As a Canadian writer who had won numerous world-class writing prizes, Margaret Atwood is famous for being as a novelist, many of her poems were inspired by fairy tales. In her work the readers can always find traces about woman: their powers, their status, their spiritual world. Combine the two significant traits, “The Blue beard’s Egg” is a short story which retell a traditional classic fairy rale that originated from Charles Perrault’s “Bluebeard”. Atwood takes a modern peek of the old tale.
In Perrault’s version, Bluebeard’s new wives would always break their promises of not open the door and enter the orbidden room while he leaves, hence they were all been killed. While in Atwood’s tale, she made the violence and absurd in the original story much normal instead of unrealistic through lenses of the modern setting. “Bluebeard’s Egg” discussed themes which are present in the original fairy tales: themes like disloyalty, trust, and be deceived. By putting the fairy tale into a contemporary, middle-class environment.
Atwood utilizes the modern setting and the change of point of view to portray the heroine’s women issues, more specifically, her unhappy marriage which intercrossed with themes of disloyalty, self- deceive. The shifts in perspectives allow readers view the story from different angles, hence, urges us to scrutinize our presumptions of the characters and how stories make genuine significance when angle shifts. Atwood’s “Bluebeard’s Egg” depict the life of Sally and Ed, a rather ordinary middle-aged couple.
Sally is a lonely housewife who works as an assistant at a trust company, while Ed, her husband is a “heart man” (Atwood 160). He never gives careful consideration to Sally, he hardly asks about her feelings and thoughts. In fact a significant part of the story is given to Sally’s worries and stresses over daily life. Meanwhile Ed, in contrast, repetitively shows up and fades away all through the story while playing the mysterious partner who Sally cannot understand thoroughly – a hint to Bluebeard.
She also grumbles that in spite of the fact that Ed might be a heart man, he doesn’t see genuine hearts, the ones “symbolized by red glossy silk encompassed by ribbon and topped by pink bows” (Atwood 160). The beauty of a lively heart, as adorable as the flush on virgin’s cheek when she sees her first love. Ed doesn’t understand the beauty of a heart just like he doesn’t understand the beauty of love, he doesn’t know o cherish Sally’s love. Meanwhile Sally needs comfort for her emotions, thus she even daydreaming and comparing herself to the “princess” (Atwood 157) of fables.
What a romantic illusion! However, Ed is not the charming prince, “He’s a child of luck, a third son who, armed with nothing but a certain feebleminded amiability, manages to make it through the forest with all its witches and traps and pitfalls and end up with the princess. ” (Atwood 157) In Sally’s point of view, Ed is like this typical young boy from Grimm’s fairy tales: he is dumb yet handsome and lucky. Sally griping, from the storyteller’s point f view, and pondering Ed and their relationship.
Because at the end of the story, unfortunately Sally unintentionally walking in on Ed and her closest girlfriend Marylynn and witnesses him touching her improperly. The last paragraph indicates Sally’s quandary that maybe Ed has bamboozled her from the very beginning of their marriage. Sally’s presumption is wrong because she only see things in a way she wanted them to be. Atwood played us that she made us think she had given out all things about this couple that we wanted to know, however, in the end of the story, like a curve-ball, we are all part of Sally – we ctually know nothing at all about Ed.
Perspective is an essential part of the story. In this story, the lack of dialogue is something noticeable. Sally is, through the storyteller’s perspective, the protagonist. She is totally in control of the voices. From the very beginning, Sally stands at the kitchen, look at Ed outside and mined keep thinking about Ed, from his windbreaker to their old time in high school. “My darling Edward, She thinks, Edward Bear, of little brain. How I love you. ” (Atwood 157) “She thinks”, she only think about it rather than tell her husband with her own mouth.
Is she afraid of elling him or she does not have the confidence to do so? Anyway, in the story almost all the time we only heard voice from Sally, the storyteller has manipulate readers on what information they gets. The storyt relatively very less dialog between the characters, this point of view might be excessively one-sided. So we follow up Sally’s thoughts, we know she loves Ed, but we also want to know Ed’s reaction. He seems not very respond to Sally. We are so curious, what is Ed thinking when he is in the garden?
What is his opinion about Sally’s heart under that cold machine in the hospital? We ollow Sally’s thought but cannot get what we wanted, we can only see Sally like a solo play on the stage. In the meantime it gives the story anticipation. Sally thinks she is the one and only angle that saves Ed from his two “stink-hole” and “quagmire” ex- wives, she also thinks him so stupid that it seems like she can own absolutely control over Ed. Sally believes she knows everything about Ed :his job, his colleagues, his children, the way he make love, food he likes to eat.
