FOUND IN TRANSLATION
Charles Perrault’s “Bluebeard” in English
Robert Samber was the first, in 1729, to provide an English translation of Perrault’s French fairy tale. His edition not only launched a series of reprints, new editions, and bilingual versions into the English publishing scene throughout the eighteenth century, but it also strongly impressed itself on the “Bluebeard tradition” that continued to thrive exponentially throughout the Victorian years. Versions based on Perrault’s “Bluebeard” continued to be the norm even after the tale was joined by Grimm stories from Kinder-und Hausmärchen (Grimm 1812–1815, 1819), which were translated (without any “Bluebeard” variant) into English as German Popular Stories in 1823–1826 (Grimm). But the eighteenth century (and, as far as “Bluebeard” is concerned, the first half of the nineteenth) belonged to Perrault. It is Perrault’s “Bluebeard” after all that was translated in editions of Mother Goose and that almost immediately broke out and headlined chapbooks on its own, or sometimes with one other tale, traveling to villages, markets, fairs, and many a funeral throughout Great Britain in the chapman’s bags (or, in America, the peddler’s pack). It is Perrault’s “Bluebeard” on which are based the late-eighteenth-century examples of Blue Beard, or, The Flight of Harlequin, a musical pantomime by William Reeve (1791); Caleb Williams (1794), the novel by William Godwin; The Iron Chest (1796), by George Colman the Younger (a play apparently based on Godwin’s novel); and the huge hit Blue Beard, or Female Curiosity! (1798), also by George Colman, with music by Michael Kelly.
Samber’s 1729 edition, Histories, or Tales of past Times … with morals, by M. Perrault, Translated into English, was a critical moment in the English tradition of Bluebeard. In The Folktale (1946), Stith Thompson wrote: “To the literary world the story has become known through Perrault’s famous collection of 1697, and wherever that version has exerted great influence it has determined the form of the story” (35). By “exert[ing] great influence” for 120 years or more prior to the Grimm versions entering the English lexicon, it effectively “determined the form of the story” for the English language.
Headpiece for Robert Samber’s English translation (1729). The use of multiple sites of action viewed simultaneously is a visual technique for suspense frequently replicated as a “set piece” of Bluebeard illustration. From Samber, Robert. 1729. Histories, or Tales of Past Times. London: Printed for R. Montagu at the Book Ware-House, 1741. Courtesy of The Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington.
The “Bluebeard” fairy tale was one of the “fashionably dressed French invaders” that became “naturalized” into English (Darton 1932, 94). Charles Perrault authored the “master text” of Bluebeard in a 1695 manuscript of tales (contes), dedicated to “Mademoiselle” (Elisabeth Charlotte d’Orléans, niece of Louis XIV and daughter of his brother Philippe, future grandmother of Marie Antoinette) that also served as a mock-up for publication: Contes de Ma Mère l’Oye (Mother Goose Tales).1 Expanded by three prose tales from the manuscript’s five, it became in 1697 Histoires, ou Contes du Temps Passe, with a “subtitle” on a sign on the door in the frontispiece illustration: Contes de Ma Mère l’Oye. While in French the stories are still known as Perrault’s Contes, it was as “Mother Goose” that the tales were anglicized; first as fairy tales, later as unrelated collections of nursery rhymes. Samber’s 1729 edition reflected a change in the original order of Perrault’s tales2 and translated the titles of the eight prose tales as follows: “The Little Red Riding-hood,” “The Fairy,” “The Blue Beard,” “The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood,”3 “The Master Cat, or Puss in Boots,” “Cinderilla [sic], or the Little Glass Slipper,” “Riquet a la Houpe” [“Riquet with the Tuft”], and “Little Poucet [Thumb] and his Brothers.” The Samber edition also followed the example of French editions by including a novel, “The Discreet Princess,” by Mademoiselle Marie Jeanne L’Héritier de Villandon, one of the fashionable fairy tale salon hosts contemporary with (and related to) Perrault. The novel continued to be reprinted as part of this collection throughout the next two centuries.4
