Source: https://genius.com/Le-sserafim…he-bluebeards-wife-lyrics
The song’s title “Eve, Psyche & The Bluebeard’s wife” is a reference to 3 mythological female figures.
- Eve refers to the biblical character who’s known for her role in the banishment of her and Adam from the Garden of Eden.
- Psyche is the Greek goddess of the soul whose beauty caused her elder sisters and the goddess Aphrodite to envy her. She was originally a mortal princess who married Aphrodite’s son, Eros, and was granted immortality.
- Bluebeard’s wife is a character from a French folktale titled “Bluebeard.” Bluebeard is a wealthy man who murdered 6 of his previous wives, and when his present wife finds out about his twisted nature he threatens to kill her but is instead killed by his wife’s brothers and sister. The surviving wife inherits all his wealth after his death, which she uses to burry his previous 6 wives and have her siblings married, before re-marrying herself.
What these 3 characters have in common is that they are all women whose curiosity is blamed for causing their misfortune.
- Eve is known as the first woman according to the bible’s story of origin. She was created by God as Adam’s (the first man) counterpart, and the two lived in the Garden of Eden. They were permitted to eat the fruits of all the trees except one, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Eve is tempted by a talking serpent to eat the forbidden fruit, and she gave some to Adam, who also ate it. God cursed all three: the man to a lifetime of hard labour followed by death, the woman to the pain of childbirth, and the serpent to go on his belly and suffer the enmity of both man and woman, before banishing them from the Garden.
- Psyche was treated unfairly by Aphrodite due to her beauty. She would give Psyche tasks to carry out after discovering that she had married the goddess' son, Eros, with the fourth task involving her to travel to the Underworld to retrieve a sample of Persephone’s (Hade’s wife and the goddess of Spring) beauty. When returning, Psyche’s curiosity got the best of her, and she opened the golden box containing the beauty only to find a cloud of darkness that put her in a deep sleep. With the help of Eros and Zeus, Psyche awoke from her slumber and was granted with immortality, with Aphrodite then warned by Zeus to never harm Psyche again.
- Bluebeard’s wife is the only nameless character of the 3. She is given a key by her husband Bluebeard who is a wealthy man, and is told that she’s able to open any room, each of which contain some of his riches, except for an underground chamber that he strictly forbids her to enter. When he leaves to go to the palace, she invites her sister, friends, and cousins over. She then sneaks away from them, and out of curiosity she uses the key to enter the forbidden chamber. There she discovered the corpses of her husband’s 6 previous wives hanging on hooks from the walls. Her husband returns and threatens to kill her once he finds out what she’s discovered. The story ends with the wife’s brothers and sister killing Bluebeard, freeing the wife who inherits his riches.
Each story can be interpreted in this way: The forbidden fruit containing knowledge that was eaten by Adam and Eve, the golden box containing the sample of beauty that was opened by Psyche, and the key used by Bluebeard’s wife to discover the true nature of her husband, can all be a metaphor for women breaking society’s rules (by doing what they’ve been told not to do).
LE SSERAFIM including these characters who represent women disobeying the rules set for them (by society) links to the title of their album “UNFORGIVEN.” The characters mentioned may not be forgiven by some for what they did, but they don’t need to be because the actions caused by their curiosity allowed them to see the truth that was hidden by them.