Carter, Angela - The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

[oyceter]

Er, yes, this is the first time I've read this...

This is a collection of retold fairy tales, and most of the ones Carter chooses revolve around beasts and men: when men are beasts, when beasts are men, and when the two are indistinguishable. The stories I remember most are the retellings of "Little Red Riding Hood" and "Bluebeard;" the "Beauty and the Beast" retellings ended up with beasts that are too human for me.

I am sure no one is surprised that I love Carter's prose, how lush and intense and over-the-top it is. I also like that she manages to reset her stories in more modern times without taking away from the feel of the tale; this worked best for me with "The Bloody Chamber."

I want to say more about the constant imagery of blood and red contrasted with white innocence that is also funereal; blood signifies death and danger and decadence, but it's also a vivid mark against overpowering white lilies and waxy white skin. Only my head hurts, and that is all I can come up with. Mostly, it's the men who are the beastly ones, figuratively or literally, which is not a surprise given the fairy tale sources, but that's why I liked the story of Wolf Alice and the vampire woman and mixing of woman and beast.

Anyway, gorgeous prose and proof that you can still transform fairy tales while following the traditional plot—for a while, I've been avoiding fairy tale retellings because they were too familiar or the changes were too trite.

Comments

[agnes-perdita.livejournal.com]

Oh, that book had such a huge impact on me when I first read it. I remember going through lots of big books of fairy tale analyses by like Jack Zipes and Marina Warner and the like in my school library and seeing all these references to this collection and when I finally got around to reading it, I wasn't disappointed. Actually, I do think the prose has an intensely heady effect that can drag a reader not in the mindset for that particular baroque way of writing under. I wasn't ready for it at first and remember being quite drugged on the circularity of her expression and the way she'd try to make her words waltz around each other, description spinning everywhere. I tried twice before I could appreciate the stories as a whole. Unfortunately, many of my friends who read this book due to the recommendation of my feverish, missionary zeal were unimpressed and disliked the style over substance nature, so I'm incredibly pleased to finally see someone praise it. Even if I'm only a strange lurker who's never piped up before this. :) (I did pick up After School Nightmare precisely due to your review posts on it, so thank you for that!)

I think she also has another story based on the Cinderella fairy tale which is a bit less decadent as these and more whimsical in tone. Well, as whimsical as Angela Carter can be, which always comes with too copious a side serving of bawdy slyness to adopt the feeling of lightness that the description whimsy invokes, I suppose. Anyway, blah, I ramble too much. I wanted to say that it focused very much on the absence of the biological mother and the conflict that creates with the invasive step-mother figure. I remembered it because you brought up the thread of brutish masculinity here and that's one of her retellings that has almost no male presence at all, if my sieve-like memory recalls correctly. If you're in the mood to look it up, I think it's called Ashputtle: insert clever sounding subtitle. Ugh sorry, first time comment and I'm pushing recommendations on people already. :-/

[oyceter]

Oh awesome! I have one of Maria Warner's books (the Grimm one, I think), but it's been sitting around unfinished for aaages. I actually meant to pick up Carter for a really long time because of all the Datlow/Windling fairy tale anthologies that I used to read in high school, all of which would reference Carter in the intros.

I am definitely going to look up more Carter, so recs are welcome! And hi!

[shewhohashope.livejournal.com]

I loved this book! It was one of my top ten from last year, and I wrote a long post about it that lj ate twice and gave up. I think it was mostly about the demon lover and the female hero in fairy tale tradition?

Prepare for some TL:DR.

Obviously there's the thread of masculine evil* throughout the stories, but there is a distinct absence of the classical hero, because for the most part the women are the focus of the story, and the good men to some extent take on the traditional role of the heroine. Like the virgin soldier in 'The Lady of the House of Love' who unknowingly 'saves' the girl with his pure heart while planning to swoop in and save her in a suitably masculine, heroic manner. Or the blind boy in 'The Bloody Chamber' whom the heroine loves for his innocence, but is unable to save her from physical danger (because her mother swoops in and does that. So cool).

