Tell me something that'll change me
The most striking story, for me, was “The Lady of the House of Love”. In group discussion, the question of vampires came up, asking “what’s so enthralling about them?” Romantically, I couldn’t tell you. I never got into Twilight or anything that romanticizes vampires. I actually never really got “into” anything vampiric at all. I never read Dracula and never even gave Anne Rice a chance. My interest in vampires stems almost entirely from an aesthetic and ethical perspective. Ethically, of course, for the moral issues raised by vampirism. Aesthetic, well, that’s a little harder to explain.
When I talked about Gaiman’s “Snow, Glass, Apples” to my group in class discussion, they pretty much freaked out when I said it was a gorgeous story. It had incest! Necrophilia! Violence! And what’s with the whole vampire thing anyway?! But I guess, for me, there’s always beauty in the darkest, nastiest imaginable things (at least fictionally). It’s that Kantian sublime (again) that revulsion/fascination dichotomy and both Neil Gaiman and Angela Carter do that so, so well. Carter more so than Gaiman mostly because, well, a lot of the beauty in the revulsion is in the prose (but not all of it; some of the most beautiful things can only be written in terms of the tragic). Carter’s writing is, well, breathtaking. Exquisite. Brilliant. I just. Margaret Atwood writes as beautifully sometimes. Jeanette Winterson. But aside from that, and outside of poetry, I can’t really cite someone with as beautiful a style and, yes, that makes The Bloody Chamber on the whole worth buying and reading but it also, well, it also makes “The Lady of the House of Love” just. Amazing. Sublime.
The story is a dual narrative. You get the vampire-lady’s perspective and you get the young man’s perspective (neither of them named) and you see how vampirism is eating away at this woman even as she is all-powerful and. Well, I’ve hit on what’s fascinating about vampires - that they’re decaying, even as they’re immortal. The pain of being in that position, how it’s a sickness, the being alive but dead. And Carter’s short story acknowledges all of that. Talks about the sexual nature of drinking blood (Gaiman’s story does the same), the sexual nature of the vampire myth in general. Perhaps the most striking part of the dual narrative is when the lady tries to seduce the man to bed. The lady thinks she is making an irresistible offer. The man thinks she’s a deranged girl deeply in need of help. (And I think there might be something to be said here about female sexuality, but I’ve always been pretty awful at reading symbols so.
And, as an aside, I could almost see “The Lady of the House of Love” as a retelling of Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shallot” in so many ways. The titular lady of both poems creates a sort of mythology, the Lady of Shallot by weaving and Carter’s lady by casting the tarot (both, in a sense, weaving a narrative) and both are undone by a kind of love, by a longing to remove themselves from their isolated prison. Both ladies are tragic figures, trapped in shadows and, I don’t know if Carter meant it or not, but I see Tennyson’s poem in nearly every line of her short story (I liked her short story better, but I do quite like Tennyson’s poem as well, so there’s that).
I guess to wrap things up I’d like to recommend Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber (it’s a collection of short stories based on fairytales). It’s really amazingly good.
When I talked about Gaiman’s “Snow, Glass, Apples” to my group in class discussion, they pretty much freaked out when I said it was a gorgeous story. It had incest! Necrophilia! Violence! And what’s with the whole vampire thing anyway?! But I guess, for me, there’s always beauty in the darkest, nastiest imaginable things (at least fictionally). It’s that Kantian sublime (again) that revulsion/fascination dichotomy and both Neil Gaiman and Angela Carter do that so, so well. Carter more so than Gaiman mostly because, well, a lot of the beauty in the revulsion is in the prose (but not all of it; some of the most beautiful things can only be written in terms of the tragic). Carter’s writing is, well, breathtaking. Exquisite. Brilliant. I just. Margaret Atwood writes as beautifully sometimes. Jeanette Winterson. But aside from that, and outside of poetry, I can’t really cite someone with as beautiful a style and, yes, that makes The Bloody Chamber on the whole worth buying and reading but it also, well, it also makes “The Lady of the House of Love” just. Amazing. Sublime.
The story is a dual narrative. You get the vampire-lady’s perspective and you get the young man’s perspective (neither of them named) and you see how vampirism is eating away at this woman even as she is all-powerful and. Well, I’ve hit on what’s fascinating about vampires - that they’re decaying, even as they’re immortal. The pain of being in that position, how it’s a sickness, the being alive but dead. And Carter’s short story acknowledges all of that. Talks about the sexual nature of drinking blood (Gaiman’s story does the same), the sexual nature of the vampire myth in general. Perhaps the most striking part of the dual narrative is when the lady tries to seduce the man to bed. The lady thinks she is making an irresistible offer. The man thinks she’s a deranged girl deeply in need of help. (And I think there might be something to be said here about female sexuality, but I’ve always been pretty awful at reading symbols so.
And, as an aside, I could almost see “The Lady of the House of Love” as a retelling of Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shallot” in so many ways. The titular lady of both poems creates a sort of mythology, the Lady of Shallot by weaving and Carter’s lady by casting the tarot (both, in a sense, weaving a narrative) and both are undone by a kind of love, by a longing to remove themselves from their isolated prison. Both ladies are tragic figures, trapped in shadows and, I don’t know if Carter meant it or not, but I see Tennyson’s poem in nearly every line of her short story (I liked her short story better, but I do quite like Tennyson’s poem as well, so there’s that).
I guess to wrap things up I’d like to recommend Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber (it’s a collection of short stories based on fairytales). It’s really amazingly good.