The ‘bluebeard’ Dream – the Affinity between Female Dream Narratives and Fairy Tales

This article presents the affinity existing between the female dream narrative and the fairy tale genre. Although a large body of material has already been written about the connection between fairy tales and dreams, it has never been examined empirically using the tools and methods with which fairy tales have been studied. This article focuses on one dream narrative, documented in the framework of a PhD dissertation, in which seventy-eight dream narratives were recorded, told by fifty-two single women. This article presents typological, formalistic, structural and esthetic approaches. In addition, this work compares how characteristics relating to time and space function within both dream narratives and fairy tales. The dream narrative is compared to tale type AT 311, called Bluebeard. From the focal point of this affinity, this work relates to the question of the feminine voice in fairy tales and the gaps between the female dream narrative and the masculine versions of the Bluebeard tales.