Book Review of The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angea Carter

A CRITIQUE OF THE SNOW CHILD, TAKEN FROM ANGELA CARTER’S THE BLOODY CHAMBER. Throughout ’The Bloody Chamber’, Angela Carter takes the highly successful conventions that belong to once innocent fairy tales, and rips them unremorsefully from their seemingly sound foundations to create a variety of dark, seductive, sensual stories, altering the landscapes beyond all recognition and rewarding the heroines with the freedom of speech thus giving them license to grab hold of the reigns of the story.

Reading literature, at first, might seem like simple stories. However, in works like William Faulkner's “A Rose for Emily,” Katherine Mansfield's “Miss Brill,” and Kate Chopin's “The Storm,” the female protagonists are examples of how society has oppressive expectations of women simply because of their gender.

To study the gender issues in The Bloody Chamber we have to first look at the motivations behind the writings. Carter’s feminist agenda creates the feminist tones in this novel which are overtly represented. An excerpt from an English anthology writes on the feminist switch of focus, {A} ‘from attacking male versions of the world to exploring the nature of the female world and outlook, and reconstructing the lost or supressed records of female experience’. This is what Angela Carter explores in her novels. The Courtship of Mr Lyon is a reconstruction of a traditional patriarchal story to highlight female independence.

These three brides represent the femme fatale, the fatal woman. The over sexualised women whose charms ensnare her lovers in bonds of irresistible desire, often leading them into compromising, dangerous, and deadly situations. These women serve as monstrous reminders of what happens if the boundaries of proper behaviour and traditional gender roles are crossed. These women, although beautiful, possess the wrong type of beauty, one of which brands them as evil, openly sexual and seductive women. Who, in addition lack the chaste passivity and fragility of the ideal Victorian lady, thus making them deserving of some form of punishment in order for them to be returned to their pure, innocent, albeit dead, human form.

Sexuality is a prevalent theme in Angela Carter’s story The Bloody Chamber. Sexual violence within a relationship often reveals aspects of each party’s identity and character as well as affects its power dynamics. Carter depicts sex both explicitly and implicitly in the story through the heroine’s own thoughts of her newfound sexuality and her sexual experiences with the Marquis. Carter’s implicit and explicit portrayals of sex and sexuality in The Bloody Chamber reflect changes in the power dynamic between the heroine and the Marquis throughout the text, develop the identity of the heroine and reveal aspects of the Marquis’ character, and challenge notions of gender.

Isak Dinesen’s Blank Page (1957) and Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber (1979) are both stories centralizing issues on gender by particularly focusing on women, female body and indeed questioning concepts like gender roles and female identity. Briefly, The Blank Page, is a short story about how female identity is constructed in which Dinesen questions this identity symbolically through the story about women and tradition of story telling. On the other hand, Angela Carter ‘s The Bloody Chamber is a story about young girl who is chasing the happily ever after dream through getting married.

While Psychoanalysis has provided many psychological breakthroughs in the field of mental health, it has also created great issue in relation to gender equality. Freud’s Psychoanalytic theory has contributed to the solidification of female oppression, and to the inferior status of women in the twentieth century. Psychoanalysis had become so intwined into the constructs of a male dominated society that it creates further barriers in attempts for gender equality. While many people have established their point of view through scholarly journals or scientific writings, Angela Carter uses an artistic approach by contesting Freud’s psychoanalytic theory in her

In the Middle Age literature, women are often presented or meant to come off as an unimportant character; which can also reflect on how the author wants the women character represent. Women are usually shunned, have no say or control in what they do; due to what men desire; like Ophelia and Gertrude did in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. But these female characters that I will discuss are women with power, control, and a voice. Majority of the female character’s appearances are made to represent wickedness, evil, or a seducer who challenges a man belief; and does not symbolize perfect women.

Angela Carter, an English writer, is best known for her feminist rewriting of classical fairy tales. In her stories she prominently uses themes, such as, virginity, the pornographic image, violence and sex, and many others. Degrading someone to the status of a mere object, in other words objectification, is a theme Angela Carter shows in many of her fairy tales, specifically the objectification of women. According to Carter, the objectification and subjugation of women is part of a “latent context” of fairy tales that she expressed simply by virtue of being a woman. Both “The Tiger’s Bride” and “The Courtship of Mr. Lyon” are fairy tales intertextually linked with “Beauty and the Beast” and show the reader Carters’ views on femininity. Not

In both Goblin Market and “The Bloody Chamber”, women face objectification as pornographic objects whose solitary purpose is to be a man’s appealing possession. Evidently, the objectification of women impacted the way each author constructed their texts. Feminist movements aiming to undermine these rigid female and male roles are prominent in the time period of both literary works. Both Christina Rossetti and Angela Carter use strange worlds to differentiate from the typical fairy tale’s predictable conclusion and instead make a statement through the use of a female heroine. Both literary works contrast the archetypal idea that a man must always be the savior

In her transformation of the well-known fable "Little Red Riding Hood," Angela Carter plays upon the reader's familiarity. By echoing elements of the allegory intended to scare and thus caution young girls, she evokes preconceptions and stereotypes about gender roles. In the traditional tale, Red sticks to "the path," but needs to be rescued from the threatening wolf by a hunter or "woodsman." Carter retells the story with a modern perspective on women. By using fantasy metaphorically and hyperbolically, she can poignantly convey her unorthodox and underlying messages.