What interests me is the potential for evil ('corruption') lies as much in the women as in the men:

"I was not afraid of him; but of myself. I seemed reborn in his unreflective eyes, reborn in unfamiliar shapes. I hardly recognized myself from his descriptions of me and yet, and yet--might there not be a grain of beastly truth hi them? And, in the red firelight, I blushed again, unnoticed, to think he might have chosen me because, in my innocence, he sensed a rare talent for corruption." (The Bloody Chamber)

And the innocent (ignorant) heroine is subverted anyway, when the girl in 'The Bloody Chamber' 'kn[ows] enough for what [she] saw in that book to make [her] gasp', or when the girl in Tiger Bride declares that she would rather sleep with the Beast (in a windowless room, with her face covered) than let him see her naked, then there's the wife in Puss-in-Boots whose first words 'onstage' are when her husband is dead and she has secured the keys, upon which she becomes an unexpectedly authoritative figure, fires her maid(?) and declares the young man will be her second husband. And this is after the 'love a of a good woman' trope has already been subverted, first by Puss telling the man to write her letter saying that she will save him with her love, and by her reply being that she 'loves virtue too much' to deny him - as long as he's not old and/or ugly.

* The casual violence used in the imagery related to the men is deeply disturbing, we have the Erl-King (did you think of the Forbidden Game when you read this one?)describing taking off the POV character's clothes as 'skin(ning) the rabbit',the Tiger licking the bride's skin off her, the Marquis 'impaling' his bride, and others I've probably forgotten.

Maybe I should post that entry about the Bloody Chamber, if lj doesn't thwart me again.

[oyceter]

OMG! I was totally thinking of Forbidden Game while reading the Erl King story, bwahaha.

I encourage you to write your post! I wanted to analyze more, but I think my brain has melted from watching fifteen straight episodes of Sweet Relationship yesterday, ergo the very sketched-out points. Definitely agree re: the heroine and how she's transformed in Carter's stories. I think one of my favorite parts of Bloody Chamber was the image of the heroine as an innocent girl leering, the potential for sly sexuality written over her face, echoed in that red necklace.

[onthehill]

Hmm... I remember reading a whole bunch of Angela Carter in my teens and loving her. This makes me want to go back and read again - thanks for the review :)

[oyceter]

Ooo read!

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Yay yay yay! I think I love Carter's short stories best; this was the first book I read by her. But my favorite of the novels is Nights at the Circus.

[oyceter]

I am going to have to find that! OMG I love her prose SO MUCH.

When I was reading it, it felt like meeting a friend of a friend whom you've heard so much about, only all the talk still hadn't quite prepared me.

[hysteriachan.livejournal.com]

Yay, a rec for a book my library DOES have! ^_^

[oyceter]

Yay!

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I especially love "The Bloody Chamber." The language and details are so lush and sensual, and the mother saves the day!

It's very unusual and neat that the male villain is compared to a flower; it's not only gender-reversing the usual imagery to make you see both the man and the usual gendering of metaphors anew, it even makes you see flowers anew: of course calla lilies are waxy and poisonous.

I liked the story about the sad vampire woman and the soldier too, though it's a bit more conventional. Perhaps the rose is a play on the vagina dentata and the idea of life coming from a woman's womb?

[oyceter]

Yes! I loved the mother coming in!

Like you, I loved the description of the male villain, so cold and beautiful and creepy and dead.

[keilexandra]

Is it weird that I've never heard of this book before?

[oyceter]

I don't know? I don't think so; I think it's more of a standard read in the subgenre of retold fairy tales, particularly bloody, dark and disturbing ones. I heard of it because of all the Datlow/Windling fairy tale anthologies that I used to read in high school (Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears, and etc.).

[oracne.livejournal.com]

Yay Angela Carter!

[oyceter]

Very yay!