When Gothic romance novelist Judith is swept off her feet at a wedding party by a charming baron, a fantastic new future opens up to her that mirrors that of her fictional heroines: a castle, a dominant but dashing husband, abundant wealth, wild and passionate sex. But the fairytale soon sours, as Her husband’s true violent nature and mysterious past begin to be exposed. Judith had thought of Gavin as a knight in shining armour, rescuing her from her life ‘of complacent dullness’ as the daughter of rich but dismissive parents. But as the uncomfortable reality of his tyrannical dominance dawns upon her, Judith struggles with conflicting feelings. She stumbles between denial and self-disgust, anger and acceptance, constantly talking herself out of her decision to leave him. Her mental well-being disintegrates as she fails to free herself from her addiction to a husband whom she knows could kill her.
All of the expected elements of a Gothic novel are to be found in Bluebeard’s Castle, from its setting and its lady in distress to its overwrought emotion and the abundance of religious and supernatural undertones. Writer and The Love Witch film director Anna Biller’s effort to put a renewed feminist spin on this traditional folktale – more than three decades after Angela Carter did so in The Bloody Chamber – is admirable. Like Carter, she twists the tale in order to expose its true core of violence against women. In an interview with online magazine CrimeReads, Biller explained that being a woman ‘exposes one to multiple daily horrors… [and] the monster is often right in the house’. Indeed, the 2022 Crime Survey of England and Wales estimated that 1.7 million women had experienced domestic abuse in the previous year.
