Bluebeard — A KEY MADE OF TEARS

The tale of Bluebeard has long unsettled me and fascinated me at the same time. At its heart lies a paradox: the key is both gift and trap, a promise of release that becomes a burden, mixing freedom with entrapment. It is offered as a false freedom, daring the person who holds it to use it. A key made of tears, of blood.

When I was a child, I had a copy of Charles Perrault’s tales, with fantastic illustrations by Gustave Doré. Perrault is considered one of the founders of the modern fairy-tale genre. His stories were based on European popular traditions and later served as inspiration for the Brothers Grimm, about a century after him.

I was fascinated by these illustrations, which is probably why I kept the book from my childhood on my teenage bookshelf. I used them often as models for my own drawings. I was a very dreamy little person from my earliest childhood, spending hours alone in my room, lost in books, drawings and my own fantasy world instead of connecting and playing with other children.

On that, I definitely haven’t changed.

Here is an oil painting I made when I was fifteen, depicting the moment when Bluebeard hands his young wife the key to the forbidden chamber. In the image, Bluebeard towers over her, stern and ominous, handing the small key to his young wife.

Bluebeard handing the forbidden key to his young wife, oil painting by Elisa Miller inspired by Charles Perrault fairy tale circa 1996

This is the pivot point of the tale: the “gift” is really a trap. The key is both a symbol of power and of entrapment, permission that is simultaneously restriction.

This is also the only male character I have ever painted.

Last year, I started working on ideas and storyboards for my new series, Go Ask Alice. The work draws on archetypes deeply embedded in our collective memory. Fairy tales are among the first narratives we encounter, yet their darker psychological layers are often softened or overlooked. By revisiting these figures through a contemporary lens, the series creates a sense of recognition while opening space for more complex emotional readings.

“Unchosen Legacy” – © Elisa Miller 2026

Part 1: Who Is Your Bluebeard?

The first interpretation of the character of Bluebeard is the external predator. The one who takes naïve women as prey.

Unfortunately, when certain foundations have not been laid during our childhood, we can learn to speak a twisted language of love. Toxic shame, abuse, variations of the abuser/abused dynamic: the forms can be multiple. Somehow, we allow these things to happen.

In the tale, the mother does not seem particularly worried about her daughter’s safety, despite the frightening signs. This seems to hint at a generational trauma.

The youngest daughter is a naïve woman because she ignores her instinct, and she displays the characteristics of the archetype of the “good little girl” we are told to become by society as we grow up. Don’t be inconvenient. Don’t be rude. Please others.

So she does what she has learnt to do and tries to bury her instinct. She tells herself that his beard is “not that blue after all” and talks herself into the relationship.

Yep, been there, done that.

Red flags since day one that we consciously choose to ignore. After all, we are speaking the same language as the predator.

Just a pause here to say very strongly that it is far from me to put the blame on women. We don’t need more of that. But without some inner work, we can carry on allowing these patterns to happen.

On a more symbolic level, Bluebeard can represent the critic inside us, our own shadow. He represents our self-limiting beliefs, everything that removes our sense of agency. He can appear at different moments in our lives, pushing us to open a new door and realise our potential.

So now the question is: what door are you trying to ignore?

“The Forbidden Room” – © Elisa Miller 2026

2. Opening That Door

The door holds a strong symbolism of a portal, a gateway to somewhere new and different. A kind of psychic rebirth, passing through a symbolic womb once again. But when the door remains closed, it becomes a psychic barrier.

The part that struck me the most when I reread the tale last year was the bleeding key, or what I called the weeping key in my story.

A key already holds a very strong symbolism. From my own introspection, the key is a symbol of inheritance, of responsibilities taken on too soon, of knowledge that both protects and wounds. Sometimes we are forced to carry a key we never asked for.

Bluebeard gives us the key. He could have chosen to hide it, hoping she would never find the door. Instead, he emphasises its existence by strongly warning her not to open it.

If this guy doesn’t know how to spark the fire of curiosity…

Opening the door carries a strong symbolism, but what is important here is what she does with what she finds (FIY the corpses of his previous wives who have mysteriously vanished). Her behaviour after opening it, after seeing the horror with her own eyes, is very striking, and I recognised myself in it a lot.

As someone who has experienced abuse, I have learnt to take the blame upon myself.

Discovering that the guy has lots of skeletons in his closet, if you’ll allow me the pun, does she instantly run away, like a sensible person would? Plus, he is away, so he can’t physically prevent her from doing so.

Nope.

She tries to convince herself to forget all about it. She even tries to clean the key of the blood stain it gained when it fell on the floor and touched the blood of his victims.

Apparently, her censoring ego is taking on the eraser and trying to do its work.

But not today, Satan!

The bones are the remnants of what is left to decay. They could symbolise parts of ourselves that we have left to decay.

And when she is confronted with her disobedience by the man himself upon his return, does she blame him? Does she ask him to take responsibility for his crimes?

Oh no, dear. That wouldn’t be very nice of you.

She apologises.

Of course.

She takes the blame upon herself. Her curiosity and disobedience become the sin, the core of the issue, rather than the murders.

Toxic shame. Gaslighting. Sounds familiar?

“I took into my hands more than I can bear to hold” – © Elisa Miller 2026

3. The Weeping Key

The key keeps bleeding. It keeps weeping.

It is because once you have opened the door of truth wide enough, you cannot unsee what is behind it. You cannot pretend anymore, no matter how hard your censoring ego tries to scrub your brain with horsehair or ashes.

Your new reality is stained irrevocably.

Like Pandora’s box, like Eve eating the fruit and opening her eyes, there is no turning back.

The key keeps bleeding because an inner feeling needs to be expressed outwardly to the world. It is a visible expression of her pain. Blood and tears speak the same language: the language of pain.

But is her persona stained forever with blood, or are the tears washing away her older self, watering the seeds for a new chapter?

I prefer the second one.

And this is why I chose the symbol of the weeping key, of tears and eyes, rather than blood.

By revisiting the tale through my art practice, I open doors I once kept shut. The forbidden room becomes the place where truth is held, and entering it now through art is less an act of disobedience than an act of reclaiming power.

A key is a gift that binds until we wash it away with tears.

My friend Leena wrote:

“Tears showed me the way. They’re meant to open a door, with a key made of tears.”

Conclusion

Through the strong symbols of the door and the key, our masculine and feminine aspects come together to unlock something that has been blocked within us.

This is perhaps why, in the tale, she is ultimately rescued by her brothers. They can be understood as representing an inner force, the animus in Jungian psychology: the qualities traditionally bred out of women, such as assertiveness, aggression, courage and the ability to act. The very qualities she needs in order to reclaim her agency.

Bluebeard, then, raises the psychic key to our consciousness. Once we have faced the beast and dismantled the fear around him, perhaps we can begin to see him differently. Not as the force that destroys us, but as the dark figure who, as Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estés describes in Women Who Run with the Wolves, can ultimately bring the light to our own potential and agency.

Perhaps this is what the key was always trying to show us.

It was never only about opening the forbidden door.

It was about discovering what was on the other side of it, and who we could become once we had the courage to look.

Going Further

Reading suggestion:

- Women who run with the wolves (1992) – Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estes see on amazon UK

- The horror and hope of bluebeard – blog post by Kathryn Wilson.

- The legend of Bluebeard finally explain – Blog post by Brittany Menjivar – If you want to dive deeper into the different origins of the story real life inspiration, folklore and other versions.