While reading this version of Bluebeard, I couldn't help but notice a lot of similarities to Beauty and the Beast. We have the odd man-freak who frightens the entire town, the woman that is with him even though she doesn't really want to be with him, and the secret, which does vary in the Beauty & the Beast stories. Both Bluebeard and Beauty & the Beast tend to focus on the heroics of the woman involved. B&B shows a reformation of the Beast by Beauty while Bluebeard shows a woman who kills her gruesome husband.
Another thing I noticed about the Bluebeard tales is that they tend to be more gruesome than many of the other stories that we've read. This series often focuses on the horrible deaths of the former lovers of Bluebeard and how he killed them. In my opinion, this series is the least "family-friendly" series since it is so violent and particularly descriptive. I think it is definitely on a different level than the rest of the fairy tales because of its mature content. Out of all of the different collections/themes that we've studied so far, this series is the one that was newest to me, but I know that it's most likely because of the maturity level of it that I was never introduced to it as a child.
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I think that its interesting that Bluebeard and Beauty and the Beast are so similar. However I do feel like Belle is kind of a passive character in Beauty and the Beast (doesn't really make a lot of decisions for herself) and in Bluebeard, that the focus is on female disobedience. I think you can look at them as heroines too but at the same time they can be different.
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