The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories – Context (OCR A-Level English Literature): Revision Notes
The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories – Context
Introduction to Carter's collection
Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (1979) is a collection that reimagines traditional fairy tales, folktales, and myths through a feminist lens. Rather than simply retelling these classic stories, Carter transforms them to challenge traditional gender roles and explore female sexuality and agency. The collection draws on well-known tales from writers such as Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, but subverts their conventional messages about femininity and masculinity.
Carter's collection is considered a landmark work in feminist literature, demonstrating how classic narratives can be reinterpreted to expose and challenge patriarchal values embedded in traditional storytelling.
Reimagined fairy tales, folktales, and myths
The oral tradition and early collections
Fairy tales, folktales, and myths have existed for centuries as part of the oral tradition - stories passed down through generations by word of mouth. From the 16th century onwards, writers began collecting these tales and publishing them in written form. The most famous collections include Charles Perrault's Tales of Mother Goose (1697) and the Brothers Grimm's Grimm's Fairy Tales (1812-15). Carter uses these traditional stories as her starting point, but rewrites them to give voice to female experiences and perspectives.
The shift from oral to written tradition fixed these stories in particular forms, often reinforcing the gender norms of the time they were recorded. Carter's reimaginings challenge these fixed narratives.
Bluebeard
Carter's title story, The Bloody Chamber, reimagines Perrault's Bluebeard (1697). In the original tale, a young woman marries a wealthy man whose previous wives have mysteriously disappeared. When she discovers he is a murderer, her brothers rescue her.
Carter's Feminist Transformation: The Mother as Saviour
Carter makes a significant change to this rescue narrative. Instead of male saviours, the young bride is rescued by her mother. This symbolic shift represents the matriarchy (a system where women, particularly mothers, hold power) overthrowing the patriarchy (a system where men, particularly fathers, hold power). When the evil Marquis is shot and killed by his own mother-in-law, Carter demonstrates female strength and agency triumphing over male violence and control.
Little Red Riding Hood
Three stories in Carter's collection draw on Perrault's Little Red Riding Hood (1697): The Werewolf, The Company of Wolves, and Wolf-Alice.
The first two stories introduce shape-shifting werewolves into the narrative, whilst Wolf-Alice tells the story of a feral girl raised by wolves. Carter challenges gender stereotypes by creating strong female characters who are fearless and possess their own wolfish nature. These women are not portrayed as victims needing rescue, but as powerful beings who embrace their wild, fierce side. This transformation of the helpless girl into a creature of strength undermines traditional expectations of feminine passivity.
Carter's reimagining of Little Red Riding Hood is particularly radical: her female characters are not innocent victims but powerful beings who embrace their animal nature. This challenges the conventional fairy tale message that women must be protected from danger by remaining passive and obedient.
Puss-in-Boots
Carter's version of Perrault's Puss-in-Boots (1697) shifts the focus from defeating an ogre (as in the original) to confronting an old, impotent man. While Puss still helps his master win a beautiful woman, Carter's story emphasises female sexual liberation. The woman is freed from sexual repression - the suppression or denial of sexual desires - allowing her to fully express her sexuality. This reflects Carter's broader feminist project of reclaiming female sexual agency.
Sleeping Beauty
The Lady of the House of Love loosely adapts Perrault's Sleeping Beauty (1697). Carter subverts the traditional narrative by making the male character a virgin whose innocence and nurturing qualities break the violent Countess's curse.
Reversing Gender Roles: Male Innocence and Female Violence
This reversal challenges conventional gender roles, where typically a male hero awakens a passive female with a kiss. Here, male innocence transforms female violence, inverting our expectations of masculine and feminine traits. The traditionally passive, innocent female becomes dangerous and violent, while the male character embodies nurturing qualities typically associated with femininity.
Beauty and the Beast
Both The Courtship of Mr Lyon and The Tiger's Bride derive from Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve's Beauty and the Beast (1740). The original tale features a cursed prince who must find true love to become human again.
The Courtship of Mr Lyon follows the original story more closely, but The Tiger's Bride makes a radical change. Instead of the beast transforming into a human to satisfy conventional romance, the human girl transforms into a tiger. This transformation suggests that embracing our animal nature - our desires, instincts, and wildness - can be liberating rather than degrading. Carter challenges the notion that civilisation and humanity are superior to wildness and animality.
The Transformation Question
In traditional fairy tales, the beast always becomes human to achieve a 'happy ending'. Carter reverses this: the human becomes beast, suggesting that what society calls 'civilised' may actually be restrictive, and what it calls 'wild' may actually be liberating.
The Erl-King
Carter draws on both Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's poem The Erl-King (1782) and the Scottish ballad Tam Lin for her story. In Goethe's version, an elf king steals the soul of a boy riding through the forest. In Tam Lin, a mortal man is rescued from the fairy queen by his lover.
Carter's narrator is a girl repeatedly drawn into the forest by her lover. She eventually imagines killing him to break his spell over her and the other girls he has captured. This violent fantasy represents female resistance against male enchantment and control. The girl must destroy the source of her captivation to free herself and others.
The Snow Maiden
The Snow Child combines elements from Alexander Afanasyev's The Snow Maiden (1869) and the Brothers Grimm's Snow White (1812-15). In Afanasyev's folktale, a snow maiden born of her parents' desire for children melts when she experiences the heat of true love.
