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Analysis Of Angela Carter 's ' The Bloody Chamber '

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Most of Angela Carter’s work revolves around democratic feminism and her representation of the patriarchal roles subjugated to women. (Evangelou, 2013) ‘The Bloody Chamber’ by Angela Carter suggests many substitutions to infamous depictions of femininity. Angela Carter manipulates old-fashioned fairy tales in order to subvert conformist gender roles like submissive wives and male dominance. (Makinen, 1992) While Carter receives commendation for her work, Patricia Duncker critiques her as well, for maintaining traditionally told tales that female relationships are doomed to rivalry and competition. Duncker basically analyses the story, ‘The Snow Child’ and then promptly states that Carter does not explore the masculine desire evident in the fairy tale and which, for the most part, forms this division between women, leading to their ‘destruction’. (Duncker, 1984: 75)
This essay will discuss the cogency of Patricia Dunker’s statement as shown in the ENG3705 Tutorial Letter. My argument is in favour of this statement and a discussion will be engaged in hereunder, using ‘The Snow Child’ by Angela Carter as a reference point to substantiate it. In the subversive modification of one of the most common fairytales, The Snow Child, Angela Carter addresses many feminist issues whilst drawing inspiration from the story of Snow White (Aziz Mohammadi, 2015).
I would suggest that this particular story from The Bloody Chamber is significant in Duncker’s argument based on the fact that she

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