UNDERGRADUATE

can mean how we use our interpretations of “Bluebeard”
to inform our understanding of the world or how writers
can take elements of Perrault’s original story to begin
constructing their own narrative, one that will interact
with and feed off other revisions, “becom[ing] yet other
stories.” Tatar also writes of famed author and folklorist
Italo Calvino, who was reported as saying of storytelling
“that the tale is beautiful only when something is added to
it.” 18 Merely reproducing stories with many of the same or
similar elements does not result in a story that is beautiful
or even original. This is one of the reasons it is easy to see
feminist revisions of a fairy tale as healthy and important.
While looking at the way stories are all interrelated is
important to being able to understand how and why a
revision was created, it does not answer the question of
what feminist revisions actually do. For this we need to
look beyond listing the changes Hopkinson made in her
revision of “Bluebeard” to questioning how these changes
are important. For one thing, revisions of less popular
fairy tales help create a new readership base for the tale.
This enhanced readership extends both ways. On the
one hand, readers of well-known authors like Atwood,
Carter, Hopkinson and Oates will be given exposure to
the “Bluebeard” fairy tale through reading these revisions.
Reading “The Glass Bottle Trick” or “Blue-Bearded Lover”
for example might prompt an interest in the reader to
return to the original source material of these retellings,
namely “Bluebeard.” On the other hand, those who grew
up knowing the tale of “Bluebeard” and have an interest in
fairy tales might be tempted to seek out alternate versions
of the tale, in order to explore how other authors have
dealt with themes like curiosity and betrayal. This type of
retelling exploration could even lead to one of the goals
of Fairy Tales with a Black Consciousness, which is using
cultural diverse representations of traditional fairy tales as
a form of cultural tourism for children—and I would also
argue adults. 19 While creating new audiences might seem
like a relatively insignificant result of fairy tale retelling
or even just an interesting by-product of the “real” goal
of revision, these offshoots from traditional tales create
new spaces for audiences who are often left out of many
fairy tales and challenge the literary canon that promotes
the work of white, affluent men above all others and by
extension privileges white, affluent male audiences. 20 In
this way, revising fairy tales is a radical act, one that even
expends to what might seem like merely byproducts.
Related to creating a new readership, another act that
feminist revision allows writers to do is articulate what
might seem like new ideas while couching them in a
familiar, perhaps even harmless setting. Hopkinson’s
decision to relocate the tale of “Bluebeard” from France to
the Caribbean allows her to confront both the racism that
exists between Samuel and the white women he interacts
with and the colorism within the Black community that
causes Samuel to persuade Beatrice to stay out of the
sun so that she might keep her light skin tone. While
these concepts are very much present in our real world,
they are also politically and emotionally charged, so by
inserting them into “The Glass Bottle Trick,” Hopkinson
is able to comment on them in a relatively neutral setting
of the fairy tale. Atwood, Carter and Hopkinson all able
to comment on the dangers of older men taking younger,
often inexperienced wives in their versions of “Bluebeard.”
On multiple occasions throughout “The Bloody Chamber”
Carter’s Marquis comments on the age of his bride, calling
her everything from “my child” to mockingly uttering the
phrase “Baby mustn’t play with grownups’ toys until she’s
learned how to handle them, must she?” 21 Besides being
utterly patronizing, this sentence highlights the ways in
which the Bluebeard character seems to be attracted to
innocence and youth as an ultimate show of power over
the wife character, not just in Carter’s revision but also
the original and subsequent revisions such as Atwood’s
and Hopkinson’s as well. One just needs to look at the
18 Ibid., 12.
19 Yenika-Agbaw, Lowery and Henderson, Fairy Tales with Black
Consciousness, 223.
20 For an example of fairy tales being revised to include marginalized
groups see Cashorali, Fairy Tales: Retold for Gay Men.
21 Carter, “The Bloody Chamber,” 14.
142 CREATING KNOWLEDGE