opinions and shows us a lady who is certainly very far from deserving his lordship's harsh stricture. Similarly, I like to believe that Lord Henry was wrong in his pronouncement ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... him of nothing so much as of Bluebeard in the fairy books, or the Black Brothers in ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... of the father's love. Could it be but his morbidly repellant pride, his jealous guarding of the domestic privacies, his vigilant pacing up and down forever before the close-drawn curtain of the heart?—was there no Bluebeard's chamber there? No! Pride was all the matter,—pride was the Spartan fox that tore the vitals of Pintal, while he but bit his lips, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... of our plan, a few preliminary words will present the historic features of that age. In the year 1547, Henry VIII., the royal Bluebeard, sank, full of crimes and beset with deathbed horrors, into a dishonorable grave.[24] A poor, weak youth, his son, Edward VI., seemed sent by special providence on a short mission of six years, to foster the reformed faith, and to give the land a brief rest after the disorders and crimes ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... the story of Captain Murderer, but I do not care for the responsibility of laying it before you. The Captain may be held to be forbidding enough, but he is, all the same, well within the nursery's traditions of acceptable villainy, being only a variant upon Bluebeard and the giant who fed upon bread made with the bone-flour of Englishmen; whereas the story of Chips introduces infernal elements and makes rats too horrible to be thought about. So I feel; but if anyone complains of the grimness of the Captain I shall ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... find it hard to stand a single disappointment about a woman. But think of a thousand disappointments! A thousand attempts to find a good wife—just one woman who could furnish a man a little rational companionship at night. Bluebeard also must have been a well-informed person. And Henry the Eighth—there was a man who had evidently picked up considerable knowledge and who made considerable use of it. But to go back a moment to the idea of the ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... to doubt, and worse to ask; and, what's more, he would not stand it. If I did but know! I'm not so far gone yet, but that I could leave the field to him, if that would do him any good. Heigh ho! it would be en regle to begin to hate him, and be as jealous as Bluebeard; but there! I don't know which it is to be about, and one can't be jealous for two ladies at once, luckily, for it would be immensely troublesome, unless a good, hearty quarrel would be wholesome to revive his spirits. It is a bad time for it, though! Well, I hope he ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... He told me that his astral colors were red and blue, and that a phrenologist had told him that a bump on the back of his head indicated that he ought never to buy mining stock. With the same instinct that undid Bluebeard's and Lot's wives he had tried it, and is once more back at his job of gardening with ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... the wife of the Parisian "Bluebeard," has been granted a divorce. We gather that there is something or other about her husband which made their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... blames her not, nor does he chide her, And she has nothing new to say; If he were Bluebeard he could hide her, But that's not written in the play, And there will be no change to-day; Although, to the serene outsider, There still would ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... with orderly stacks of every sort of clothing, from shoes to hats, from gloves to parasols; and in the room beyond this, and beyond that, and again beyond that, row after row of high wooden cabinets stretching the width of the room, and forming innumerable aisles. All of Bluebeard's wives could have been tucked away in one corner of the remotest and least of these, and no one the wiser. All grimly shut and locked, they are, with the key in Josie's pocket. But when, at the behest of McCabe, or sometimes even Sid Hahn ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... don't think so—not particularly. She is fond of church and all that, but she doesn't often speak out as she did at dinner to-night. Now, don't let us be gloomy; come indoors, and I will show you Bluebeard's cupboard in the study, It is well worth looking at, for it is beautifully carved, and I am going to try and copy it. You know ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... anyone else to forget; and on this he traded as a capital, which paid him many dividends of one kind or another, among them being a dividend in wives. How many wives he had had no one knew; and Jabe's own account was incredible. It would have eclipsed Henry VIII and Bluebeard. But making all due allowance for his arithmetic, he must have run these worthies a close second. He had not been a specially good "hand" before the war, and was generally on unfriendly terms with the overseers. They used to say that he was ...
