Question 1

In Bluebeard's Ghost and the Seven Wives of Bluebeard both authors make an attempt to translate the fantastical of the fairy tale into reality. The horror in the Bluebeard's Ghost is that in the middle of dull exchanges of romance, the supernatural, having been explained away the hole time, rears its head again in the form of Bluebeard's ghost. The appearance of the specter throws the entire story off balance, which until then was obsessed mostly by the small interactions of the widow, to suddenly include the wider implications of her history with bluebeard. It is the resolution that settles the story again in reality as Blackbeard gets the girl and the the shy facade of frederick is shown to be just that. In this case the return to the normal is a relief, and the horror is the departure from this. However, in The Seven Wives of Bluebeard the horror of the plot comes from the unswerving reality of it. It instead becomes a tragedy of a good man constantly taken down at every turn. Had it at any point gone back to the fantastical, it would be welcome. It would mean that in the end the villain lost and the hero was rewarded. Instead, by sticking to the plausible world that the author created, we are presented with a man driven into ruin. The horror of the story comes from the last few lines, where bluebeard is disgraced, and the corrupt lovers achieve everything they dreamed of.