Perrault’s “La Barbe bleue” is the ur-text for what followed. Morna Daniels, writing about “Puss in Boots,” noted the impact of Perrault’s tales north of the Channel: “In Britain the individual stories were quickly pirated for chapbook versions, and other illustrated little books for children. … The illustrations were hand-coloured for those who could afford the more expensive version” (2002, 8). As the tales were not even credited with translation into English until 1729, the English chapbooks do not seem to follow as “quickly” on Perrault’s heels as it may sound. After all, a pirated version of the entire Contes appeared from the publisher Moetjens, in the Hague, the very same year as the original Parisian publication (1697).5 Harry Stone, in Dickens and the Invisible World, said: “Soon after they were translated into English, Perrault’s tales … appeared in chapbook form, and in that guise became immensely popular and made their way into every village and hamlet in the British Isles. When Dickens was a boy, Cinderella and Bluebeard, and Sleeping Beauty were as well known and as ‘English’ as Jack the Giant Killer, Tom Thumb, and Jack and the Beanstalk” (1979, 24). Dickens was born in 1812, so he was not a boy so very “soon” after Samber’s translation of 1729. But the prevalence and enduring popularity of the tale in chapbook form is undisputed.
In Margaret Spufford’s book on English chapbooks, her very first quotation from a chapbook reader includes a testimony to “Bluebeard” (1981, 2): “My Father and Mother had to get me a new Halfpenney or Penney Book before those Leeches went on, nor do I think it was Money spent in waste, for when I got a little better I read those Books and I shall never forget the Impressions one of them left upon my mind the title of the Book was Blue Beard. … (Bowd [1889] 1955)” (original ellipsis). The author of this diary was writing in his sixty-sixth year, recollecting here his boyhood age of seven (1830), at the time of the bout with scarlet fever. It is perhaps coincidental that “Bluebeard” is the first chapbook referenced by Spufford, but surely not coincidentally so memorable to a childhood reader. In addition to such anecdotal evidence are the many extant copies of chapbooks in library and private collections, contemporary publishers’ lists on the covers of these, and booksellers’ catalogues.
It took over thirty years to translate such a popular work into English, if indeed Robert Samber’s 1729 edition (London: Pote and Montagu, including a dedication by Samber to the Countess of Granville) is the first. A major debate over the chronology of the first translation was occasioned by several editions through the latter half of the 1700s that ascribe their translation to “G. M. Gent.” Most problematically, one now-notorious “G. M.” edition was dated (in Roman numerals) 1719, apparently predating Samber’s translation by a decade. Older reputable work on fairy tales, even a 1905 Harvard libraries publication, referenced “Gent’s English version of Perrault.” J. Saxon Childers, in his 1925 edition of Perrault’s Histories, commented gleefully on the mistaken surname: “A really amusing mistake is made in the Library of Harvard University Bibliographical Contributions, No. 56, Cambridge, 1905; and, of course, the mistake is doubly amusing, because it is so seldom an error is able to avoid the searching eyes of the Harvard librarians.”6 However, Saxon Childers himself mistakenly credits the 1719 date with its face value (127–28).7 It was the folklorists Iona and Peter Opie who demonstrated that the date was the result of a misprint of roman numerals for 1799 and that this edition was therefore not a first (1974, 30 n.), although they in turn mistakenly assert that Samber had not translated Perrault’s two “moralités.”8
It may well have been as a result of the erroneous “1719” text that Guy Miège was considered the likely translator, G. M. He was certainly qualified for the role. Guy Miège was born in 1644 and educated in Lausanne, coming to London in 1661 where he served as undersecretary to the ambassador to Russia, Sweden, and Denmark, the Earl of Carlisle. In addition to surveys such as The New State of England under Their Majesties K. William and Q. Mary in Three Parts (1693), The New State of England under Our Present Monarch, K. William III … (1701), The New State of England under Our Sovereign Queen Anne (1703), and The Present State of Great Britain and Ireland in Three Parts … also The Present State of His Majesty’s Dominions in Germany (1723), and others besides, his list of writings on language are most impressive. In short, Miège wrote grammar handbooks in both French and English, about both French and English, and for both native and nonnative readers. His credentials for translating Perrault’s Contes are sound. Further, titles such as Miscellanea, or, A Choice Collection of Wise and Ingenious Sayings, &C. of Princes, Philosophers, Statesmen, Courtiers, and Others, out of Several Ancient and Modern Authors, for the Pleasurable Entertainment of the Nobility and Gentry of Both Sexes seem to demonstrate that Miège was well-read and writing with a view to entertaining the “nobility and gentry of both sexes,” in other words: the original audience for Perrault’s Contes de Ma Mère l’Oye.
