{"id":139982,"date":"2019-10-03T12:53:41","date_gmt":"2019-10-03T16:53:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=139982"},"modified":"2019-11-08T18:21:13","modified_gmt":"2019-11-08T23:21:13","slug":"a-bluebeard-of-wives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/10\/03\/a-bluebeard-of-wives\/","title":{"rendered":"A Bluebeard of Wives"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sabrina Orah Mark\u2019s monthly column,\u00a0Happily<\/a>, focuses on fairy tales and motherhood.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Bluebeard Illustration, \u201cWhat She Sees There,\u201d by Winslow Homer, 1868<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cSabrina,\u201d says my husband\u2019s first wife, \u201cis married to my husband.\u201d I hear this through The Grapevine, a multibranched root system resembling the hearts of my husbands\u2019 two ex-wives planted in the same plot of deep, fertile soil. Vines like earthy veins, growing tough and twisty. A friend brings me cuttings. I hold them to my ear and listen.<\/p>\n

I tell my husband I am writing about Bluebeard. \u201cOh fuck,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

I look in the mirror. I have become uglier and stronger. I look out the window. A white shed glows in my yard. I live in \u201cthe unguessable country of marriage.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBluebeard\u201d first appeared in Charles Perrault\u2019s seventeenth-century Tales of Mother Goose.<\/em> A man with a blue beard, several missing wives, and extraordinary wealth gives his newest wife all the keys to all the doors of his very fine house. \u201cOpen anything you want,\u201d he says. \u201cGo anywhere you wish.\u201d Except for the \u201clittle room,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

I ask my husband to clean out the garage, but instead, while I am gone for the summer with our sons, he builds in our backyard\u2014dead center\u2014a white shed. As the walls go up, his second wife drops their daughter off to live with us, possibly forever. She also drops off many boxes. Contents unknown. The garage is half empty now. The shed is half full. I call my mother. \u201cNow there\u2019s a shed in my yard,\u201d I say. \u201cOf course there\u2019s a shed,\u201d says my mother. \u201cBetter check it for wives.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are doors no third wife should ever open.<\/p>\n

My husband, possibly the gentlest man on earth, came to me in a coat of old vows. I married him knowing he arrived with wives. Maybe I married him a little bit because <\/em>the vows had somehow deepened the lines on his face. Like handwriting I wanted to read, but never could. I married him knowing, but I didn\u2019t know the wives would keep growing in a locked room in my heart. Sometimes they move around, angrily. Sadly. Wives, like peeling wallpaper. Curling wives. Wives like skin. Wives who tell their daughters things that their daughters, my husband\u2019s daughters, don\u2019t tell me. That silence breathes inside me. \u201cWhat did she say?\u201d I am always asking. \u201cWhat did who say?\u201d my husband answers.<\/p>\n

\u201cPerhaps,\u201d writes Angela Carter, \u201cin the beginning, there was a curious room, a room like this one, crammed with wonders; and now the room and all it contains are forbidden you, although it was made just for you, had been prepared for you since time began, and you will spend all your life trying to remember it.\u201d<\/p>\n

I am not an incredibly jealous person, but it hurts to think of my husband saying, \u201cI do. I do. I do.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Once a month, for over a year, I am told my husband\u2019s first wife is moving to our town any day now, but she never does. It\u2019s like when my sons put silver spoons under their pillows hoping it will snow in Georgia. Neither the snow nor the wife ever comes. Except for once. But it wasn\u2019t snow, it was hail.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a terrible comparison,\u201d says my mother. \u201cWives? Snow? Who is putting what under whose pillow? Who wants the wives to come? You?\u201d<\/p>\n

Marriage is hard. There are days when all the dead wives are me. The wife who is never sad. Dead. Hanging on a hook. The wife with a good paying job. Dead. The wife with a clean garage and a window that looks out her kitchen. Dead. The dancing wife. Dead. The famous wife. The wife with straight teeth. The wife who throws sparkling dinner parties filled with brilliant poets. Dead, dead, dead.<\/p>\n

What do you call more than one wife? A bluebeard of wives?<\/p>\n

For a marriage to survive, pieces of the tale need to be left out. I prick a pinhole through the story so I don\u2019t go blind staring directly at the sun. The deleted text message. The old regret. The surrender. My husband and I have been married for ten years. Longer than he\u2019d been married to the other two wives, but not collectively. I don\u2019t want my sons anywhere near the wives. As if they\u2019d fall in, and I wouldn\u2019t be there to jump in and save them. \u201c\u2018Sinkhole\u2019 and \u2018quagmire\u2019 are not flattering ways of speaking about other women,\u201d writes Margaret Atwood in her version of the fairy tale, \u201cbut this was at the back of Sally\u2019s mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Few fairy tales have as rich an afterlife as \u201cBluebeard.\u201d Sometimes it\u2019s a bloody key, sometimes a withering flower, or an egg, or a rotten apple, or a heart-shaped mark on the forehead that is proof of the wife\u2019s disobedience. Sometimes it\u2019s the mother with her \u201cblack skirts tucked up around her waist\u201d who saves the last wife from decapitation. \u201cA crazy, magnificent horsewoman in widow\u2019s weeds.\u201d Sometimes it\u2019s a dragoon and a musketeer. Sometimes it\u2019s the wife who saves herself.<\/p>\n

