Bluebeard



Edna St. Vincent Millay
This door you might not open, and you did; So enter now, and see for what slight thing You are betrayed…. Here is no treasure hid, No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring The sought-for truth, no heads of women slain For greed like yours, no writhings of distress, But only what you see…. Look yet again— An empty room, cobwebbed and comfortless. Yet this alone out of my life I kept Unto myself, lest any know me quite; And you did so profane me when you crept Unto the threshold of this room to-night That I must never more behold your face. This now is yours. I seek another place.

__**HISTORY OF THE POEM AND POET**__ 


 //As Edna St. Vincent Millay once said, “A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public with his pants down." From an early age, Millay gained recognition as a poet and published many books. Apparently, having her pants down did not bother her.

Bluebeard was published in 1917 as a part of Millay’s compilation ////__Renascence and Other Poems __////. Since then many people have come to appreciate the energy and originality in Millay’s writing style. She is typically best known for her excellent sonnets. //

//Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in Maine on February 22, 1892. She was given a scholarship by the Young Women's Christian Association to Vassar College for her writing in her school’s magazine. She graduated in 1917, the same year __Renascence and Other Poems __<span style="font-style: normal; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';"> was published. She ended up in Greenwich Village, living freely and challenging sexual boundaries (for example she never hid her bisexuality). In fact, another collection of her poetry, __<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">A Few Figs from Thistles __<span style="font-style: normal; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">, became famous for the radical and unique ideas it posed on feminism and sex. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for __<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">The Harper Weaver __<span style="font-style: normal; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">, making Millay the first woman to win a Pulitzer. The same year, Millay married Eugen Boissevain and maintained an open marriage with him until his death in 1949. Due to her problems with alcohol, Millay’s mental and physical health began deteriorating in 1944, and then in 1950, Millay – strong female character, poet, playwright, challenger – died from falling down the stairs. //

__**<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">PARAPHRASE **__
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">(first quatrain) You opened door you should not have opened. You have no reason to be there- nothing of value, nothing you are looking for. //(second quatrain)// You did not find bodies like the girl in Bluebeard, so you are only led to loneliness and disappointment. //(third quatrain)// This secret (the door you opened) is dear to me, and by invading my privacy, you show that you don't respect me. //(couplet)// Now that you have lost my trust, I'll leave you.

__**<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">STRUCTURE **__
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Bluebeard is a Shakespearean sonnet. The rhyme scheme of the poem is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. It is divided into three quatrains and a couplet at the end, which provides the conclusion of the three quatrains. A volta, or turn, is presented to the reader at the end of the third quatrain, in time to be solved by the last two lines. Bluebeard follows, with the exception of line four, the standard Shakespearean sonnet meter, iambic pentameter, which has five feet composed of stressed-unstressed syllables.

**__<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">POETIC DEVICES __**
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">__**Alliteration**__ Millay uses alliteration, the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words or stressed syllables in lines 4 and 8. In line 4 "No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring", Millay uses alliteration to draw attention to the message that nothing you want is easily achieved. The cauldron is an allusion to the pot of gold at the end of rainbow; where all of your dreams could come true by reaching into the magic pot. By stating that there is no cauldron, Millay says that your absolute happiness cannot be simply achieved. In line 8 Millay used "cobwebbed and comfortless" to emphasize the emptiness of the room and to emphasize that there is nothing in the room that could be desired.

__**Allusion**__ Allusion is the reference of another work within your own. The fairytale of Bluebeard is the story of how an old king gives his wife the keys to all the rooms in his castle but forbids her to go into one of the rooms. Out of sheer curiosity his wife opens the door and in the room are the bodies of his dead previous wives. Millay uses this allusion to contrast against the ideals of fairytales where such things do not happen and there is nothing beyond the locked door and fairytales hardly ever come true (lines 2-3).

