Turning the Tables on “Bluebeard”: Intertextuality in Helen Oyeyemi’s Mr. Fox

Abstract: One of the chief criticisms of Helen Oyeyemi’s Mr. Fox is that the book is disjointed. The novel’s fragmentation derives from Oyeyemi’s studious avoidance of Perrault’s “Bluebeard,” which functions as the absent center of the novel. Rather than perpetuating the misogynistic elements present in Perrault’s “Bluebeard,” Oyeyemi invokes a constellation of female voices and folkloric variants of the fairy tale. However, Oyeyemi does not uncritically valorize narratives by women, and she holds out the possibility of rehabilitating Bluebeard once his crimes have been reported and atoned for, even dedicating the novel to her own Mr. Fox.