Like marriage, the cultural resilience of \u201cBluebeard\u201d is mystifying. \u00a0And like a fairy tale, marriage belongs to a never-ending circulation of happily-ever-afters in the shape of a cliff. I rummage through a big box of gowns and beards. Someone has worn these before. Now my husband wears the beard. Now I wear the gown. I do. He does. We wear it like skin.<\/p>\n

In Angela Carter\u2019s \u201cThe Bloody Chamber,\u201d the nameless wife and the marquis\u2019s matrimonial bed is surrounded by so many mirrors that when the marquis undresses his new bride what she sees is dozens of husbands undressing dozens of wives. And when the marquis tells his wife to prepare for her death, \u201ctwelve young women combed out twelve listless sheaves of brown hair in the mirrors.\u201d On the edge of sex and death, the wife multiplies. She becomes the army of wives coming up over the hill. Are they coming to save her or join her? It\u2019s hard to know.<\/p>\n

I shouldn\u2019t be writing any of this down. It is not a good idea. This essay is the bloody key. It\u2019s my act of disobedience.<\/p>\n

In the 1812 \u201cBluebeard,\u201d published in Grimms\u2019 Fairy Tales<\/em>, Wilhelm Grimm (in the annotations) makes a handwritten comment that Bluebeard believed the blood of his wives could cure his beard of its blue. This is why the wives\u2019 blood is collected in basins. He bathes in it. His dead wives are his medicine. An imaginary disease needs an unimaginable cure. \u201cMagic,\u201d writes Maria Tatar, \u201chappens on the threshold of the forbidden.\u201d<\/p>\n

I look through old photographs of my husband. In one, he is with his second wife and their newborn daughter, who is asleep on a pillow. The pillowcase is gray and white and I recognize it as the same soft, worn pillowcase I now sleep on. Have slept on for years. My head fills up with hot static. A biting shame. I pull the pillowcase off and put it with the rags. I should give it to my stepdaughter, but I don\u2019t and I don\u2019t know why I don\u2019t. I just don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

I am married to a man I love very much who had many lives before the life I now share with him. Sometimes I look around for myself in those lives. Under the bed. Behind a tree. One day I might just jump out, whispering boo<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Or maybe the wives should put me in a barrel stuck full of nails and roll me downhill into the river.<\/p>\n

The first time I met my husband\u2019s father was at his funeral. The casket was open. To this day, my husband\u2019s father is the only dead person I have ever laid eyes on. Our son, Noah, would have his eyes, his mouth, but I didn\u2019t know this yet. After my husband gave the eulogy, but before he could return to the nave, my husband\u2019s first wife flew toward him like a soft white bat. A blur in the air that had been locked in a chamber for years. She collapsed into his arms. Shaking and sobbing and coming into focus, as if she was returning to life. I sat in the pew like a dumb little girl. They shared grief and they shared daughters. And by the time they had broken each other\u2019s hearts, I was still nothing but a child.<\/p>\n

If Bluebeard\u2019s wives were killed for having laid their eyes on all the dead wives who came before them, then why did the first wife die? What could she have seen?<\/p>\n

At the funeral I say hello to the first wife. She just stands there. Doesn\u2019t say hello back. Just looks at me. I don\u2019t know what to do so I hug her. And there we are. In each other\u2019s arms. Swaying in a church. She is old enough to be my mother.<\/p>\n