However, to date, the earliest edition ascribed to G. M. is the Collins edition of 1763, so while many libraries continue to reference Guy Miège as the translator G. M., it is perhaps unlikely to be him. Nevertheless, what is incontrovertible is that these two translations, that by Samber and that by G. M., dominate the English editions, and once attribution is correctly made, surprisingly the number of G. M. editions outnumber those by “R. S.”9 For instance, the first American edition (1794) is G. M.’s. More notably, it is widely but incorrectly assumed that Andrew Lang used Samber’s translation for his Blue Fairy Book (1888). For “Cinderilla” [sic], he did so; but in fact, for “Bluebeard” he did not. This correction has further ramifications for sourcing twentieth-century “retranslations” of Lang’s text.10 Thus, both Samber and G. M. are equally important in “determining the form” of the story in English.
Distinguishing the G. M. and Samber translations is therefore not only possible, but extremely useful. The two translations are very close. As G. M.’s translation is more compact his is used as the base text in the following, while Samber’s elaborations appear after within square brackets. Where relevant the text from which it deviates is then bolded. Quoted here are the first two paragraphs of the tale to illustrate the translations representatively:
[The] Blue Beard.
There was [R. S.: once upon a time] a man who had [several] fine houses, both in town and country, a [good] deal of silver and gold plate, embroidered furniture, and coaches gilded [gilt] all over with gold. But this [same] man had the misfortune to have a Blue Beard, which made him so frightfully ugly, that all the women and girls ran away from him.
One of his neighbours, a lady of quality, had two daughters who were perfect beauties. He desired of her one of them in marriage, leaving to her the choice of which of the two [which of them] she would bestow upon him. They would neither of them have him, and sent him backwards and forwards from one another, being not able to bear the thoughts of marrying [being resolved never to marry] a man who [that] had a Blue Beard. And what besides [That which moreover] gave them [the greater] disgust and aversion, was his having [that he had] already been married to several wives, and no-body ever knew what became [were become] of them.11
Leaving aside for a moment the issue of whose name appears on the title page of these editions, there is a short list of hallmarks that distinguish the G. M. translation from Samber’s translation, and generally the title is the first indicator: G. M. versions use “Blue Beard,” while Samber translated the French article, “The Blue Beard,” consistently from the title through to the end of the translation. Samber also wrote “a full eight days” instead of “a whole week,” again choosing a more Gallic and literal translation over idiomatic English. Elsewhere, the reverse seems to be true, however, and Samber used more idiomatic English than G. M., such as “the floor was covered over [R. S.: all covered] with clotted blood.”12
The translation is G. M.’s rather than Samber’s if the text states: “a deal of silver and gold plate,” “the lady their mother,” “mirth and feasting” (instead of “feasts and collations”), “two great wardrobes” (instead of “rooms”); if she promises to observe “very exactly” Bluebeard’s injunction, she runs down “a little back staircase” (instead of “a back pair of stairs”), she nearly “twice or thrice” breaks her neck running down these stairs (Samber prefers “two or three times”); if at the door “she made a stop” (instead of “she stopt”); and if Bluebeard castigates her “you was resolved to go into the closet, was you not?” (instead of “were”), and gives her “half a quarter of an hour” (instead of “quarter of an hour”). Bluebeards that “bawl” for their wife to come downstairs derive from G. M.; if they wield a “scimitar” they follow G. M., while Samber chooses “cutlass.” A full list and a detailed interpretation of Samber’s choices must keep for another time. But as the majority of the translations are identical, as are the verse morals at the end (inspired by, rather than translated from, Perrault’s),13 discussion below features the most striking examples of departure between them in the course of comparing these English translations to Perrault’s French.
