Summary
Highlights
Angela Carter re-writes fairy tales to challenge traditional narratives that often portray women as passive and reliant on male saviors. She uses and subverts the gothic form, which typically depicts females as victims, to explore themes of female empowerment, sexuality, and transgression. The reliance on short story format allows for symbolism and ambiguity rather than explicit telling, encouraging reader interpretation. The collection is designed to take the reader on a journey, starting with 'The Bloody Chamber' and ending with 'Wolf Alice', illustrating a progression from passivity to autonomy.
Carter was a second-wave feminist writing in the 1970s, deeply interested in power dynamics between genders, female empowerment, and challenging gender inequality. Her work is influenced by contemporaries like Caryl Churchill and Germaine Greer. The theory of the 'male gaze' by Laura Mulvey is a key influence, as Carter explores how texts often present females through a male perspective, a theme echoed by the symbolism of 'eyes' in her stories. Structuralism, with its focus on recurring motifs and patterns, also informs her work, leading her to use and subvert recognizable fairy tale and gothic structures. Her criticism of Marquis de Sade and engagement with Baudelaire's poetry, featuring themes of death, sex, and recurring motifs of blood and red, further shape her narratives. Carter aimed to restore fairy tales to their original, less sanitized forms, exploring non-Victorian ideas of sexuality and discovery.
Carter's personal experiences, such as her time in Tokyo, where she observed the constrained lives of Geisha women, influenced her portrayal of female subservience and the objectification of women, as seen in 'The Tiger's Bride'. She also reacted against the Catholic Church's negative portrayal in her texts, contrasting it with Dracula's more nuanced depiction. The short story form, central to 'The Bloody Chamber', relies on 'showing not telling' and often features ambiguous endings, compelling readers to actively engage and interpret. This brevity necessitates strong symbolism, a characteristic also prevalent in gothic literature. These stories often focus on a single transformative 'epiphany' for characters.
The collection 'The Bloody Chamber' can be viewed as an album, with stories strategically placed to create a cohesive narrative arc. 'The Bloody Chamber' itself introduces an innocent girl who, initially bought by the Marquis for her innocence, discovers her potential for corruption and realizes the danger of passivity. She is ultimately saved by her mother, highlighting the importance of female agency. In contrast, 'Wolf Alice', the final story, features a young girl undergoing a transformation from puberty, leading her to save the werewolf. This journey from passivity to autonomy is a central theme throughout the collection.
Carter's work is considered postmodern, characterized by its artificiality, intertextuality, and playful subversion of genres. Her stories are rich with allusions to classic tales like 'Red Riding Hood', 'Dracula', 'Bluebeard', and folklore figures like the Green Man, as well as references to Pandora's Box and the Mark of Cain. She takes established forms and re-contextualizes them, mixing high and low culture. Carter also employs magic realism, a technique that blurs the line between the supernatural and reality, allowing her to convey specific messages and liberate her narratives from strict realism.
Carter extensively uses gothic conventions, particularly symbolism, to explore themes of transgression. Unlike traditional gothic narratives that trap females as victims awaiting male rescue, Carter subverts these tropes. Key symbols include eyes (representing surveillance and entrapment), colors like red and white (symbolizing virginity, sexual transgression, and blood), and skin (representing identity, masks, and the true self). Settings like castles, forests, and locked rooms, along with imagery of trapped birds and predatory animals, reinforce themes of entrapment and the female condition.
Critical perspectives are crucial for a deep understanding of Carter's work. A feminist reading explores female perspectives, emancipation, and gender inequality, including the representation of female sexuality and male characters. It also highlights how women, like the Countess in 'The Snow Child' or the nuns in 'Wolf Alice', can be complicit in the subjugation of other women. A Marxist reading focuses on wealth and power inequality, exploring how impoverished, innocent girls are often 'bought' in fairy tales. It examines how extreme wealth, as with the Marquis, can alienate individuals from society and even themselves, leading to sociopathic behavior. The stories show how overcoming alienation and unjust social structures can lead to true self-discovery and liberation.
'The Bloody Chamber' is rich in symbolism (keys, locks, stains, suggestive paintings), foreshadowing the girl's potential death. It juxtaposes innocence with villainy, but Carter blurs these lines: the protagonist is not entirely innocent, finding pleasure in her sexual discovery while being objectified by the Count. The unhelpful housekeeper further complicates the notion of female solidarity. Narrated in the first person, it's a retrospective account of an epiphany, a realization of the narrator's own potential for corruption and the dangers of passivity. The mother's intervention subverts the traditional ending. The blind piano tuner represents a gaze that doesn't judge, yet the 'stain' of experience remains, prompting questions about female guilt and liberation.
This story re-frames 'Beauty and the Beast', presenting the Beast with vulnerability. Beauty, initially an object of desire, transitions from her father to Mr. Lyon. However, the tale subverts conventions: Beauty's vanity (symbolized by mirrors) transforms her negatively, rather than the Beast. Her initial neglect causes Mr. Lyon to physically deteriorate, prompting her return. Carter's deliberate ambiguity questions whether her return is out of genuine affection or emotional manipulation, inviting diverse interpretations.
'The Tiger's Bride' is seen as a more assertive response to 'The Courtship of Mr. Lyon'. Symbolism includes the automaton, representing vanity and objectified female subservience, reminiscent of Geisha culture. Narrated in the first person, it features a predatory patriarch and an absent father, but the girl asserts her own demands, forcing the tiger to acknowledge his error. Her transformation involves a willing 'licking away' of her skin, representing a union and liberation, connecting her to her primal animal self. Yet, Carter maintains ambiguity, questioning if this is true liberation or another form of subservience.
'The Snow Child' uses fairy tale conventions (Snow White, Cinderella) to create a girl conjured as an object of desire. It emphasizes colors like white (innocence) and red (blood, transgression), juxtaposed with stark, alienated landscapes. Carter confronts sexual transgression, with the Count's actions observed by his complicit wife. The Countess's inaction leads to her symbolic injury by a thorn, suggesting that passive acceptance of transgression will lead to harm. This story raises questions about female solidarity and the necessity of autonomy.
'The Erl-King' features a typical gothic villain, personifying the Green Man from folklore. A young girl enters the forest, where the Erl-King transforms girls into caged birds, symbolizing entrapment. Despite a dreamlike rapture, the girl resolves to kill him and free the trapped women. Carter uses ambiguity, light and shadow, and shifting narratives (second person to first person, past to present) to create confusion and sensation. The Erl-King's pointed teeth evoke vampires, while the girl's transformation and act of strangling him with her hair leave a dizzying, ambiguous ending, questioning the nature of her liberation with lines like "Mother, you have murdered me."
'The Lady in the House of Love' focuses on isolation and entrapment, both physical (dilapidated castle, shadows) and temporal (wedding dress for a never-to-be wedding). The Lady, a vampire, is trapped by fate (tarot cards) and her ancestral gaze. Carter subverts Gothic tropes by presenting the vampire's visual appearance and the male gaze of her ancestors. The male protagonist, initially seeing her through a traditional male lens, learns a new, more maternal way of seeing her. His kiss, reminiscent of a mother's, symbolizes change and transformation. Carter suggests that both men and women possess the ability to change and overcome self-inflicted entrapment, leading to liberation. The tragic ending, a love story concluding in death, paradoxically allows for true love and liberation.