— Old Jabe's Marital Experiments - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... Crete, like that associated with the Minataur, which was conceived as being as cloudy a fable as the Chimera. To most people this would have seemed quite as frantic as finding the roots of Jack's Beanstalk or the skeletons in Bluebeard's cupboard, yet it is simply the fact. Finally, a truth is to be remembered which scarcely ever is remembered in estimating the past. It is the paradox that the past is always present: yet it is not what was, but whatever seems to have been; for all the past is a part of faith. What did they believe ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... be supposed that children do not read Prefaces; these are Bluebeard's rooms, which they are not curious to unlock. A few words may therefore be said about the Romances contained in this book. In the editor's opinion, romances are only fairy tales grown up. The whole mass of the ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... quarrelsome—the lie circumstantial and the lie direct—are of immeasurably greater interest in the House of Commons than the health, the taxation, and the education, of a whole people. I will not penetrate into the mysteries of that secret chamber in which the Bluebeard of Party keeps his strangled public questions, and with regard to which, when he gives the key to his wife, the new comer, he strictly charges her on no account to open the door. I will merely put it ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... the fatal accident which deprived her of her husband, Mrs. Bluebeard was, as may be imagined, in a ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... Bowlsby; there was Lucille, "a daughter of the gods, divinely tall," linked forever to the dwarf Perrywinkle; there was my friend Porphyro, the poet, with his delicate genius shrivelled in the glare of the youngest Miss Lucifer's eyes; there they were, Beauty and the Beast, Pride and Humility, Bluebeard and Fatima, Prose and Poetry, Riches and Poverty, Youth and Crabbed Age— Oh, sorrowful procession! All so wretched, when perhaps all might have been so happy if they had only paired differently! I halted a moment to let the weird shapes drift by. As the ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Spanish, and Mr. Lenox spoke German. Whether well or ill, Lois did not know; but in any case, how many doors, in literature and in life, stood open to them; which were closed and locked doors to her! And we all know, that ever since Bluebeard's time—I might go back further, and say, ever since Eve's time—Eve's daughters have been unable to stand before a closed door without the wish to open it. The impulse, partly for good, partly for evil, ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... hair—to make pompadour. Last week when they have tableaux, Patty has borrowed it and has dyed it with blueing to make a beard for Bluebeard. But being yellow to start, it has become green, and the color will not wash out. The sweetch is ruin—entirely ruin—and Patty is desolate. She has apologize. She thought it would wash, but since it will not wash, ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... into his Bluebeard dreams, or his fairyland of love, the deeper I got into my hobby, political economy, and to thinking of the wide ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... THAT man—he's our neighbor—just gone for a ride Has three wives in the churchyard that lie side by side. So I call him "Bluebeard" in search of his bride, While I'm ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... relatively more simple—they were terrified of anything that had been "already said." The most gifted of them coldly devoted themselves to working contrariwise. The process was childishly simple: they pitched on some beautiful legend or fairy-story, and turned it upside down. Thus, Bluebeard was beaten by his wives, or Polyphemus was kind enough to pluck out his eye by way of sacrificing himself to the happiness of Acis and Galatea. And they thought of nothing but form. And once more it seemed to Christophe (though he was not a good judge) that these masters of form were rather ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... every effort made in her behalf by marking the gauge upon the thermometer of civilization, and by raising man as he raises her. In short, let him provisionally stand upon such a platform as might be constructed by a committee of which Legree was chairman and Bluebeard the rest of it, and if he does not accept "Absolute Science," he will at least be patient in reading what may be said in its behalf. But if, in justice to ourselves, we present the obvious objections of the general reader, in justice to Mr. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... her husband laugh still more. "They are well matched," he said; "Morton is as cool as she is. He might be Bluebeard proposing ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... flowers; of the bridges and shining fountains and rivers wherein the castle windows reflect their festive gleams, when the halls are filled with happy feasters, and over the darkling woods comes the sound of music;—always, I say, when I think of Castle Bluebeard:—it is to think of that dark little closet, which I know is there, and which the lordly owner opens shuddering—after midnight—when he is sleepless and must go unlock it, when the palace is hushed, when ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... gone. Next day, before leaving, Prince Andrew went to his son's rooms. The boy, curly-headed like his mother and glowing with health, sat on his knee, and Prince Andrew began telling him the story of Bluebeard, but fell into a reverie without finishing the story. He thought not of this pretty child, his son whom he held on his knee, but of himself. He sought in himself either remorse for having angered his father or regret at leaving home for the first time in his life on bad ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... airs that are always floating in German brains. Sometimes, if the ballad was a favourite one, the others would take part in any verses that contained a dialogue. This was generally the case with some verses in the pet ballad of Bluebeard, at that exciting point where Sister Anne is looking from the castle window. First the Maerchen-Frau ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... agreed Lizzie. "I tried to get her interested yesterday in the number of his wives—I thought the Bluebeard aspect of it might move her—but she only said: 'What does it matter when they're all