Intertexuality: Macbeth & Blue Beard
Crimson Peak on the other hand opens with Edith Cushing, as follows:
The audience is firstly told that "Ghosts are real", as snow gently falls around this calm, but shaken woman, in a white nightgown with a bloodied hand and face. The first scene is actually from the end of the film taken after the climatic events. Both these openings, of Macbeth and Crimson Peak, indicate a violence that has or will occur. Macbeth foreshadows violence through the use of the storm, and the witches' discussion of the "hurlyburly" and "battle" to be fought and finished . In Crimson Peak Edith's disheveled appearance, heavy but even breathing, the blood and cuts on her face, and the tears filling her eyes indicate that she has been through some upsetting and violent ordeal. When Edith says "Ghost are real", her speech is the only other information viewers have at that point to figure out her appearance, leading viewers to assume that ghosts have something to do with why she's wearing a bloodied nightgown in the middle of the snow. Not only do both openings imply a chaos to come, both this chaos is intertwined with the supernatural forces. It is useful for supernatural texts to begin with the supernatural as it sets the bar for the audience's suspension of disbelief and the acceptance of any later supernatural events.
Secondly, the character of Lady Macbeth bears similarity to Lucille Sharpe, who is erroneously referred to as a "Lady" (IMDb). The key similarity is that both woman are willing to commit murder, and this willingness to be violent is an implied perversion of femininity. Lady Macbeth's association between murder and femininity is well discussed and evident by the "Unsex me here" speech: "Come, you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here / And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full / Of direst cruelty!... / That no compunctious visitings of nature / Shake my fell purpose," (1.6. 41-47). She further emphasizes the tension between femininity and murder when she stands in conflict with her husband over Duncan's death. She says to Macbeth, "Had he not resembled / My father as he slept, I had done't" (2.2. 15-16). In this line Lady Macbeth is attempting to convince her husband to murder the King by comparing him to herself, claiming that she could do it. This is actually the opposite case of Lucille Sharpe: where Lady Macbeth does not actually commit murder, and expressly would not kill Duncan
because of likeness to her father, Lucille does commit murder, and the film dramatizes the reveal that it was she who killed Edith's father. Like Macbeth though, Lucille's other half, her brother and lover Thomas, must be manipulated and encouraged by her to kill. Like Lady Macbeth, she expresses a disdain for her partner's hesitancy to kill and consequently force her to perform all the violence.
It was the second clip here that first evoked my memory of Lady Macbeth.
Lucille does not express the kind of regret Lady Macbeth later does. What they do share in common, besides their willingness to kill, is the later "madness" of their character. Lady Macbeth is eventually visited by the Doctor and Gentlewoman who describe and witness her apparent madness. The Gentlewoman describes Lady Macbeth sleep walking in her nightgown repeatedly (5.1.5-9) and the washing of repeated imaginary washings of her hands (5.1.30-33). The woman who initially showed ambition and deadly poise had become plagued by guilt and come undone. Lucille follows a similar pattern, although her madness is not characterized by guilt but passion.
Lucille's disintegration is evident not only in her emotional expression, but her appearance. She goes from her all black and red high-necked corseted dresses to the anachronistic medieval renaissance dress. Her long hair has, like her, become undone and the tight lipped replies have turned to wailing and screams. The refined aristocratic lady descends into a kind of wild madness, her previous organized scheming and intelligence is undermined by a womanly madness.
"Blue beard" is most similar to Crimson Peak in terms of plot. In the 1697 publication by Charles Perrault, the unnamed main character marries a rich man whose beard is literally blue. He leaves her in the house with a set of keys and the instruction not to go the office in lower level.
She immediately goes to investigate the forbidden room and discovers the room to be filled with the hanging corpses of Blue Beard's previous wives, with their throats all slit (Perrault 166). The key becomes spotted with blood and is enchanted so it cannot be cleaned (Out damned spot! Out-) and Blue Beard, discovering his wife's disobedience, decides to kill her. Likewise, the grand-reveal of Crimson Peak is that Thomas has been married before, repeatedly, and each successive wife has been killed by the Sharpes. In this the sense, the Gothic secret of the male aristocrat and the mansion are the same in both texts.
Similarly both texts also contain a male-performed rescue scene. In "Blue Beard" our main character awaits the news of her brother's arrival. She calls to her sister to ask if she can see them coming and Blue Beard below demands she come downstairs so he may kill her. This is repeated several times.
Her life is saved by the timely revival of the brothers who proceed to murder Blue Beard. Crimson Peak's male hero is Edith's friend, Alan McMichael, whom after investigating the death of Edith's father, has come to take Edith away from Allerdale Hall and arrives just after Lucille has thrown her from the balcony.Sister Anne climbed to the top of the tower and the poor thing cried out to her now and then, 'Anne, sister Anne, is there nothing in sight?'
And sister Anne would reply, 'I see nothing but the sun raining dust and the grass getting lush.'
In the meantime, Blue Beard gripped a wide blade in his hand and would scream to his wife, 'Get down here now or I'll come up there!'
'Just a second, please" his wife would answer and quickly call out in a whisper to her sister, 'Anne, sister Anne, is there nothing in sight?' (Perrault 167)
The texts start to differ after this point. In "Blue Beard", the brother's arrival signals Blue Beard's death and the end of the conflict. It would appear in "Blue Beard" that women depend on men for rescue and that it is men who commit physical violence. On the other hand, McMichael's rescue fails: after he arrives he is also injured by the Sharpes and in need of his own rescuing. Edith is then the one who must save him.
In this sense the film seems to subvert the feminine expectations of women presented in "Blue Beard" as it is Edith who must save McMichael and physically fight her attacker. Crimson Peak does not end nor is resolved through male-on-male physical violence or a male-performed rescue of a woman. However, "Blue Beard", while it maintains gender roles for performance of violence and female subservience to men, is not completely an ode to male superiority: like her brothers, the main character uses the inherited money from Blue Beard to reward her sister; albeit, the money is used for marriage (Perrault 168). This shows, that while all the women and men behave in strict gender roles, Anne's contribution, merely calling from the tower, is still considered as valuable as her brother's physical rescue. Crimson Peak appears to subvert some of these gendered expectations, but for reasons I will discuss later, reinforces other stereotypes about women.
