Which of Bluebeard’s Wives Are We?

A Fairytale for Our Moment Challenges Us to Face Reality—Even If We’d Rather Hide From It

There’s magic in fairy tales, the sort of magic that allows us to make sense of our world thanks to the help of long-dead storytellers. If we listen closely to what these stories are saying, we can hear a million voices yelling at us from the past to do better in the future. To stop making the same mistakes.

Fairy tales come from the oral tradition, a time before washing machines and the internet when women would sit around darning socks and telling tales of romance, danger, and talking animals to …