Original fairy tales restrict the opportunities of female protagonists, allowing their fate to be controlled by male characters and society’s restrictive expectations of women. Authors such as Perrault of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ were quick to provide advice to their suggestible female readers in moral that girls should not try to drift from the path that society has laid out for them. Thus they became ‘parables of instruction’ (Carter) to indoctrinate the next generation in the values of a patriarchal society. Fairy tales of this time consistently remind us that those of the female sex will not prosper if they choose to ignore and defy the social constructs. Pre 1900s, the roles of women were entirely predetermined. A clear female dichotomy was established portraying them as either ‘the virgin’ or ‘the whore’. Stereotypical perceptions of women reduced them to biological functions and stated that they should acquire the role of wife and mother – objectified to such an extent where they were essentially their male counterpart’s possession. Both authors scorn the importance placed on domesticity and conformity, stressing the vital nature of being able to choose and uncover the consequences of societal ignorance. Carter highlights to her literary audience a passive generation of women who face the inability to vocalise their thoughts and opinions in the context of oppressive patriarchy. Within her work ‘The Company of Wolves’ “The

Contrary to to traditional Mother roles in gothic literature, the Mother in ‘The Bloody Chamber’ embodies Strength and Courage. Through Carters feminist style of writing, the mother is seen as a knight in shining armour. The ‘indomitable’ (p1) woman is a figure of strength and courage; she has shot ‘a man – eating tiger with her own hand” (p2), and holding all the traits of a masculine hero. Traditionally, these traits symbolise her possession of the power traditionally possessed by men. Moreover, her overwhelming power is influential; she is in the position of true power, in no way passive or innocent. The passing down of her husband’s “antique service revolver” (p2) contradicts societies expectation of women. Traditionally, possessions are handed down to a fathers heir, however the mother receives this symbolic item instead. This item represents both the mothers strength and her physical power. Yet she is equipped with ‘maternal telepathy’(p41), which adds another dimension to her empowerment as it is a feminine strength, suggesting Carter is employing the notion that women may embrace their femininity whilst still retaining an advantage over men. However, her masculine qualities cannot be ignored. The windswept image is one of strength, portrayed towards the end of the novel, when she saves the damsel in distress, a role usually dominated by men. Her ‘white mane’ (p40) and “wild” appearance alludes to the image of a hunting lioness, a symbol of strength. She is the embodiment of “furious justice”. This

The majority of the story is reiterated through dialogue that allows the girl’s words, but also her actions, to speak of her “sweetness,” or lack thereof, rather than an arbiter such as the narrator. The reader must decide whether or not the actions of the young girl are of merit. For example, the story begins, “There was a woman who had made some bread. She said to her daughter, ‘Go and carry a hot loaf and a bottle of milk to your grandmother. So the little girl set forth” (Millien). It is safe for the reader to assume that the young girl is obedient because that is all the reader has seen of the young girl, she has not taken any other action and there is not a narrator who prescribes any other attribute. The lack of a narrator preemptively assigning causal relation between the young girl’s action and her reception in the community allows the act of obedience to represent a virtuous quality, rather than a virtuous quality that is inherently feminine, as the Grimm brother version does with the quality of being “sweet.”

When someone mentions the name “Cinderella”, the first thing that usually comes to our minds is the fairytale in which the fair maiden who works so hard yet it treated so poorly gains her “fairytale ending” with a wave of a magic wand. However, the fairytale of Cinderella written by the Grimm Brothers has multiple differences in plot from the fairytale we all usually think of. The plot of the Cinderella written by the Grimm Brothers, written in 1812, is that a young female’s mother passes away early in the story, departing with the message to Cinderella to remain “pious and good”. Cinderella remained true to this message given to her by her mother, and she showed this in her work ethic. Because Cinderella had remained pious and good, her mother, in return, watched over her in the form of the birds above her grave that gave Cinderella help and material things that she needed. In the end, Cinderella has her “happily ever after”, for when the prince held a festival to find a new bride, she was chosen due to her insurmountable beauty. The feminist lens critiques how females are commonly represented in texts, and how insufficient these representations are as a categorizing device. These representations of women often include them being passive and emotional—staying back while the men do the work. Cinderella relates to the feminist lens because she fits into the typical representations of women created by men. Feminist criticism is important to recognize because women are often falsely represented as helpless, thus needing a man to come to their rescue. It is common in literature to see helpless women, crying and begging for help instead of being able to work out their own problems and hardships. Others, however, may believe that it is still important to uphold the fundamentals of the feminist lens because it keeps the man in power, which they say is important in keeping the man the head of the household. Cinderella thoroughly represents the feminist lens because it shows how women in literature uphold the representations of passive and emotional, created by the man.