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!