This is how you make a chain of paper wives: Cut a piece of paper lengthwise. Fold it into quarters, accordion-style. Draw half a wife on the top layer. Cut the wife out and unfold. Voila. You will get a chain of paper wives holding hands.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m the wife all the way at the end of the paper chain. I look to the left down the long hallway. I see the little room. The little room where writing is safe. Here is the combination: key, flower, egg, apple, heart. I open the door. I go in. Look at this place. It smells like being alive. If I could do it all over again I\u2019d marry my husband in this little room. I\u2019d give birth to my sons in this room. I\u2019d die in this room. I would. I will. I do.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sabrina Orah Mark is the author of the poetry collections\u00a0<\/em>The Babies\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>Tsim Tsum.\u00a0<\/em>Wild Milk, her first book of fiction, is recently out from Dorothy, a publishing project. She lives, writes, and teaches in Athens, Georgia.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a marriage to survive, pieces of the tale need to be left out. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1615,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45325],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-happily"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nA Bluebeard of Wives by Sabrina Orah Mark<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"October 3, 2019 \u2013 For a marriage to survive, pieces of the tale need to be left out.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/10\/03\/a-bluebeard-of-wives\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Bluebeard of Wives by Sabrina Orah Mark\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"October 3, 2019 \u2013 For a marriage to survive, pieces of the tale need to be left out.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/10\/03\/a-bluebeard-of-wives\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-10-03T16:53:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2019-11-08T23:21:13+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/bb1.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"782\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"334\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Sabrina Orah Mark\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Sabrina Orah Mark\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"9 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/10\/03\/a-bluebeard-of-wives\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/10\/03\/a-bluebeard-of-wives\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Sabrina Orah Mark\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/270cda6e8307fafc721f29708e8f554a\"},\"headline\":\"A Bluebeard of Wives\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-10-03T16:53:41+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2019-11-08T23:21:13+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/10\/03\/a-bluebeard-of-wives\/\"},\"wordCount\":1731,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/10\/03\/a-bluebeard-of-wives\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/bb1.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Happily\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/10\/03\/a-bluebeard-of-wives\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/10\/03\/a-bluebeard-of-wives\/\",\"name\":\"A Bluebeard of Wives by Sabrina Orah Mark\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/10\/03\/a-bluebeard-of-wives\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/10\/03\/a-bluebeard-of-wives\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/bb1.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-10-03T16:53:41+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2019-11-08T23:21:13+00:00\",\"description\":\"October 3, 2019 \u2013 For a marriage to survive, pieces of the tale need to be left out.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/10\/03\/a-bluebeard-of-wives\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/10\/03\/a-bluebeard-of-wives\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/10\/03\/a-bluebeard-of-wives\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/bb1.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/bb1.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/10\/03\/a-bluebeard-of-wives\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"A Bluebeard of Wives\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/270cda6e8307fafc721f29708e8f554a\",\"name\":\"Sabrina Orah Mark\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/95e15df848cf346c0591da87fc41b48a22ab3bb4a4b76c4fc4dc3d8dc401a013?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/95e15df848cf346c0591da87fc41b48a22ab3bb4a4b76c4fc4dc3d8dc401a013?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Sabrina Orah Mark\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/somark\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"A Bluebeard of Wives by Sabrina Orah Mark","description":"October 3, 2019 \u2013 For a marriage to survive, pieces of the tale need to be left out.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/10\/03\/a-bluebeard-of-wives\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"A Bluebeard of Wives by Sabrina Orah Mark","og_description":"October 3, 2019 \u2013 For a marriage to survive, pieces of the tale need to be left out.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/10\/03\/a-bluebeard-of-wives\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2019-10-03T16:53:41+00:00","article_modified_time":"2019-11-08T23:21:13+00:00","og_image":[{"width":782,"height":334,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/bb1.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Sabrina Orah Mark","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Sabrina Orah Mark","Est. reading time":"9 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/10\/03\/a-bluebeard-of-wives\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/10\/03\/a-bluebeard-of-wives\/"},"author":{"name":"Sabrina Orah Mark","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/270cda6e8307fafc721f29708e8f554a"},"headline":"A Bluebeard of Wives","datePublished":"2019-10-03T16:53:41+00:00","dateModified":"2019-11-08T23:21:13+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/10\/03\/a-bluebeard-of-wives\/"},"wordCount":1731,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/10\/03\/a-bluebeard-of-wives\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/bb1.jpg","articleSection":["Happily"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/10\/03\/a-bluebeard-of-wives\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/10\/03\/a-bluebeard-of-wives\/","name":"A Bluebeard of Wives by Sabrina Orah Mark","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/10\/03\/a-bluebeard-of-wives\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/10\/03\/a-bluebeard-of-wives\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/bb1.jpg","datePublished":"2019-10-03T16:53:41+00:00","dateModified":"2019-11-08T23:21:13+00:00","description":"October 3, 2019 \u2013 For a marriage to survive, pieces of the tale need to be left out.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/10\/03\/a-bluebeard-of-wives\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/10\/03\/a-bluebeard-of-wives\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/10\/03\/a-bluebeard-of-wives\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/bb1.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/bb1.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/10\/03\/a-bluebeard-of-wives\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"A Bluebeard of Wives"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/270cda6e8307fafc721f29708e8f554a","name":"Sabrina Orah Mark","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/95e15df848cf346c0591da87fc41b48a22ab3bb4a4b76c4fc4dc3d8dc401a013?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/95e15df848cf346c0591da87fc41b48a22ab3bb4a4b76c4fc4dc3d8dc401a013?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Sabrina Orah Mark"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/somark\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1615"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139982"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":140863,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139982\/revisions\/140863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}