Having established the sources of the translation choices, it is now possible to look at the substantive highlights of the English translations in relation to the French original. Ideally, the French and English would be (re)published side by side. The eighteenth century produced several bilingual versions of the Mother Goose tales, as listed above, and “presumably for pedagogical purposes” (Daniels 2002, 6). For clarity in discussing the English translations in relation to the French, the translation will only be ascribed to either Samber or G. M. when there is a substantive deviation.
While the English translation of “Bluebeard” follows Perrault’s French very closely indeed, the nature of translation necessitates shifts in meaning, connotations, and so on. Claire Lise Malarte-Feldman noted: “Perrault’s style is deceptively simple: stripped of any superfluous ornaments, every word counts. Conscientious translators find themselves at a cross-roads at the moment of the definite choice for a word. Neil Philip [Philip and Simborowski 128] commented: ‘It is hard to convey in English translation the splendid brevity of Perrault’s prose. His distinctive wit and elegance are based on succinctness and economy’” (1999, 193).
The Concordance to the Mother Goose tales bears this out, noting an entire vocabulary of 2676 words, including different forms of the same verb. The concordance notes that this is half the vocabulary of either Corneille or Racine, other French classicists (Barchilon 1977, viii).14 Does it matter that in translation the prospective bride goes to visit Bluebeard’s house with “ladies of her acquaintance” as opposed to her “meilleures amies” (best friends)? Probably not, although arguments could be made: best friends exert more influence over the bride; they are therefore arguably implicated in her decision to marry him; the phrase needs to be compared later in the story with the young women who arrive at the house as soon as Bluebeard vacates it. But in most cases, even subtle differences in translation do make a palpable difference. A sentence such as the following, early in the story when Bluebeard is requesting a bride from one of the two daughters of a local lady of quality, illustrates this process: “He desired of her one of them in marriage, leaving to her the choice of which of them she would bestow upon him.” In Perrault’s 1697 text, “desired” was “demanda” (asked/demanded) and “bestow” was “donner” (give). While the literal meaning is similar, Bluebeard’s early characterization is at issue. We already know that Bluebeard has a blue beard and that it frightens everyone; we know he is rich, having “several fine houses both in town and country” and so on. To “desire” and have a wife “bestowed” connotes a courtly process, in a sense wooing the mother as much as the daughters and characterizes a gracious man. Tellingly, it characterizes Bluebeard as a man who has desires, but his desire is not specific to one woman. If instead he had “asked” to be “given,” it suggests rather a proprietary sense, a transaction, with an expectation of compliance. To illustrate further, he might “demand” that she “render” a daughter, characterizing him this early in the story as a domineering brute. Finally, are we to read in Perrault’s original a balance between the verb “donner” used here and that used later, for example, when Bluebeard deigns to “give” his wife some time to prepare for death (Je vous donne)?