dead?' I felt so blank that I couldn't say ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... because I am alone so much and it keeps me happy. Sometimes he even plays it with me. It makes horrid things seem nice. And Jimmie never wanted me to know the boys and girls at school—because I'm lame, I guess—so I always pretended things about them and gave them names. You should have seen Bluebeard." She laughed at the recollection. "And now I'm going on playing. I'm the little beggar-maid who awakens to find her self in the castle. Do you suppose there's a fairy ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... days of Pandora, through the epoch of Bluebeard's wife, down to the present time, one of the chief failings of humanity has been the disposition to open things that were better closed. It would have been simple for Archie to have taken another step and put a door between himself and the world, but there came to him ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... Passed Times appeared at Paris in 1697 A.D. It included the now-familiar stories of "Bluebeard," "Cinderella," "Sleeping Beauty," and "Little Red Riding Hood." In 1812 A.D. the brothers Grimm published their Household Tales, a collection of stories ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... and a draught of cold water, the greatest boon, in our ardent climate, that he could offer, to a wearied child? Oh, there was much poetry in the poor fellow! And here, had they not that most melodramatic (as you choose to word it) of thieves, Blackbeard, before whom Bluebeard must for ever hide his diminished head? Why, Bluebeard had only one wife at a time, although he murdered five of them, whereas Blackbeard had seldom fewer than a dozen, and he was never known to murder above three. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... the feet of priests. The statutes of Henry VIII. were the title- deeds of the English Church. Henry established the supremacy of the State by letters patent, praemunire, and conge d'elire. The old bluebeard Henry, who spent his whole time in murdering his wives, was a nursery toy. The real Henry put two wives to death by lawful means on definite and substantial charges of which death was the penalty. His subjects were quite as anxious as he could be that he should have a male ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... retirement, his gout, and the memorable theatrical speech he made on the floor of the House of Lords, at the time of our greatest national triumph and exertion, that closed his public life. Further up the stream, we come to old Windsor Castle, to be reminded of bluff Bluebeard, bigamous, wicked, king Hal; higher still, we are at Oxford, the nursery of our Church, the 'alma mater' of our learning. Lower down, at Whitehall stairs, we are face to face again with Roundheads, and regicides, and gunpowder ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... remedy? To be sure there was, and Annie knew, moreover, what it was; but then it was to be got only by a sacrifice, and that sacrifice she also knew, though it must of necessity be kept in the meantime as secret as the wonderful doings in the death-chamber of the palace of a certain Bluebeard. ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... hung on to the atoll with his forty women, retreating little by little before Ross and his sturdy crew, till at last he found himself and his harem on the little island known to this day as Prison Island, where, like Bluebeard, he confined his wives in a castle. The channel between the islands was narrow, the water was not deep, and the eight Scotch sailors wore long boots. Hare was now dismayed. He tried to compromise with rum and other luxuries, but these ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... ice. Malheureux! The chair sinks down with you—sinks, and sinks, and sinks—a large wet flannel suddenly envelopes your face and throttles you. Need we say any more? After Northumberland Street, what is improbable? Surely there is no difficulty in crediting Bluebeard. I withdraw my last month's opinions about ogres. Ogres? Why not? I protest I have seldom contemplated anything more terribly ludicrous than this "agent" in the dingy splendor of his den, surrounded by dusty ormolu and piles of empty bottles, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... close to Tavistock, and with the property came to Sir John's daughter, Lady Howard, round whose name many tales have gathered. In Mrs Bray's time Lady Howard was regarded as 'a female Bluebeard,' but a later verdict is more charitable, and it is now thought that the unhappy lady has been much maligned. Being a great heiress, her hand was disposed of when she was only twelve years old, and she was married to Sir Alan Percy, who ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... playability, to be looked for in the world. Many such burning questions must arise in the course of nursery education. Among the fauna of this planet, which already embraces the pretty soldier and the terrifying Irish beggarman, is, or is not, the child to expect a Bluebeard or a Cormoran? Is he, or is he not, to look out for magicians, kindly and potent? May he, or may he not, reasonably hope to be cast away upon a desert island, or turned to such diminutive proportions that he can live on equal terms with his lead ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... answers, 'my soul's pretty clean-swept, I think, save for one Bluebeard chamber in it that's been kep' locked ever so many years. It's nice and dirty by this time, I expect,' he says. Then the grin comes on his mouth again. 'I'll open it some day,' he says, 'and look. There's something in it about comparing me to a dancing dervish, with the wind in my petticuts. Perhaps ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... the world, you will be surrounded by admirers who may eclipse and supplant him. But I tell thee one thing, my dear creature, you will have no chance to shine as a belle, as the wife of Ernest. If he does not prove a second Bluebeard, my name is ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... evidence of derivation from the earliest, common sources of all folk-lore and myth; parallels to the fairy tales and legends of other lands and other ages. There is a version of the Bluebeard theme in Imarasugssuaq, "who, it is said, was wont to eat his wives." Instances of friendship and affection between human beings and animals are found, as in the tale of the Foster-mother and the Bear. Various resemblances to well-known fairy tales are discernible in such stories as that ...
