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

[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.