In another and rather more critical example, is Bluebeard a “civil” man or an “honest” one (fort honnête)? Both G. M. and Samber translate “honnête” here as “civil” following the term’s specific currency at the time. Accordingly, the wife is “uncivil” when leaving her guests (malhonnête). But at the end where Perrault describes her new husband as also “fort honnête,” G. M. chooses “worthy,” while Samber chooses “very honest.” Both translators thereby lose Perrault’s irony of having the same epithet to describe the wife’s initial opinion of both husbands she weds.15
We pick up the story at the early party in Bluebeard’s house, where all the women have so much fun and see the wealth he has that the youngest daughter decides to accept Bluebeard in marriage. The English translation reads: “In short, everything so well succeeded, that the youngest daughter began to think.” Perrault’s version says “everything went so well” (tout alla si bien). Given what will follow, and that Bluebeard is commonly understood to have set up the test or trap for his bride, the concept of “success” underscores the sense of a script, or at least a plan. He not only succeeds in “engag[ing] their affection,” but also in drawing in the youngest daughter. But in English, Bluebeard’s subsequent absence is a more haphazard event: “About a month afterwards [the] Blue Beard told his wife, that he was obliged to take a [journey].” Perrault’s French reads “Au bout d’un mois” (at the end of one month), which sounds more intentional on Bluebeard’s part. Samber translates “en Province” as travel to a “distant country” rather than “take a country-journey,” further enhancing the subtext of a premeditated trap.
The injunction is one-half of the most essential elements of this tale, the breach of it being the other. The English translation renders the first part of Bluebeard’s instructions as follows: “desiring her to divert herself in his absence, send for her friends and acquaintance, carry them into the country, if she pleased, and make good cheer wherever she was.” The notion of “desire” recurs, with the stronger endorsement of the verb “prier,” as opposed to the earlier “demander.” But the original for “wherever she was” is “partout” (everywhere). Again, the difference is subtle, but giving the bride a “passe-partout” in effect and then belying that with the injunction not to go into the little room is not the same. In other words, “have fun wherever you go, but do not go in there” is not the same as “go everywhere, but not there.” Perrault’s Bluebeard simply defines his good china as that which is not used daily (qui ne sert pas tous les jours), and so does G. M. (which is not every day in use), while Samber’s Bluebeard appears to give instructions as to their use: “which is not to be made use of every day.” Samber thus hints that already Bluebeard’s generosity has limits and that he concerns himself with even the smallest of details of his housekeeping. The injunction itself is worth quoting in full: “Open them all, go into all and every one except that little closet, which I forbid you, and forbid it [you] in such a manner, that if you happen to open it, there is nothing but what you may expect from my just anger and resentment.” The English translations follow Perrault very closely here,16 except that “resentment” is an interesting and spontaneous addition to mere “colère” (anger). In English, Bluebeard promises both “anger and resentment”; the connotations of resentment are quite different from those of anger and characterize a different set of emotions and reactions in the man and in his relations with his wife.
When the bride’s friends arrive, without even “stay[ing] to be sent for,” they “ran thro’ all the rooms, closets, wardrobes” and so on; Perrault emphasizes that they did so “aussitôt” (immediately), emphasizing their “great … impatience” to see the riches of the house. This emphasis on impatience and immediacy both generalizes the trait to the female sex, and not simply Bluebeard’s wife alone, and foreshadows the nearly break-neck speed with which she will descend to the forbidden closet. But it also contrasts what she will do when she gets there. While the ladies rush about the house “immediately” upon arrival, she will hesitate at the door, thinking of the injunction and pondering its consequences. This pause on the threshold heightens suspense, but also characterizes the breach as a conscious decision to act. The English translations describe her curiosity as “press[ing]” her, as if an affliction, taking their cue directly from the French, which also contains this notion of pressure: “elle fut si pressée de sa curiosité.”17 The translations also editorialize on her rush to get downstairs simply by translating “tant de precipitation” (so much speed) as “excessive haste” and commenting with narrative objectivity that “she had like to have broken her neck” as opposed to reflecting the character’s own thoughts, as in Perrault: “she thought (elle pensa) she would break her neck.”
