Bluebeard and Men's Fear of Women

When we discussed "Little Red Riding Hood" in class, it was very interesting to see that the story may have contained some hidden fears that men have toward women and their own sexuality. I wondered if "Bluebeard" contained similar male issues of fear, and I think it might. Here are some ideas.
The Bluebeard tale may start out with an example of men's fear of rejection by women. After all, Bluebeard was rejected by women because he did not live up to their standards of physical attractiveness. Since his beard was blue, women found him to be ugly and ran away from him. This illustrates a basic male fear that they may not be good-looking enough to attract a female. We may think of this as mainly a female problem, that we worry about not looking good enough for men. The old joke about "does this make my butt look too big?" is placed upon women and never men. But I think men do have to worry about their physique and whether they can compete with other males in the attractiveness arena. If the beard was a sign of masculinity, Bluebeard was really in trouble because his symbol of virility was turning off the women.
Another fear brought out by this story is the male fear of an unfaithful, untrustworthy female. Bluebeard seems to set up a test for his new wife to see how trustworthy she will be. If they proved to be unfaithful to his word, they were killed! This seems to be a reflection of an age-old fear that men had about women being sexually promiscuous. In the 17th century, they seemed to have more of a fear of public ridicule or tainting of the family bloodlines than a fear that the woman didn't love them enough. Since the Bluebeard fairy tale was written before we had companionate marriage (as we learned in class), love was probably not his concern regarding his wife's faithfulness.
But this brings us to another, more subtle fear; the fear that the woman will be insubordinate and may take over or gain too much power. The whole story centers around the fact that she was disobedient to her husband. It even seems to suggest that the problem was her disobedience, not his murderous ways! This was supposed to be a "moral lesson" for women of that time -- not to be too curious and never to disobey your husband. Phooey on that.
A final thought on man's fear being brought out in the story of Bluebeard is that women may be marrying you only for your money. In both the Perrault version of the story and the Grimm's version the Bluebeard character was wealthy. In Perrault's tale, he threw a big week-long party for the sisters and it was this extravagance and show of wealth that eventually won over the younger sister. In the Grimm's tale he was a sorcerer who stole women. But once he got them back to his home he wooed them with his splendid belongings and "he gave the girl everything she wanted (Grimm 148)." This sure makes women sound materialistic and shallow. But we must remember once again that these were written or told at a time when women married for very different reasons than we have now. They did marry for financial support and status, not love. Thank goodness we can earn our own money these days and don't have to marry some guy with a blue beard. (Unless we're a punk rocker and like that sort of thing...)