— Eskimo Folktales • Unknown
... suitable for the purpose, but my mother put her wits to work. She fitted up the stable with a stage and seats, and persuaded a neighbor who played the cornet to act as 'band.' Then she taught a small group of us to act 'Villikens and his Dinah,' which she read aloud behind the scenes, and 'Bluebeard,' made into a little play. My paternal grandmother, a straight-backed, severe looking old lady, was then visiting us. How my mother managed it I don't know, but Grandma, who abhorred theatricals, was soon reading 'Villikens' for us to practice, and she even consented to appear as one of ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... follies and extravagances. Robert Macaire had all these to exploiter. Of all the empire, through all the ranks, professions, the lies, crimes, and absurdities of men, he may make sport at will; of all except of a certain class. Like Bluebeard's wife, he may see everything, but is bidden TO BEWARE OF THE BLUE CHAMBER. Robert is more wise than Bluebeard's wife, and knows that it would cost him his head to enter it. Robert, therefore, keeps aloof for the moment. Would ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... led to believe that the divorce was only a blind, and that the prince's marriage would be actually, if not legally, a bigamous union. The satirical papers represented him as a fortune-hunter, a Bluebeard who had ill-treated his first wife, and declared that he had proposed for the hand of the dusky Empress of Hayti, then on ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... with in the Greek theater. His second situation, which we may call 'To Rescue from Imminent Danger,' has been widely popular alike with the ancients and the moderns, so we have in subdivision (A) a condemned person rescued by a hero, as in the myth of Andromeda, the folk-tale of Bluebeard, and the first act of 'Lohengrin'; and in subdivision (B2) a condemned person rescued by a guest of the house, as in the ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... laughing at you," Dorry protested, merrily. "But it was so funny to hear you putting the English queens into the pots and pans; that was all. Here, let me help a little. Come, Jamie, sit on Dotty's lap, and she'll tell you all about Bluebeard." ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... excellent fancy of the ancients to make woman the incarnation of original sin,—the tempter and the temptation in one,—a combination of the apple and the serpent. King David, Herod, and even the terrible Bluebeard, might have behaved well in a world without women. It is proverbial that there is no quarrel without ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... is that in childhood I classed the name of Mauprat with those of Cartouche and Bluebeard; and in the course of horrible dreams I often used to mix up the ancient legends of the Ogre and the Bogey with the quite recent events which in our province had given such a sinister lustre to ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... something or somebody were coming in or going out, or there was something to be hidden in those dark mahogany presses. Is there an inner apartment that I have not seen? The way in which the house is built might admit of it. As I thought it over, I at once imagined a Bluebeard's chamber. Suppose, for instance, that the narrow bookshelves to the right are really only a masked door, such as we remember leading to the private study of one of our most distinguished townsmen, who loved to steal away from his stately library to that little silent cell. If this were lighted from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... for Mister Bluebeard, I'm sorry to cause him pain; But a terrible spree there's sure to be When he comes ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... of the evening we ride out on horseback through vineyards and yellow-berry gardens to Mr. Binns' country residence, a place that formerly belonged to an old pasha, a veritable Bluebeard, who built the house and placed the windows of his harem, even closely latticed as they always are, in a position that would not command so much as a glimpse of passers-by on the road, hundreds of yards away. He planted trees and gardens, and erected marble fountains at great cost. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... St. Thomas while the Diana put off hundreds of barrels of cement; but what with the gayly painted boats and their dark-skinned crews, the naked brown boys diving and swimming for pennies and dimes in the harbor, a walk to Bluebeard's Tower and Blackbeard's Castle, we were well amused. Particularly so was Dorothea, who disappeared from my side for a half-hour while I chatted with the captain, rejoining me in the tiny palm-bordered ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... in the background (she had not seen him as yet, and his figure would not therefore be very distinct); she had arrayed herself in an infinity of shawls, turbans, and diamond necklaces, and had mounted upon an elephant to the sound of the march in Bluebeard, in order to pay a visit of ceremony to the Grand Mogul. Charming Alnaschar visions! it is the happy privilege of youth to construct