Skeleton Key Tattoo Meaning

Access, secrets, ancestry, and the key to unlocked history.

Bluebeard gave his new wife all the keys.

He had been married before — several times — and his new wife never met the previous ones, which should have been concerning. He gave her a full ring of keys when he left on a journey: here are the keys to every room in the house. Use them as you like. Open anything you wish. Except this small key — this one room you must not enter.

She entered it.

The room contained the bodies of his previous wives, hanging or lying or otherwise arranged in the specific way of things that have been there long enough to stop being people and become evidence. The key, when it touched the blood on the floor, became permanently stained — Bluebeard knew immediately on his return, because the stain on the key was the confession.

Perrault wrote the story in 1697 and it has never stopped being told because the structure of it is the structure of the question it asks: what do you do with a key to the room you were told not to open? The room that was forbidden might contain treasure. It might contain the history of what happened to everyone who trusted this person before you. The key does not know which one. The key only knows that it fits.

The skeleton key — the master key, the key cut to open many locks rather than one — is the key of maximum access and maximum responsibility. The more a key can open, the more its misuse costs.

Bluebeard's key was a test. The room was not. The room was always a room. The test was whether she would use the key.

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