However the sweet taste of ler is Sally, but since there is power of control turns bitter when she found out about Ed’s cheat. Maybe she will remember in fact at the beginning she already know that Ed could not tell her the reason he divorced. “Ed doesn’t know what happened with these marriages” (Atwood 158) Does Ed really doesn’t know? Or is it simply because Ed doesn’t want to tell. From the fact the he is cheating on Sally the answer might be the second – he doesn’t want to tell Sally that he was a cheater. The truth is he is cheater now and probably still will be one in the future.
Now what were Sally thinking the moment when she decide not to ask about his ex-wives. She does not want to hear the story, yet she is afraid hat same fate will come to her as the ex-wives. Why she didn’t ask Ed despite she is so scared? Because she is even more afraid of getting answers she doesn’t want to hear from Ed. She would rather live with the secret room and does not enter. For she is curious of what might inside the room, but she is more afraid of seeing body parts. The truth is always the heaviest burden to bear. Sally is a coward.
She choose to ignore the imperfection on Ed, to shape Ed as the one she wanted – the dumb, stupid boy that she can save. Atwood makes us mindful that her story is not by any stretch of the imagination exact and points out the tory’s moving account viewpoint in various ways. She purposely composes that Sally persistently stresses over her marriage and trusts that maybe she doesn’t know everything about Ed. The storyteller clarifies “Ed is a real person, with a lot more to him than these simplistic renditions allow for; which sometimes worries her “(Atwood 158).
This quote is from different perspective – the narrator’s. Clearly this is the storyteller’s point of view, not Sally’s. Because another voice jumped out and said” Ed is a real person”, this indicates that actually Sally has s always been objectify Ed. She sees him as her belongings, like her favorite perfume, or favorable little red table. That is why our assumption get corrected by the narrator. In case we’ve been manipulated by Sally too much, and become too subjective on sally’s side. Sally implies the way that there is another viewpoint in the story that she and we, don’t have a clue about; Ed’s own perspective.
He talks in compact sentences when bantering with alternate characters, however what he uncovers leaves Sally needing significantly more. She needs to investigate “Ed’s inward world, which she can’t get at” (Atwood 169) and it totally disappoints her. We get to be mindful toward the starting that Ed will remain a riddle which Sally can’t understand on the grounds that he appears “a shadow” (Atwood 176) to her and us. Another illustration of this movement happens when Marylynn converses with Sally about Ed: “Ed is charming as a catch,” Marylynn said. Truth be told, he’s much the same as a catch: he’s so splendid and gleaming. In the event that he were mine, l’d get him bronzed and keep him on the mantelpiece” (Atwood 160). This quote comes straightforwardly from the character, an uncommon event in Atwood’s story. It likewise aggregates up Sally’s most exceedingly terrible fears bout how ladies react to her spouse. She teases him about being gone after by imperceptible ladies “who chase after him all over the place” (Atwood 166), yet she reasons for alarm this situation all the same.
Actually Marylynn foreshadow Sally’s fear. Like the little ice house foreshadows Sally’s own house, furthermore, her marriage. Sally’s insecurity would exaggerate when there’s women approaching Ed. Like building The Tetris, when the last block drops, the base of Sally’s last dignity would vanish. She now cannot ignore the problem between she and Ed, she had to face it now. Atwood shrewdly utilizes Marylynn, n auxiliary character, to call attention to this dread; the same character who might be having an unsanctioned romance with Ed.
By moving point of view the peruser gets to be mindful of how Marylynn feels and thinks contrasted with Sally. Albeit both ladies typify Ed, Marylynn’s words are more undermining than lively. Her voice gives us an alternate perspective and basically more data to consider and inspect. Stories additionally speak to the way of life they originate from, society that gives an account power that clarifies how these stories go. These societies and social orders use stories to clarify how things exist; after some ime examples and subjects rise.
Perceptions remain for all time altered to the socio-social mindfulness and individuals figure out how to perceive the themes and guidelines from the stories, passing on clarifications to the people to come. In any case, nobody questions why things happen the way they do on the grounds that there is no data to recommend something else. We can’t make derivations about these stories in light of the fact that doing as such thrashings their motivation.
A key symbol from the first bluebeard’s story is the key that bluebeard give to his wife. Then in another version of Bluebeard’s story “Fitch’s bird” is the key and the egg that the witch give to the wife. Finally it is only the egg left in Bluebeard’s Egg. Key is an object use to open locks, it does not possess possibilities on its own. However, egg is a live thing. Until it hatched no one would ever know what will come out from the egg. This pure, innocent egg in Bluebeard’s egg, just like the dumb, looks no harmful Ed.
No one is expecting Ed’s cheat, and sally would never though that well-behaved Ed someday would be misbehave. So to speak, Ed is the Egg, they both look pure at the first, and Ed’s cheat also makes Sally started to wonder, Even Ed could go wrong, what about the egg?? What will hatch from it? A toad or a basilisk? An angel or a monster?