you, and many a fanciful young creature besides Rebecca Sharp has indulged in ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... party were devoured by a curiosity to see the departed fair one. Had Mr. White, indeed, furnished us with the key of the museum, leaving us to our own discretion, but restricting us only (like a cruel Bluebeard) from looking into any ante-room, great is my fear that the perfidious question would have arisen amongst us—what o'clock it was? and all possible ante-rooms would have given way to the just fury of our passions. I submitted to Lady Carbery, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... thing in little girls more hateful than another, it is curiosity," answered Chirper, with her mouth half-full of nails. "Curiosity has been the bane of many of our sex. Witness Bluebeard's unhappy wife. If you want to know more, you must ask Mrs. Whitehead. I have my instructions and ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... therefore the Bible cannot be a divine revelation. As for animus: I do not believe any of these men ever existed. I regard them as myths. Should one be angry with a myth? I should as soon think of being angry with Bluebeard, or the Giant ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... inanimate busts and shoulders the sweetest assortments ever seen of new things in summer fashions. These headless dummies of the Bowery have a very ghastly look at night. They suggest a procession of the ghosts of Bluebeard's wives, who, true to their instincts while in life, nightly revisit the "ladies' furnishing establishments" here, to rummage among scarfs and ribbons, and don for the brief hour before cock-crow the valuable stuffs and stuffings that are yet so ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... ones, who so willingly go back with us to 'Jack the Giant Killer,' 'Bluebeard,' and the kindred stories of our childhood, will gladly welcome Mrs. Burton Harrison's 'Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales.' The graceful pencil of Miss Rosina Emmet has given a pictorial interest to the book."—FRANK ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... smart wedding but a second-rate pantomime?—put them into a good humour, and made them feel that, after all, they had got something for their presents. And so the happy pair passed through a dreary rain of rice to the mysteries of that Bluebeard's ...
— The Folly Of Eustace - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... she resumed, "he'd better watch his reputation, for he was beginning to be regarded as the local Bluebeard. Oh, I was as frank as George Washington. And I told him also that there isn't a man inside the U.S.A. that would treat a black as he treats his wife. I think that surprised him some, for he began to stutter, and then of course I had the ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... turned the key, and set the cupboard open: it was to him a Bluebeard's chamber, a cave of the Forty Thieves, a garden of the Genius in Aladdin, a mysterious secret treasure-house of wealth uncounted ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... I made another attempt to cash a cheque to-day, and again the bank refused. A Russian who stood beside me was desperate. He spoke execrable French, and cried excitedly: "Comment donc! je ne puis pas quitter le pays et j'ai une famille et trois femmes!" Poor Bluebeard! his "trois femmes" (wife and daughters) looked terrified and miserable. Our position is incredible and most serious. Still, one cannot but admire the glorious spirit of sacrifice and patriotism which animates all classes of the German people. Just what it was ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... seem to me positively sacrilegious. I wonder the arms of the men who ventured upon such sacred ground did not wither at their sides. To paint old men with tremendous white flowing beards—a cross between Santa Claus and Bluebeard—and call them God! Here is materialism for you with a vengeance. These audacious men forgot that He was not seen in the whirlwind, neither in the storm, but never seen at all; only heard in the still, ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... if she were about to enter a Bluebeard's castle, but deeming it polite to take no notice of the uproar, she tried to appear unheeding though the shrieks increased in violence as they came up to the house and the carriage stopped at ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... this Oriental notion was not indulged by the French king, who had more taste and delicacy; and Henry remained without a wife for more than two years, the princesses of Europe not being very eager to put themselves in the power of this royal Bluebeard. At last, at the suggestion of Cromwell, he was affianced to Anne, daughter of the Duke of Cleves, whose home was on the banks of the Rhine, in the ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... enchanted spot to Jules, made so by the magic of Joyce's wonderful gift of story-telling. For the first time in his life that he could remember, he heard of Santa Claus and Christmas trees, of Bluebeard and Aladdin's lamp, and all the dear old fairy tales that were so entrancing ...