Again, the moment of transgression is the iconic moment and the turning point of the tale, and I will quote the English translations in full (differences between the two separated by a backslash), noting on several occasions a more literal translation of Perrault’s French in square brackets for comparative purposes:
Being come to the closet door, she made a stop / stopt for some time, thinking upon her husband’s orders [defense, prohibition], and considering what unhappiness might attend her if she was / were she [d’avoir été, to have been] disobedient; but the temptation was so strong she could not overcome it: She took then the little key and opened it tremblingly / in a very great trembling; [D’abord, At first] but could not at first see any thing plainly / see nothing distinctly, because the windows were shut; after some moments she began to perceive / observe that the floor was covered over / all covered with clotted blood, on which lay [se miraient, were mirrored] the bodies of several dead women ranged against the walls. (These were all the wives whom / that the Blue Beard had married and murder’d [égorgée, slit the throats of] one after another.)18 She thought / that / she should have died [would die] for fear, and the key that / which she pulled out of the lock fell out of her hand.
After having somewhat recover’d her surprise, she took up the key, locked the door and went up stairs into her chamber to recover herself, but she could not, so much was she frightened [émue, moved].19 Having observed that the key of the closet was stain’d with blood, she tried two or three times to wipe it off, but the blood would not come out; in vain did she wash it and even rub it with soap and sand, the blood still remained, for the key was a Fairy [Fée, enchanted], and she could never quite [il n’y avait pas moyen, there was no way to] make it clean; when the blood was gone off from one side, it came again on the other.
Interestingly, Perrault’s wife foreshadows her actual transgression by imagining it having already happened before she has even opened the door: “d’avoir été” is literally “to have been” and renders the transgression in the past of some as-yet-not-done act. Next, the English translators seem to dwell slightly less than Perrault on the grisly details. Perrault’s dead women are displayed, their throats slit. The English translation states more clinically that they lay on blood and that they had been murdered. But in their brief section “Perrault in English” in their biography of Charles Perrault, Jacques Barchilon and Peter Flinders noted this translation as one example of Samber mistranslating from Perrault:
Most mistranslations are not worth signaling, but an extraordinary one occurs in “Bluebeard” and refers to the terrifying moment when the unfortunate woman discovers the bodies of the previous wives. The passage in Samber’s text read: “after some moments she began to observe that the floor was all covered over with clotted blood, on which lay the bodies of several dead women ranged against the walls” (our italics). Obviously the dead women could not at the same time “lay” on the floor and be “ranged” against the wall. This logical impossibility is the result of a careless translation. What the French text says is that the floor was covered with clotted blood in which were reflected (se miraient) the bodies of several women attached (or hanging) along the walls (1981, 111–12).
In fact, Perrault’s original, in both manuscript and published edition, used “se miroient” (reflected, mirrored), making the mistranslation even more obvious. G. M.’s version is the same as Samber’s on this point.20
The translation of the key as “a fairy”, supplying the article to the adjective “fée” itself (enchanted), occasioned a number of later English translations to elaborate on this Fairy who gave the key to Bluebeard, and even to make another allusion to the scene in Othello in which Othello gives the handkerchief to Desdemona and tells her it has magical properties (that will specifically reveal a betrayal of trust within marriage). It supplies a literal fairy to the borderline “fairy” tale; the key (as is often mentioned) is the only literally enchanted element of the tale. Perrault made it clear that because the key is enchanted, there is no possibility of cleaning it. The revision between the 1695 manuscript and 1697 publication reinforces this notion of desperate futility; instead of merely wiping the key, she now wipes it two or three times (Elle l’essuya becomes l’essuia deux ou trois fois), and at the same time Perrault added that the blood had the magical ability to switch from one side of the key to the other (quand on ôtoit le sang d’un costé, il revenoit de l’autre). In later translations, the wife will use a variety of contemporary cleaning products, such as brick dust, in addition to soap (often referred to by brand) and sand.