**__<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">ANALYSIS __**
<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> <span style="color: rgb(206, 148, 240);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">  <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">St. Vincent Millay was a prominent poet in the 20th century for her radical feminist views of the time. "Bluebeard", first published in 1917 as a part of Millay’s compilation __Renascence and Other Poems__, illustrates her feminist view that privacy in a relationship is important, even in a stable relationship. The title "Bluebeard" is an allusion to the fairy tale of the same name. By using some of the morals from the fairy tale, but also adding some changes, Millay effectively demonstrates this point.

// In the fairy tale, the heroine marries a brute named Bluebeard, the eponymous villain. Bluebeard has to go on a trip and tells his wife not to open his closet. Out of curiosity, the heroine does<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> open the closet and discovers that it was filled with the bodies of Bluebeard's previous wives. When Bluebeard comes home, he immediately realizes what has happened. He proceeds to try to murder his wife, but her brothers arrive in time to kill Bluebeard. //// The poem has much in common with the fairy tale. In both, someone has violated another's privacy and received immediate and severe consequences; the wife was at least supposed to be killed in Bluebeard's plan of revenge. In the poem the woman leaves the man forever (line 13). The consequences demonstrate that privacy is important, especially in a relationship. //// However, while demonstrating the consequences of not respecting privacy, Millay also significantly changes the plot and the ending of the fairy tale to reinforce the importance of privacy in her poem. //A major difference is that the genders of the main characters are switched. In the fairytale, Bluebeard's wife trespasses on his secret, while the male character plays that role in Millay's sonnet. This deviation is designed to promote her highly feminist point of view that shows up in many of her other works. The difference in outcomes is an example of feminism because in Millay's version, the man is portrayed as the wrongdoer, and in the fairytale, even though the wife has broken boundaries in the same way, she triumphs and uses Bluebeard's money to live independently.

Another difference between the story and the sonnet is the main message each one tries to convey. As with most fairytales, a large part is focused on the battle between good and evil- Bluebeard is the evil wife-killing villain who gets defeated at the end. Of course, the story gets one thinking about whether "curiosity kills the cat", although the curious wife ends up better off than before. Millay's poem is definitely more focused on the theme of invading privacy, and it uses Bluebeard's story to complement its own message by pointing out the differences in scenario. For instance, Millay refers often in the first quatrain to what is //not// present- "no cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring the sought-for truth" and how the metaphoric room of privacy is empty, "cold, cobwebbed and comfortless" The use of alliteration in this line underlines this point. From this the reader can realize that the writer is separating herself from the character of Bluebeard- there are no bloody bodies to have called the male character in, so it wasn't a necessary invasion of privacy. The allusion to Bluebeard is certainly central to the central idea in this poem. Making the allusion more effective is deviation of the plot of the fairy tale in the poem. Millay's feminist view that privacy is important for women in marriage certainty comes as no surprise, since she was most prominent feminist poets of her day.

__**<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">REFERENCES **__
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Academy of American Poets. "Edna St. Vincent Millay." __Poets.org__. 18 Nov. 2008 < <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">[|__http://www.poets.org/poet. php/prmPID/160__] <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> >. Bartleby Bookstore. __Renascence and Other Poems__. 10 Dec. 2008 < <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">[|__http://www.bartleby.com/131/ index.html‌131/‌index.html__] <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> >. Britannica. "alliteration." __Britannica Online Encyclopedia__. 18 Nov. 2008 < <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">[|__http://www.britannica.com/ EBchecked/topic/16468/ alliteration__] <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> >. Cathleen McGuigan. " A New Day for Ms. Millay ." 18 Nov. 2008 < <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">[|__http://www.arlindo-correia. com/160901.html__] <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> >. Lombardi, Esther. __Edna St. Vincent Millay Quotes__. 2008. 10 Dec. 2008 < <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">[|__http://classiclit.about.com/__] <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> ‌ od/‌millayednasv/‌a/‌aa_ estvmillayqu.htm> University of Illinois English Department. "Modern American Poetry." __About Edna St. Vincent Millay__. 17 Nov. 2008 < <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">[|__http://www.english.uiuc.edu/ maps/poets/m_r/millay/about. htm__] <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> >.

- by Claire Liu, Mike Zhivov, Katayun Salehi and Kevin Li