Carter's version intensifies the conflict by pitting mother and daughter against each other, exploring themes of female rivalry and jealousy. This adaptation examines how patriarchal structures can turn women against one another rather than fostering solidarity.
Intertextuality
Intertextuality is the literary technique of referencing other texts within a work to create deeper layers of meaning. No text exists in isolation; all writing is influenced by and responds to other texts. Carter employs intertextuality extensively, expecting readers to recognise these references and understand how they enrich her themes.
Understanding Carter's intertextual references deepens your appreciation of her work. She expects readers to notice how her allusions to other texts create complex layers of meaning that support her feminist themes.
Tristan and Isolde
Intertextual Reference: Death and Performance
In The Bloody Chamber, the Marquis marries an opera singer famous for performing Isolde's death aria from the 12th-century romance Tristan and Isolde by Gottfried von Strassburg. The original story features lovers who die for their love. Carter suggests the Marquis killed his first wife because he wanted to make her performance of a death scene horrifyingly real. This reference highlights the Marquis's perverse desire to blur art and reality, beauty and death.
Goblin Market
The Erl-King alludes to Christina Rossetti's poem Goblin Market (1862) in the line about a 'goblin feast of fruit'. In Rossetti's poem, eating goblin fruit leaves one sister desperately craving more, creating a dangerous addiction. This echoes the narrator's compulsive return to the Erl-King despite knowing he will harm her. The allusion emphasises themes of dangerous desire and enchantment that undermines rational judgment.
Gulliver's Travels
Intertextual Reference: Beasts vs Humans
In The Tiger's Bride, the narrator agrees with Gulliver's opinion that horses are better than humans, referring to the intelligent horse race called the Houyhnhnm in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726). She expresses a wish to depart with Gulliver to their kingdom, foreshadowing her eventual transformation into an animal.
By referencing the noble Houyhnhnm, Carter develops her theme that beasts can be more honourable than humans. The narrator's father is depicted like a Yahoo - the greedy, brutish humanoid race in Swift's work. Like Gulliver, the narrator ultimately rejects humanity to live with the beasts, suggesting a critique of human civilisation and its corrupting influences.
Romeo and Juliet
The Lady of the House of Love describes the vampire Countess's rooms as 'Juliet's tomb', referencing William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (c. 1591-96). In Shakespeare's play, Juliet appears dead though she is alive. The Countess represents the opposite: she appears alive but is actually one of the undead.
Juliet's tomb proved dangerous for Romeo, who killed himself in grief. Similarly, the Countess's room holds danger for the young soldier, though he escapes unharmed due to his innocence. This reference adds layers of tragic romance and deathly danger to Carter's Gothic atmosphere.
Second-wave feminism
Understanding feminism
Feminism is the belief that women should be socially, economically, and politically equal to men. The movement to achieve this equality has developed in waves throughout history.
First-wave feminism
The first wave of feminism focused primarily on women's suffrage - the right to vote. In the United States, this movement lasted over 70 years, from the first women's rights convention in 1848 to the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, which finally granted women the vote. This wave concentrated on achieving basic legal and political rights for women.
Second-wave feminism
Second-wave feminism emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, addressing women's dissatisfaction with traditional gender roles. This movement was closely connected to the civil rights movement of the 1950s, sharing its focus on social justice and equality.
The Feminine Mystique: A Foundational Text
The foundational text for second-wave feminism was Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963). Friedan identified and challenged the feminine mystique - the pervasive idea that women find contentment in deferring to their husbands and devoting themselves entirely to homemaking and child-rearing. She argued that women can only achieve true fulfilment through personal development and achievement beyond the domestic sphere.
Carter's feminist perspective
Angela Carter was in her early twenties during the rise of second-wave feminism and was experiencing an unhappy marriage herself. She became one of the prominent women writers exploring the systematic oppression of women within patriarchal society.
Carter embraced a more radicalised form of feminism captured by the slogan 'the personal is political'. This phrase argues that private experiences of women - relationships, sexuality, domestic life - are not merely individual issues but reflect broader political structures of power. Carter believed that only widespread societal change could genuinely improve women's lives.
Carter's Political Approach to Fairy Tales
Her retellings of fairy tales embody this political approach. By transforming traditional stories that reinforced gender stereotypes and female passivity, Carter demonstrates how cultural narratives shape our understanding of gender roles. Her strong, sexual, sometimes violent female characters challenge the expectations placed on women by patriarchal culture.
Key Points to Remember:
- Carter reimagines classic fairy tales through a feminist perspective, challenging traditional gender roles and celebrating female agency and sexuality
- Key sources include Perrault's tales (Bluebeard, Little Red Riding Hood, Puss-in-Boots, Sleeping Beauty) and the Brothers Grimm's collections
- Carter employs intertextuality by referencing works like Goblin Market, Gulliver's Travels, and Romeo and Juliet to deepen thematic meaning
- The collection reflects second-wave feminism of the 1960s-70s, which challenged domestic gender roles and argued that personal experiences are political issues
- Carter frequently reverses traditional narratives: mothers rescue daughters, women transform into beasts, and female characters embrace rather than suppress their desires and power