In the Samber/G. M. English translations the wife pretends to be “extremely glad” of her husband’s sudden and unexpected return home. It is not from either of them, then, that the phrase “in a transport of joy” derives, although it is used frequently thereafter in chapbooks. But their Bluebeard is almost casual about when he will get the key. It is true that in the original, also, he waits until the next morning to ask for the keys to be returned to him, and very little has ever been made by any commentator on the night the wife must pass in waiting for this inevitable moment. But when he does ask, they translate “tantot” (right away) as “presently,” which sounds coyly casual. Similarly, the question he asks on seeing the indelible blood is not “pour quoi” (why), as in Perrault, but is translated as “How comes” it there. The difference is both subtle and important. Both Bluebeard and his wife know “how” the blood got on the key; the question of “why” it is there is a more general one: Why did you disobey me? Why did you open the door? Samber’s Bluebeard accuses his wife of being “resolv’d” to go into the forbidden closet, but Perrault’s Bluebeard shows a better understanding of his wife’s nature when he accuses her instead of wanting to go in (voulu); this emphasizes the idea of temptation, rather than mere disobedience (resolve). Furthermore, it was only “vouloir” that could overcome the lack of resolve she demonstrates on the threshold. In English the wife shows “all the signs of a true repentance, and that she would never more be disobedient,” which is not that same as repenting of not having been obedient, without future promises: “toutes les marques d’un vrai repentir de n’avoir pas été obéissant” [all the signs of a true penitent for not having been obedient]. Because she has already “witnessed” (témoigner) her happiness at his sudden return home, Bluebeard perhaps accurately reads these signs as meaningless. Already, the scene is reminiscent of Shakespeare’s Othello, when Bluebeard tells his wife she must die, and she begs for time to pray, stalling the execution. But the English translations bring Othello even closer when Bluebeard states: “You must die, Madam, said he, and that presently.” Perrault’s French is “tout à l’heure,” so the English “presently” is accurate, but had Samber or G. M. translated it as “soon” or “shortly” or “imminently” then we would not have the echo of Othello telling Desdemona that she is to die “presently”:
OTHELLO: Thou art on thy deathbed.
DESDEMONA: Ay, but not yet to die.
OTHELLO: Yes, presently:
Therefore confess thee freely of thy sin …
Thou art to die (5.2, emphasis added).
While Othello goes on to tell Desdemona to pray before he kills her, he says only: “do it, and be brief.” Bluebeard, however, gives (Je vous donne) his wife precisely “un demi quart-d’heure … mais pas un moment d’avantage” (half a quarter of an hour, but not one moment more). This is one of the few important substantive departures between Samber’s and G. M.’s translations. Samber translates this as “a quarter of an hour,” doubling the length of time given in Perrault, while G. M. translates the literal “half a quarter of an hour.” A survey of other translations of this phrase demonstrate either how much creative license is given to conceiving this scene, or how much trouble the lack of a colloquial equivalent for seven and a half minutes has given English translators; the time given can be five, ten, or fifteen minutes, and even, from some more generous Bluebeards, half an hour or more.21
Another more notable departure between the Samber and G. M. translations occurs here, in the calls of the wife to her sister Anne, in the tower keeping desperate watch for the arriving horsemen, their brothers.22 G. M. has the wife speak quite plainly: “I beg you … if you see them … do you see anyone …?” Instead, in Samber the wife speaks with heightened diction, preparing the way for her evolution into a stage heroine: “I desire thee … if thou seest them … dost thou see nothing …?” Otherwise, this well-known prevarication sequence where Sister Anne is three times begged to look out the window and make signs of haste to the brothers if she sees them, and the maddening refrain that she sees “nothing but” dust, grass, and a flock of sheep, before finally the brothers are spotted, is closely translated.23 In fact, Samber’s translation “Anne, sister Anne, does thou see nothing coming?” is more faithful to the negatives of the wife in the French text (ne vois tu rien venir?) than G. M.’s or than will often be the case afterward. The required double negative in the French (“ne … rien”; do you not see nothing coming?) is reduced to the more colloquial English equivalent, “dost thou see nothing,” but is still a question in the negative, rather than G. M.’s “do you see anything coming?” which would be the hopeful alternative. The focus, as it has been all throughout the tale, is on the act of seeing. Sister Anne is iconically pictured on the lookout by many illustrators of the tale. Perrault gets in another reference to seeing with mention of the brothers, who “me viendraient voir” (were coming to see me). The English translators lose this one reference by translating the brothers’ expected arrival as: “they promised me that they would come to day.”
