3. Angela Carter (1979), The Bloody Chamber
This is the second book I read for the now-unlikely-to-happen DracSoc trip to Bath, again because its author lived there in the early to mid '70s. On one level it is a series of ten 'takes' on traditional fairy-tales, but even to say that rather over-simplifies and understates what Carter does with them. Most are entirely recast, reset, reframed - more riffs on the original stories than even retellings, and sometimes taking two or three iterations to explore different angles on the same archetype. All of them reflect her famously radical feminist perspective, but while that might now conjure up a vision of stories about women triumphing over patriarchy, perhaps with a queer emphasis, Carter's focus is more on demonstrating the workings of patriarchy, the ways in which women are often complicit in it, its damaging effects and (sometimes) the ways in which women can counter or escape from it. Most of the stories are also distinctly Gothic in nature, involving violence, the monstrous, isolated fantastical settings and a general sense of heightened drama and emotion. My notes on individual stories follow below.
The Bloody Chamber - this is apparently a take on Bluebeard, a story about a man who kills his wives. I wasn't familiar with the original, but it didn't seem to matter too much. It is rather like a version of Beauty and the Beast with a much unhappier outcome, and indeed Carter seemed to know and be playing around with that, both from the fact that she calls the husband 'leonine' early on and portrays him generally as fairly animalistic, and from the fact that it appears in the collection directly before two more direct takes on Beauty and the Beast. It also has inter-texts with Dracula and other vampire stories - our narrator, the young bride, is told she can go anywhere she likes in her husband's castle except for one forbidden locked chamber; she discovers that her husband has a former wife who was a Romanian Countess called Carmilla who refers to herself as a descendant of Dracula; and her husband presses a bloody key to her forehead, leaving a permanent red mark which she cannot wash away. That key, of course, is the key to the forbidden and bloody chamber of the title, whose contents are distinctly Poe-esque. A good start to the collection.
The Courtship of Mr Lyon - the first of two direct takes on Beauty and the Beast. It is a romantic one, set in a world modern enough to have cars but showing a distinct knowledge of La Belle et la Bête (1946) and also acknowledging the Classical archetype of Cupid and Psyche via a 'little cupid in the gilt clock on the mantelpiece'. The heroine talks with the lion about astronomy and climatology, and the story ends with her love transforming him into a human and the two of them remaining in wedded bliss as Mr and Mrs Lyon.
The Tiger's Bride - also Beauty and the Beast, but much more visceral. Where the heroine's father had lost her to the Beast accidentally in the previous story, this one bets her in a card game with inevitable consequences. On going to live in the Beast's castle, she is frightened and repulsed by the discovery of just how bestial he is, basically a tiger living in a turret amongst the half-devoured corpses of his prey. But she eventually comes to treat him with compassion and he to respond, leading to the opposite outcome to the previous story - he licks at her skin, which comes away to reveal fur, and she joins him in becoming a tiger.
Puss-in-Boots - told from the point of view of the cat, who schemes and tricks his way into getting the girl and the riches for both himself and his master. Has a bit more sexiness and murder than I remember from the Ladybird book, but otherwise a fairly straight adaptation.
The Erl-King - based on the folkloric being of the same name, this one is (what would now be called) classic Folk Horror, and specifically the kind of story in which nature (as personified by the Erl-King) seems charming and alluring at first, but then reveals itself to be red in tooth and claw. The Erl-King does not mean or intend to harm, but it is just what he is - he has sharp white teeth and an air of the graveyard about him, and the only thing the narrator can do as she realises this is flee.
The Snow Child - a very short fable about a Count, a Countess, and disturbing wishes made in the snow.
The Lady of the House of Love - one of the two stories in the collection I had previous knowledge of, in this case from a radio adaptation. It is a vampire story set in Romania, but spliced with Sleeping Beauty so that the vampire lady of the title waits in a castle behind overgrown roses, not to mention something of Great Expectations in the way she sits alone in a bridal gown (though it is her mother's) and an M.R. Jamesish feel thanks to the Edwardian young man on a bicycle exploring the region who finds her there. Dracula and related legends are directly evoked - we are told that 'she is the last bud of the poison tree that sprang from the loins of Vlad the Impaler who picnicked on corpses in the forests of Transylvania'. But she is a poor prisoner of her situation, who doesn't revel in the evil of vampirism at all, and ends up awoken to humanity and - for her - death by the young man's kiss. As such, it has quite strong resonances with the two Beauty and the Beast stories as well, except that the genders are reversed so that she is the beast whom he makes human.
The Werewolf - the second story I'd already read (in this collection: LJ / DW), and the first of three Little Red Riding Hood / werewolf stories. This one starts us out in familiar territory with Little Red Riding Hood visiting her grandmother, but discovering when she gets there that the grandmother is the same as the wolf who had attacked her earlier in the forest. It so happens that she profits from this situation, in that the grandmother is stoned to death by the visitors and the girl inherits her property.
The Company of Wolves - a longer and more complex story, weaving multiple werewolf tales into one. In the main strand, again based directly on Red Riding Hood, we learn that the heroine has just started her periods, a link also made in Ginger Snaps (2000) which is sort of obvious given the monthly cycle of both menstruation and lycanthropy but I suspect would have been considered too taboo to articulate explicitly much before Carter did. This time, the heroine flirts with the hunter in the forest before getting to the cottage to discover that he is the werewolf and has eaten her grandmother, but she still lies down 'between the paws of the tender wolf' in her grandmother's bed. So, Beauty and the Beast is here once again, and both stories in succession are about the young violently supplanting the old. Carter co-wrote a film script with the same name as this story which I have been meaning to watch for years, and have become even keener to see since I learnt last year that it is also from the same producer / director team as both Interview with the Vampire and Byzantium. That was the final bit of 'homework' I'd planned for myself in advance of our DracSoc holiday, and I'm still planning to watch it shortly even if we can't go this year.