— The Gate of the Giant Scissors • Annie Fellows Johnston
... occurred on my way to John Miller's, where I arrived on the following day, and was received by the veteran with the rough kindness of a backwoodsman. He was a gray-haired man, hardy and weather-beaten, with a blue wart, like a great beard, over one eye, whence he was nicknamed by the hunters 'Bluebeard Miller.' He had been in these parts from the earliest settlements, and had signalized himself in the hard conflicts with the Indians, which gained Kentucky the appellation of 'the Bloody Ground.' In one of these fights he had had an arm broken; in another he had narrowly escaped, ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... answer. The books and newspapers talk about women's curiosity. It's nothing to a man's curiosity when it is aroused. Oh, I know the story of Bluebeard very well. But if Mrs. Bluebeard had been a strong minded woman, and had killed her seven husbands, I wonder if the eighth would not have taken a peep. He would not have waited for the key but would have broken in the door long before. If ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... in holes and corners that anything really legible existed as by accident. The "Parent's Assistant," "Rob Roy," "Waverley," and "Guy Mannering," the "Voyages of Captain Woods Rogers," Fuller's and Bunyan's "Holy Wars," "The Reflections of Robinson Crusoe," "The Female Bluebeard," G. Sand's "Mare au Diable"—(how came it in that grave assembly!), Ainsworth's "Tower of London," and four old volumes of Punch—these were the chief exceptions. In these latter, which made for years the chief of my diet, I very early ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... condoned as a young man who promised to be a great king. There are, as Chesterton points out, two great things that intruded into his reign: the one was the difficulty of his marriages, the other was the question of the monasteries. If Henry was a Bluebeard, he was such because his wives were not a fortunate selection. 'He was almost as unlucky in his wives as they were in their husband.' But the one thing that Chesterton feels broke Henry's honour was the question of his divorce. In doing this he mistook the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... all sitting above the arena round which the lions' dens were placed. The black Arab keeper was told to stir up the great beast, Bluebeard. A firework was accordingly dropped into the den, whose door had been opened . . . they all waited breathless, with beating hearts . ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... the kind girls like best to hear about, and I still remember we always said of my friend Hulda Niemeyer, whose name you have heard, I believe, that she knew no history, except the six wives of Henry the Eighth, that English Bluebeard, if the word is strong enough for him. And, really, she knew these six by heart. You ought to have heard her when she pronounced the names, especially that of the mother of queen Elizabeth,—so terribly embarrassed, as though it were ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... speak English, few of them could exchange a word with her. Before we got into the river, he had some reason for keeping her in her cabin; for the poor lady was very ill. Several times I heard her Bluebeard of a husband scolding her fearfully, and I felt strongly inclined to pitch him overboard. She recovered rapidly when she got into the river, and was able to hold her own, and prove that she could scold as well as ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... the most erroneous opinions have been expressed with regard to the famous individual commonly known as Bluebeard. None, perhaps, was less tenable than that which made of this gentleman a personification of the Sun. For this is what a certain school of comparative mythology set itself to do, some forty years ago. It informed the world that the seven wives of Bluebeard were the ...