Samber’s Bluebeard repeats “presently” once when he calls to his wife to descend and be killed, before switching to “quickly” in a more literal translation of Perrault’s “vite,” used twice in the original (G. M. uses “instantly” from the beginning): “Come down, presently, or I’ll come up to you. … Come down quickly, cried the Blue Beard, or I’ll come up to you.” The third time he calls up he asks, in both English translations: “Will you not come down?” which does not have the same possibilities for ironic nuances as the French: “ne veux-tu pas descendre?” While it can mean “won’t you,” as the English translators choose, it can also mean “don’t you want to.” If we return to the issue of “vouloir” that arose when Perrault’s Bluebeard charges the wife with “wanting” to go into the forbidden chamber, we can read “don’t you want to come down?” as a viciously ironic echo of the “wanting” that got the wife into this predicament in the first place, according to Bluebeard. Again, though, the English focus is on resolution: she “resolv’d” to go into the forbidden chamber and now she must resolve herself, or will herself, to descend: “will you not come down?”
Another iconic moment from the story, most often illustrated, is the moment of threatened death, and it is another major deviation in diction between the G. M. and Samber translations. Bluebeard stands over his wife, “cutlass” raised, and seems about to accomplish the murder. This was in fact the tale’s first illustration, as seen in the Barchilon facsimile of the 1695 manuscript. It is rare that Perrault’s “coutelas” will be translated as faithfully as Samber’s “cutlass”; G. M.’s translation of the blade as a “scimitar” is most often followed in later decades, more in keeping with the images of the orientalization of the tale. The brothers, by contrast, have “swords” (épeé).24 When the wife comes downstairs she supplicates in tears, hair disheveled. In Perrault’s version, Bluebeard tells her that these signs of distress, just as the signs of repentance she showed a while earlier, are useless: “ça ne sert à rien” (that serves no purpose). But Samber’s Bluebeard focuses on the signs themselves, choosing now to draw out the reference to seeing by focusing on signs: “This signifies nothing, says the Blue Beard.” But immediately Samber loses yet another reference to vision when the brothers rush in. Perrault’s French shifts to the third person neutral: “on vit entrer” (one saw enter) but Samber simply states the fact of their arrival: “immediately enter’d two horsemen.”
Finally, the conclusion of the tale in Perrault’s version begins to introduce the tone of levity and practicality that will be evinced by the two “moralités” at the end of the tale. In a return to the materialist focus of the beginning of the tale, the subject of this last paragraph is the wife’s inheritance of all Bluebeard’s estate and how she chooses to disburse it.25 Anne is married to a long-time suitor, the brothers are advanced with purchased commissions, and Bluebeard’s surviving wife dowers herself to marry another man. Perhaps in a move to grant more propriety to her remarriage, the Victorians often used the oriental story version’s invention of the character of Selim, a lover from whom Fatima (Bluebeard’s wife) has been parted by her marriage to Blue Beard. Thus, there is a preexisting character for her to marry at the end.26 Otherwise, in further efforts to sanctify her inheritance, she remains single for the rest of her life, and for her charity is beloved by all.
Perrault’s moralités, added between the 1695 and 1697 versions, have been the subject of many studies, usually commenting on their doubleness (their supplementarity, their ironic self-contradictions, and so on). Whether for their anachronism or for their problematic duplicity, they are often omitted from translations. Ségolène Le Men alluded to the shift in audience from adult to child when she noted in her study of the illustration history of Mother Goose: “By the nineteenth century, however, children’s editions of Perrault’s tales had begun to be published without the morals, which, supposedly, were not intended for children” (1992, 23). But Samber and G. M. both use the same translation, in verse, further demonstrating that one of them used the translation of the other as their template.27
Thus were launched the English versions of Charles Perrault’s “Bluebeard,” and they dominated the eighteenth century through multiple editions of Mother Goose alone. The eighteenth-century “prehistory” of Bluebeard in English and American culture established the inheritance for those who followed.