Wolf-Alice - we come full circle with this final story, combining something of The Jungle Book with Alice Through the Looking Glass by placing a feral child raised by wolves into the guardianship first of nuns and then a vampiric Duke with another bloody chamber, for whom she begins to feel sympathy. It wasn't the stand-out story of the collection for me, but it tied things together nicely.
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The Bloody Chamber - this is apparently a take on Bluebeard, a story about a man who kills his wives. I wasn't familiar with the original, but it didn't seem to matter too much. It is rather like a version of Beauty and the Beast with a much unhappier outcome, and indeed Carter seemed to know and be playing around with that, both from the fact that she calls the husband 'leonine' early on and portrays him generally as fairly animalistic, and from the fact that it appears in the collection directly before two more direct takes on Beauty and the Beast. It also has inter-texts with Dracula and other vampire stories - our narrator, the young bride, is told she can go anywhere she likes in her husband's castle except for one forbidden locked chamber; she discovers that her husband has a former wife who was a Romanian Countess called Carmilla who refers to herself as a descendant of Dracula; and her husband presses a bloody key to her forehead, leaving a permanent red mark which she cannot wash away. That key, of course, is the key to the forbidden and bloody chamber of the title, whose contents are distinctly Poe-esque. A good start to the collection.
The Courtship of Mr Lyon - the first of two direct takes on Beauty and the Beast. It is a romantic one, set in a world modern enough to have cars but showing a distinct knowledge of La Belle et la Bête (1946) and also acknowledging the Classical archetype of Cupid and Psyche via a 'little cupid in the gilt clock on the mantelpiece'. The heroine talks with the lion about astronomy and climatology, and the story ends with her love transforming him into a human and the two of them remaining in wedded bliss as Mr and Mrs Lyon.
The Tiger's Bride - also Beauty and the Beast, but much more visceral. Where the heroine's father had lost her to the Beast accidentally in the previous story, this one bets her in a card game with inevitable consequences. On going to live in the Beast's castle, she is frightened and repulsed by the discovery of just how bestial he is, basically a tiger living in a turret amongst the half-devoured corpses of his prey. But she eventually comes to treat him with compassion and he to respond, leading to the opposite outcome to the previous story - he licks at her skin, which comes away to reveal fur, and she joins him in becoming a tiger.
Puss-in-Boots - told from the point of view of the cat, who schemes and tricks his way into getting the girl and the riches for both himself and his master. Has a bit more sexiness and murder than I remember from the Ladybird book, but otherwise a fairly straight adaptation.
The Erl-King - based on the folkloric being of the same name, this one is (what would now be called) classic Folk Horror, and specifically the kind of story in which nature (as personified by the Erl-King) seems charming and alluring at first, but then reveals itself to be red in tooth and claw. The Erl-King does not mean or intend to harm, but it is just what he is - he has sharp white teeth and an air of the graveyard about him, and the only thing the narrator can do as she realises this is flee.
The Snow Child - a very short fable about a Count, a Countess, and disturbing wishes made in the snow.
The Lady of the House of Love - one of the two stories in the collection I had previous knowledge of, in this case from a radio adaptation. It is a vampire story set in Romania, but spliced with Sleeping Beauty so that the vampire lady of the title waits in a castle behind overgrown roses, not to mention something of Great Expectations in the way she sits alone in a bridal gown (though it is her mother's) and an M.R. Jamesish feel thanks to the Edwardian young man on a bicycle exploring the region who finds her there. Dracula and related legends are directly evoked - we are told that 'she is the last bud of the poison tree that sprang from the loins of Vlad the Impaler who picnicked on corpses in the forests of Transylvania'. But she is a poor prisoner of her situation, who doesn't revel in the evil of vampirism at all, and ends up awoken to humanity and - for her - death by the young man's kiss. As such, it has quite strong resonances with the two Beauty and the Beast stories as well, except that the genders are reversed so that she is the beast whom he makes human.
The Werewolf - the second story I'd already read (in this collection: LJ / DW), and the first of three Little Red Riding Hood / werewolf stories. This one starts us out in familiar territory with Little Red Riding Hood visiting her grandmother, but discovering when she gets there that the grandmother is the same as the wolf who had attacked her earlier in the forest. It so happens that she profits from this situation, in that the grandmother is stoned to death by the visitors and the girl inherits her property.
The Company of Wolves - a longer and more complex story, weaving multiple werewolf tales into one. In the main strand, again based directly on Red Riding Hood, we learn that the heroine has just started her periods, a link also made in Ginger Snaps (2000) which is sort of obvious given the monthly cycle of both menstruation and lycanthropy but I suspect would have been considered too taboo to articulate explicitly much before Carter did. This time, the heroine flirts with the hunter in the forest before getting to the cottage to discover that he is the werewolf and has eaten her grandmother, but she still lies down 'between the paws of the tender wolf' in her grandmother's bed. So, Beauty and the Beast is here once again, and both stories in succession are about the young violently supplanting the old. Carter co-wrote a film script with the same name as this story which I have been meaning to watch for years, and have become even keener to see since I learnt last year that it is also from the same producer / director team as both Interview with the Vampire and Byzantium. That was the final bit of 'homework' I'd planned for myself in advance of our DracSoc holiday, and I'm still planning to watch it shortly even if we can't go this year.
Wolf-Alice - we come full circle with this final story, combining something of The Jungle Book with Alice Through the Looking Glass by placing a feral child raised by wolves into the guardianship first of nuns and then a vampiric Duke with another bloody chamber, for whom she begins to feel sympathy. It wasn't the stand-out story of the collection for me, but it tied things together nicely.
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