Stories are serious business. The power of a story’s message is that we can receive it without knowing; it slips right past our conscious guard. A story shapes our picture of the world, just through the simple act of being told (and heard).
A good story often reveals the difference between factuality and truth; a good fantasy gives us a stronger grounding in the real world.
Let me tell you a story; although I wouldn’t be surprised to find you already know this one.
It’s a story about… oh, let’s call her a friend of a friend. Anyway, the gist of the story is that she got married. It was a fairly independent decision; she didn’t closely consult with her parents.
But she’d gone off the deep end over him; he was caring and responsible and quite successful in life.
Now it’s true that you don’t really get to know someone in good times, you only find out who they are in the bad ones. In this case, my friend’s new husband eventually showed a side that she’d never seen (or one that she’d chosen to ignore, I don’t know) and she found herself trapped in an abusive relationship.
She was ashamed and confused and she didn’t feel that she could tell anyone about it. Things might have ended horrifically, except she had a sister with whom she was very close.
Her sister, sensing something wrong, managed to coax out the truth and eventually convinced my friend that something had to change. Finally, her family was able to step in and get her out of the house. They gave her support and a place to stay while the situation worked its way through the police and through the courts.
My friend is in a better situation now, although she carries with her a set of memories she can never leave behind.
–
Quite a sober story.
Now arguably, a story like this is important, and it should be told to keep it from happening again. It’s probably wise to pass on the lessons from this story to those who are about to embark on life’s adventures.
Unfortunately, effective teaching requires a receptive audience, and for lessons like these, if the audience gets all the way to teen-age it’s probably too late, because they’ve stopped listening by then. Uh-oh. That means it must be told to children.
How could I ever tell this story to a child? It’s awful. It’s terrifying. It’s real.
What happens when I shatter a child’s trust in real grown-ups? If I tell a story about real people (like the ones around them) how to be sure that the child won’t draw all the wrong conclusions – that they themselves are in danger and should be frightened?
Perhaps it could be fantastic, rather than realistic, to preserve the message and omit the threat.
Maybe the man my friend marries is marked in some way that distinguishes him from ordinary people – something that identifies him as a particular kind of man that we should be afraid of.
“There was a man who had fine houses, both in town and country, a deal of silver and gold plate, embroidered furniture, and coaches gilded all over with gold. But this man was so unlucky as to have a blue beard, which made him so frightfully ugly that all the women and girls ran away from him.
…
In short, everything succeeded so well that the youngest daughter began to think the master of the house not to have a beard so very blue, and that he was a mighty civil gentleman.
Can a child really understand emotional baggage, how people carry things with them? How do you tell them that there are areas of life that we consider unsafe to talk about? Bluebeard uses a metaphor; he tells his wife,
“But for this little one here, it is the key of the closet at the end of the great gallery on the ground floor. Open them all; go into all and every one of them, except that little closet, which I forbid you, and forbid it in such a manner that, if you happen to open it, there’s nothing but what you may expect from my just anger and resentment.”
How do you explain to a child why a man would abuse his wife? Maybe you don’t know, yourself. But it’s enough for them to know that it is a bad thing, a horrible, ghastly thing…
She then took the little key, and opened it, trembling, but could not at first see anything plainly, because the windows were shut. After some moments she began to perceive that the floor was all covered over with clotted blood, on which lay the bodies of several dead women, ranged against the walls. (These were all the wives whom Blue Beard had married and murdered, one after another.)…
“You do not know!” replied Blue Beard. “I very well know. You were resolved to go into the closet, were you not? Mighty well, madam; you shall go in, and take your place among the ladies you saw there.”
The reason for the story, of course, is to pass on a message. What should children know about how to act and who to turn to when threatened?
When she was alone she called out to her sister, and said to her:
“Sister Anne” (for that was her name), “go up, I beg you, upon the top of the tower, and look if my brothers are not coming over; they promised me that they would come to-day, and if you see them, give them a sign to make haste.”
It’s good to know of course, that a family is a support network in time of crisis.
The gate was opened, and presently entered two horsemen, who, drawing their swords, ran directly to Blue Beard. He knew them to be his wife’s brothers, one a dragoon, the other a musketeer, so that he ran away immediately to save himself; but the two brothers pursued so close that they overtook him before he could get to the steps of the porch, when they ran their swords through his body and left him dead.
And if you want to preserve a child’s peace of mind, you’d better leave them with some assurance that the world is not hideously broken and that things will be all right. Yes, this means a “happy ending”.
Blue Beard had no heirs, and so his wife became mistress of all his estate. She made use of one part of it to marry her sister Anne to a young gentleman who had loved her a long while; another part to buy captains commissions for her brothers, and the rest to marry herself to a very worthy gentleman, who made her forget the ill time she had passed with Blue Beard.
I don’t know why I felt the need to dissect this story and ground it in reality. Once I do it suddenly becomes vile and it probably falls afoul of Philippians 4:8 (Whatsoever is true). Still, here it is.
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