— The Seven Wives Of Bluebeard - 1920 • Anatole France
... effusive, but the woodpecker was a veritable Bluebeard. The Cardinal longed to pull the feathers from his back until it was as red as his head, for the woodpecker had dressed his suit in finest style, and with dulcet tones and melting tenderness had gone acourting. Sweet as the dove's had been his wooing, ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... beautiful lady. But I must not talk in this frivolous strain, monsieur. There is serious business to be considered, and I assure you I looked forward to your coming, monsieur, with the eagerness of Sister Anne in the tower of Bluebeard.' ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... the archdeacon had been reared. To him a clergyman was a priest who belonged to a sacerdotal caste, and who ought not "to merge himself in the body of the nation." To him the Reformation was an infamous crime, and Henry VIII. was worse than the Bluebeard of the nursery. His hero was Thomas a Becket. He wrote a sketch of his life and career, which he did not live to finish. His friends ill-advisedly published it after his death. His ideal ecclesiastical statesman of modern times was ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... Torcellani of old, as they descried the smoking advance of Huns or Vandals. But the finer emotions are like gifted children, and are seldom equal to occasions. I am ashamed to say that mine got no further than Castle Bluebeard, with Lady Bluebeard's sister looking out for her brothers, and tearfully responding to Lady B.'s repeated and agonized entreaty, "O sister, ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... way, I know every inch of this palace. It was left to the Fairy Berylune by Bluebeard.... Let us make the most of our last minute of liberty, while the children and Light pay their visit to the Fairy's little daughter.... I have brought you here in order to discuss the position in which we are placed.... Are we ...
— The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Six Acts • Maurice Maeterlinck
... fronts torn off. The rooms within were like stage-settings for some tragic play. Sheets and blankets trailed from beds where sleepers had waked in fright. Doors of wardrobes gaped to show dresses dangling forlornly, like Bluebeard's murdered brides. Dinner-tables were set out for meals never to be finished, save by rats. Family portraits of comfortable old faces smiling under broken glass hung awry on pink or blue papered walls. Half-made shirts and petticoats were still caught by the ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... When Bluebeard had left her to herself, she called her sister; and, after telling her that she had but half a quarter of ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... Need we be angels, male or female, in order to be worshiped as such? Let us admire the diversity of the tastes of mankind, and the oldest, the ugliest, the stupidest and most pompous, the silliest and most vapid, the greatest criminal, tyrant, booby, Bluebeard, Catherine Hayes, George Barnwell, among us, we need never despair. I have read of the passion of a transported pickpocket for a female convict (each of them being advanced in age, repulsive in person, ignorant, ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... few days after our arrival, my time was agreeably spent in receiving the visits of the nobility and gentry who came to pay their respects to the noble new-married couple, and, like Bluebeard's wife in the fairy tale, in inspecting the treasures, the furniture, and the numerous chambers of the castle. It is a huge old place, built as far back as Henry V.'s time, besieged and battered by the Cromwellians ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and affluence of conversation; but I would not talk to him of the Rockingham party.' GOLDSMITH. 'But, Sir, when people live together who have something as to which they disagree, and which they want to shun, they will be in the situation mentioned in the story of Bluebeard: "You may look into all the chambers but one." But we should have the greatest inclination to look into that chamber, to talk of that subject.' JOHNSON, (with a loud voice.) 'Sir, I am not saying that you could live in friendship ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... Bluebeard fame, gazed anxiously around and listened with all the intensity born of her desperate state; but there was nothing to be seen or heard. Only Bruin had risen again and was coming slowly towards the hut. A bright scheme suggested itself to the ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... following is from Thackeray: "So was Helen of Greece innocent. She never ran away with Paris, the dangerous young Trojan. Menelaus, her husband, ill-used her; and there never was any siege of Troy at all. So was Bluebeard's wife innocent. She never peeped into the closet where the other wives were with their heads off. She never dropped the key, or stained it with blood; and her brothers were quite right in finishing Bluebeard, the cowardly brute! Yes, Madam Laffarge never poisoned ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... talk about it, Sir Victor—it makes you unhappy I see; only if ever I—if ever I," laughing and blushing a little, "come to be mistress of that big, romantic old house, I shall wall that room up. It will always be a haunted chamber—a Bluebeard closet for me." ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... dismay, Albinia could not help thinking of Bluebeard's closet. Her inclination was to stay where she was, and take her chance of losing her head, yet she felt as if she could not bear to be found invading a sanctuary of past recollections, and was relieved to find that it was a false alarm, though not relieved ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... transacted there that morning. The table was strewn with breadths of gay broche silk; an unfinished gauzy-looking dress hung over a chair; the door of the wardrobe was open, and a row of dark-looking shapes—like Bluebeard's decapitated wives—were dimly revealed to view. A sort of lay figure, draped in calico, was in one corner. As Nan observed to Phillis afterwards, "There was not a tidy corner in the ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... holes and corners that anything really legible existed as by accident. The Parent's Assistant, Rob Roy, Waverley, and Guy Mannering, the Voyages of Captain Woods Rogers, Fuller's and Bunyan's Holy Wars, The Reflections of Robinson Crusoe, The Female Bluebeard, G. Sand's Mare au Diable—(how came it in that grave assembly!), Ainsworth's Tower of London, and four old volumes of Punch—these were the chief exceptions. In these latter, which made for years the chief of my diet, I very early fell in love (almost as soon as I could ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you know as well as I do that we all like that kind of play, whether we admit it or not—something along in between "Bluebeard, Jr.," and "Cymbeline" played ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... perhaps, than anything he had written before, but still susceptible of very great improvement. One was entitled "The Lighthouse Tragedy," and was founded on the shipwreck of Captain Worthilake and his two daughters. The other was a sailor's song, on the capture of the famous "Teach," or "Bluebeard," the pirate. ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... of the black flag as the Gaston castaways, getting sorrily afloat one by one, cleared their decks for action. Some Bluebeard admiral there will always be for such stressful occasions, and David Kent, standing aside and growing cynical day by day, laid even chances on Hawk, the ex-district attorney, on Major Guilford, and on one Jasper G. Bucks, sometime mayor ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... shows buccaneer authorship. Even in the town of Charlotte Amalia, the capital of St. Thomas, the stamp of the pirate is strong, for two of the hills above the city are marked by the ruins of old stone buildings, one of which is called "Bluebeard's Castle," and "Blackbeard's Castle," the other. It was once, no doubt, one of the many ports of call of that Nero of pirates, ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... and by dint of her insistence their pasts clung to them with all the reality of a fate not by any means to be lived down. If George rode the huge rocking-horse, he was Paul Revere, or some equally historic figure, and sometimes, to Edith's terror, he was compelled to assume the role of Bluebeard, when Honora submitted to decapitation with a fortitude amounting to stoicism. Hide and seek was altogether too tame for her, a stake of life and death, or imprisonment or treasure, being a necessity. And many times was Edith extracted from the recesses of the cellar in a condition bordering ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... he sha'n't touch even the tips of my fingers, you dreadful Mr. Bluebeard." She had surrendered now. He was never so compelling as when determined to have his own way. Again her whole manner changed; she was once more the sweetheart: "Don't let us bother about cards, my darling, ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... There are those who hold that the South African mine-owner is not a man at all, but a kind of pantomime demon. You take Goliath, the whale that swallowed Jonah, a selection from the least respectable citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah at their worst, Bluebeard, Bloody Queen Mary, Guy Fawkes, and the sea-serpent—or, rather, you take the most objectionable attributes of all these various personages, and mix them up together. The result is the South African mine-owner, a monster who would willingly promote a company for the putting on the market ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... he had not had the pleasure of cutting off her head. Here he married his sixth wife, Lady Catherine Parr, widow of Neville, Lord Latimer, and sister of the Marquis of Northampton. This lady, who had the hardihood to marry this royal Bluebeard, after he had divorced two wives and chopped off the heads of two others, narrowly escaped the fate she so rashly hazarded. The very warrant for her committal to the Tower, whence she was only to be brought forth ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... to be worshipped as such? Let us admire the diversity of the tastes of mankind; and the oldest, the ugliest, the stupidest and most pompous, the silliest and most vapid, the greatest criminal, tyrant booby, Bluebeard, Catherine Hayes, George Barnwell, amongst us, we need never despair. I have read of the passion of a transported pickpocket for a female convict (each of them advanced in age, being repulsive in person, ignorant, quarrelsome, and given to drink), that was as magnificent ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... disastrous termination of the marriage with her, the fiasco of Anne of Cleves, and the catastrophe of Katharine Howard, is responsible for the somewhat mythical monster of popular imagination. The man who divorced two wives and beheaded two more is too suggestive of Bluebeard to be readily regarded as after all to some extent the victim ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes |
