My intention was not to do 'versions' or, as the American edition of the book said, horribly, 'adult' fairy tales, but to extract the latent content from the traditional stories.[2]
The collection contains ten stories: "The Bloody Chamber", "The Courtship of Mr Lyon", "The Tiger's Bride", "Puss-in-Boots", "The Erl-King", "The Snow Child", "The Lady of the House of Love", "The Werewolf", "The Company of Wolves" and "Wolf-Alice".
The tales vary greatly in length, with the novelette "The Bloody Chamber" being "more than twice the length of any of the other stories, and more than thirty times the length of the shortest [the vignette "The Snow Child"]."[3]:viii
The collection's contents are also reprinted in Carter's Burning Your Boats.
Story summaries
The stories within The Bloody Chamber are explicitly based on fairy tales. Carter was no doubt inspired by the works of author and fairytale collector Charles Perrault, whose fairy tales she had translated shortly beforehand.
The narrator, a beautiful teenage girl, marries an older, wealthy French Marquis, who met her while she was playing the piano at a tea-party. Her governess, though pleased she has made a good match, notes the Marquis has formerly wed three women, all of whom died in mysterious circumstances. He gifts his bride a choker made of rubies, warning her against taking it off, and takes her to his coastal castle in Brittany, where she discovers his collection of pornographic engravings and paintings. He takes pleasure in her embarrassment, and they consummate their marriage that night, in a bedroom filled with white lilies and mirrors. The following morning, he hears of urgent business he must attend to in New York. When he leaves, he entrusts her with a chain of keys, telling her she can use them to go about the castle as she wishes. He forbids her from using a certain key, telling her it opens his private den. She tries to grow accustomed to her new-found decadence, but, being a talented pianist, feels most comfortable with the blind piano-tuner. Closer to her age, he lives in a nearby town and, after tuning the piano her husband gave to her as a wedding present, asks to hear her play once in a while. But still, her husband's absence makes her feel melancholy, and she telephones her mother. Afterwards, she starts going through the Marquis' things in order to learn more about him. After going through his desk, she learns more of his previous wives, which pushes her to take the forbidden key and enter his chamber. She soon realizes the full extent of his perverse and murderous tendencies when she discovers the bodies of his previous wives, presented in gruesome ways, some of which are surrounded by the same white lilies the Marquis filled her own room with. In her shock, she drops the key, staining it with the blood on the floor. When she meets the piano-tuner again, she confides the newly discovered secret to him. Before the two can flee, the Marquis returns home, his business trip having been cut short. Unable to clean the blood from the key, the Marquis discovers that she has entered the bloody chamber and presses the key into her forehead, leaving a red mark. He decides to kill her by execution upon a chopping block. The brave piano tuner is willing to stay and accompany her even though he knows he will not be able to save her. She is saved at the last moment at the end of the story by her mother, who bursts into the castle and shoots the Marquis just as he is about to behead the girl in the courtyard. The girl, her mother, and the piano tuner go on to live together and the young widow opens a little music school on the outskirts of Paris. Most of the money she inherited is given away to various charities and the castle is turned into a school for the blind. However, the girl is still stained with a red mark on her forehead with the key.
In Angela Carter’s retelling of Beauty and the Beast, The Courtship of Mr. Lyon tells the story of Beauty, a snow-white girl whose father lost their fortunes and, in the opening of the story, has failed yet again to restore them. He doesn’t have enough money left to buy a Beauty her only request, a single white rose. On his way home from the failed venture, his car runs out of fuel and he walks on foot to look for help.
The father then comes across a set of wrought iron gates and behind it is the Beast’s Palladian home. He passes through the gates in order to reach a single white rose growing on a bare, tangled vine. As the gates close behind him, he hears the great roar of the Beast from a distance. The father then proceeds to the front door as it opens for him. The only sign of life is a spaniel wearing a diamond necklace in place of a collar. The dog gently herds the father to a table set with food and drink labeled with the instructions Eat me and Drink me. Afterward, the father finds a telephone with the number of a local mechanic. He calls the garage and the mechanic’s tone changes when the father describes the Beast’s residence. After the call, the father is disconcerted but is met with the spaniel holding his hat in her mouth and the front door swinging open, signaling for him to leave. On his way out, the father decides to steal the single white rose for Beauty, instantly summoning the angry Beast.
The Beast appears as a ferocious, giant lion standing on his hind legs in a dress jacket. He shakes Beauty’s father violently, calling him a thief. The father pleads that the rose was only for his daughter and he shows the Beast her photograph. The Beast then tells the father to take the rose, but to also bring Beauty back to dinner at his house that evening. Her father relates the news to Beauty but does not reveal what he knows of the Beast’s animalistic nature.
At dinner that evening, Beauty recognizes the Beast for what he is, and she is moved by the sadness in the Beast’s eyes. However, she also feels like lamb being led to slaughter. She sits through dinner to appease her father and eventually realizes that she will be staying with the Beast indefinitely.
Beauty’s bedroom is lavish and decorated with a glass bed but she notices the lack of human servants in the house. During her stay, Beauty reads from a revolving bookcase, dines on fine food, and converses in the evenings with the Beast. During their first conversation, the Beast manages to master his animal-like shyness and Beauty decides to master her own nerves about him as well. At the end of the conversation, the Beast throws himself at her feet and buries his head in her lap when she gets up to leave. He begins to lick her hands and Beauty understands that he is simply kissing her hands. He stops and gazes at her before bounding away on all fours.
The next day, the Beast goes hunting in the morning as Beauty walks with the spaniel in the garden. It is noted that all the natural laws of the world were held in suspension when she was on the Beast’s lands. Carter imparts the mystique of the magical by hearkening back to the thematic tradition of otherworldliness historically found in fairy tales in this line. Then, Beauty suddenly gets a call from her father beckoning her to come home. The Beast asks her if she will come back soon and she agrees to return by the close of winter. A taxi comes and takes Beauty away.
Beauty returns to her father’s house in London to find him a wealthy man once again. It is revealed that Beauty’s father had ruined his family's fortunes before she was born and that her mother died during her birth. Beauty sends the Beast bouquets of white roses but does not return. After sending the roses she feels as though she has escaped some danger and is completely free but she feels a desolate emptiness as well. Winter is nearly over.
Beauty stays in London and, one night, she returns late from dinner and the theater. She is looking at herself with a satisfactory gaze in the mirror when the wind blows in from her open window and she feels as though she will cry. She hears the sound of claws at her door and all at once remembers everything about her time with the Beast. At first she thinks the Beast has come for her and is frightened, angry, and then joyful. However, when she opens the door she finds the spaniel. The dog is matted and dirty and, after leaping into Beauty’s arms, begins to tug at her and whimper. Beauty realizes that the Beast is dying. She leaves a note for her father and returns immediately to the Beast’s home.
Upon her return, the white roses in the garden refuse to bloom or grow. She sees a flickering light in an attic room. Inside, the house has lost its glamor, as if its conjurer had moved on from the space. In the attic room, Beauty finds the Beast near death, as his health had been failing since she left. Beauty swears that the Beast will have her and that she will never leave if only he will not die. As her transforming tears fall on the Beast’s face, he suddenly becomes a man. After a moment, the Beast simply says that he could eat and asks Beauty to have breakfast with him.
The story concludes with Mr. and Mrs. Lyon (Beauty and the Beast) walking through the rose garden while the spaniel dozes in the grass, surrounded by fallen petals.
In her collection of short stories, The Bloody Chamber, British author and feminist Angela Carter retells the fairytale of Beauty and the Beast in her version, “The Tiger’s Bride.” In this short story, the main character, Beauty, although otherwise unnamed, begins her tale of how her father lost her to a mysterious, masked Milord at cards. The father drinks alcohol as he gambles away the last of Beauty’s inheritance. In his drunkenness and gambling, the father bets and loses his daughter to Milord, or The Beast. Beauty’s departure from her father the next morning for the Beast's residence is alluded to when the tear-beslobbered father asks for a rose to show that she forgives him. She pricks her finger on a thorn and the rose gets smeared with her blood. She has been made a sacrifice. Thus, she is lost to The Beast.
Upon arriving at The Beast’s palazzo, Beauty is shown a room high above the house. Then, a strangely sexual encounter happens between Beauty, The Beast, and the valet as he awkwardly attempts to express The Beast’s sexual desires to Beauty. The valet then speaks for the Beast, saying that his master’s only desire is to see her nude without her clothes. She is promised to come to no harm and she is also to receive fine gifts and the restoration of her father’s money that was lost in his card games with The Beast. At this Beauty lets out a raucous guffaw; no young lady laughs like that!...But I did. And do.[4] Taken from the story, this statement from Beauty suggests Carter’s subversive feminism and technique in having a young woman laugh in the face of a terrifying beast at such a request.
Then again, Beauty is met with another, similar request from The Beast via the valet. Again Beauty refuses, and the valet replies that if she will not consent then she must see the Beast unclothed. Beauty then sees the Beast in his true form which is that of a large tiger. Remembering his promise to do her no harm, Beauty then proceeds to remove her clothing, showing the Beast her naked body.
After this exchange, Beauty is returned not to her cell, but to an elegant room. In her beautiful new room she finds a pair of heart-shaped diamond earrings. She puts on the earrings and proceeds to undress down to her nightclothes. Beauty then makes her way to the Beast’s den. She proceeds into his room finding it scattered with blood and bone, the Beast among the carnage. The Beast begins to lick Beauty’s hand as she exclaims that he will lick the skin right off of her. Indeed, she is left not with her skin but with a shining coat of fur. Her diamond earrings turn to water as she shrugs the droplets off her fur-covered shoulders. In this reverse ending, Beauty is turned into a tiger, or a beast to match her mate.
Figaro, a cat, moves in with a rakish young man who lives a happily debauched life. They live a carefree existence, with the cat helping him to make money by cheating at cards, until the young man actually falls in love (to the cat's disgust) with a young woman kept in a tower by a miserly, older husband who treats her only as property. The cat, hoping his friend will tire of the woman if he has her, helps the young man into the bed of his sweetheart by playing tricks on the old husband and the young woman's keeper. Figaro himself finds love with the young woman's cat, and the two cats arrange the fortunes of both themselves and the young man and woman by arranging to trip the old man so that he will fall to his death.
Angela Carter had described Puss in Boots as "the Cat as Con Man... a masterpiece of cynicism... a Figaroesque valet – a servant so much the master already".[5]
The Erl-King
(An adaptation of the Erlking in folklore; a sort of goblin or spirit of the woodlands.)
A maiden wanders into the woods and is seduced by the sinister Erl-King, a seeming personification of the forest itself. However, she eventually realises that he plans to imprison her by turning her into a bird, which he has done with other girls. Realising the Erl-King's plan, she kills him by strangling him with his own hair, thus keeping her freedom.
A Count and Countess go riding in midwinter. The Count sees snow on the ground and wishes for a child "as white as snow". Similar wishes are made when the Count sees a hole in the snow containing a pool of blood, and a raven. As soon as he made his final wish a young woman of the exact description appears at the side of the road. The Count pays immediate attention to her, much to the chagrin of the Countess. At the Countess' command, the girl picks a rose but is pricked by a thorn and dies, after which the Count rapes her corpse. After this, her cadaver melts into the snow, leaving nothing but a bloodstain on the snow, a black feather and the rose that she had picked.
The Lady of the House of Love
(Loosely based on "Sleeping Beauty" and more directly on a radio play called "Vampirella".)
A virginal English soldier, travelling through Romania by bicycle, finds himself in a deserted village. He comes across a mansion inhabited by a vampire who survives by enticing young men into her bedroom and feeding on them. She intends to feed on the young soldier but his purity and virginity have a curious effect on her. When they enter her bedroom she accidentally cuts herself and the soldier kisses it better. He wakes up to find her dead. He leaves to return to his battalion due to the outbreak of World War I.
A girl goes to visit her grandmother, but encounters a werewolf on the way, whose paw she cuts off with a knife. When she reaches her grandmother's house, the paw has turned into a hand with the grandmother's ring on it, and the grandmother is both delirious and missing her hand. This reveals the girl's grandmother as the werewolf, and she is stoned to death. The girl then inherits all of her grandmother's possessions.
"Those are the voices of my brothers, darling; I love the company of wolves."
In the beginning of the piece, the wolf is described as an evil thing. One mini story in the beginning is about a witch who gets impregnated and left by a nobleman, who then visits his wedding and turns the whole wedding ceremony into wolves. She makes the wolves come to serenade her and the baby. In another mini story a young lady and a man are about to consummate their wedding night. As they get ready the husband says he needs to stop and relieve himself in the forest. The wife waits and he never returns. Off in the distance a wolf can be heard howling. She then concludes her husband will never return and marries a new man. With her new husband she bears children. Her first husband comes back and sees his wife. He then becomes furious, transforms into a wolf and bites the leg off the eldest child. Her second husband kills the wolf, who dies and looks exactly the same as he had when he disappeared; this makes her cry and her husband beats her. Later we meet a young girl walking in the woods who is "loved by everyone" and "[fears] nothing", who meets a handsome hunter who makes a deal with her; whoever can get to the grandmother's house first wins, and if the hunter wins she owes him a kiss. The protagonist lets the hunter win because she wants to kiss him. The hunter arrives at the protagonist's grandmother's house first, as planned, but tricks the woman to let him in. She is frail and sick, and holds a Bible in her hand to protect herself against any harm. The hunter is revealed to be a wolf and eats the grandmother, then waits for the girl. When she arrives, she notices her grandmother's hair in the fire and knows the wolf has killed her. He threatens to kill and eat her too, but she laughs in his face and proceeds to seduce him, stripping off their clothes and throwing them into the fire. The last lines are "See! sweet and sound she sleeps in granny's bed, between the paws of the tender wolf."
A feral child, whom some nuns have attempted to "civilise" by trying to teach her standard social graces, is left in the house of a monstrous, vampiric Duke when she cannot conform. She gradually comes to realise her own identity as a young woman and human being, and even develops compassion for the Duke, going far beyond the nuns' stunted views of life.
Publication history
The Bloody Chamber was first published in 1979, though many of the stories within the collection are reprints from other sources, such as magazines, radio and other collections. Only two are completely original to this collection, though many were revised or changed slightly from their previously published versions for this collection.
The stories' various origins are listed below
"The Bloody Chamber" made its début in The Bloody Chamber.
"The Courtship of Mr Lyon" originally appeared in the British version of Vogue.[6] It was revised for this collection.[7]
"The Tiger's Bride" made its début in The Bloody Chamber.
"Puss-in-Boots" was intended for a 1979 anthology The Straw and the Gold, edited by Emma Tennant, but the anthology was never published.[6]
"The Erl-King" originally appeared in Bananas.[6] It was revised for this collection.[7]
"The Snow Child" was originally broadcast on the BBC Radio 4 programme Not Now, I'm Listening.[6] It was revised for this collection.[7]
"The Lady of the House of Love" originally appeared in print in The Iowa Review.[6] However, it was originally written as a radio play entitled Vampirella which was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in 1976.[8] The story was revised from the previous printed version for this collection.[7]
"The Werewolf" originally appeared in South-West Arts Review.[6] It was revised for this collection.[7]
"The Company of Wolves" originally appeared in Bananas.[6] It was revised for this collection.[7]
"Wolf-Alice" originally appeared in Stand.[6] It was revised for this collection.[7]
Style and themes
The Bloody Chamber can be treated as a collection of short stories that speak to a bigger narrative that deals with issues of feminism and metamorphosis instead of a set of individual tales. Although each particular narrative deals with a different set of characters, the 'oppressed female seeking liberation' is a common theme and concept that is explored throughout the collection. The characters seem to blend into each other and become indistinguishable from one another when recognising this theme in the text.[9]
In particular to Carter's writing style, Margaret Atwood states that Carter presents a "macabre" painting, filled with gruesome and melancholy prose. "Not for her Hemingway's clean, well-lighted place, or Orwell's clear prose like a pane of glass. She prefers instead a dirty, badly-lit place, with gnawed bones in the corner and dusty mirrors you'd best not consult."[10] It shows throughout these short stories, Carter's dedication to dark towers and dusky landscapes. Carter herself admits to being a fan of both Gothic horror and Edgar Allan Poe in particular, including in her stories such elements as incest and cannibalism in order to call upon the Gothic tradition.[11] As such, her prose is also influenced by post-modern conventions, shown through her frank unorthodoxy and twisted proclivities towards sex and sexuality, such as the constant implications of virginity and deflowering in both "The Bloody Chamber" and "The Tiger's Bride". Oftentimes, her writing is also considered [by whom?] to be something similar to magical realism in relation to the insertion of inexplicable magical elements. This is shown in "The Bloody Chamber" when the narrator is unable to clean the blood from what seems to be a normal key in a semi-realistic setting.[citation needed]
The time periods of the stories are early 20th century. For example, in "The Bloody Chamber" the existence of a transatlantic telephone implies a date of 1930 or later. On the other hand, the mention of painters such as Gustave Moreau and Odilon Redon, and of fashion designer Paul Poiret (who designs one of the heroine's gowns) all suggest a date before 1945. "The Lady of the House of Love" is clearly set on the eve of the First World War, and the young man's bicycle on which he arrives at the tradition-bound vampire's house is a symbol of the encroaching modernity which fundamentally altered European society after 1914.
Feminism
Angela Carter's short stories challenge the way women are represented in fairy tales, yet retain an air of tradition and convention through her voluptuously descriptive prose. For example, in the opening tale "The Bloody Chamber", which is a retelling of Bluebeard, Carter plays with the conventions of canonical fairy tales; instead of the heroine being rescued by the stereotypical male hero, she is rescued by her mother.
Carter effectively draws out the theme of feminism by contrasting traditional elements of Gothic fiction – which usually depicted female characters as weak and helpless – with strong female protagonists.[12] By contrasting the barren and horrific atmosphere found typically within the Gothic to the strong heroines of her story, Carter is able to create sexually liberated female characters that are set against the more traditional backdrop of the fairy tale. In doing so, Carter reinvents the outdated conventions of fairy tales and offers insight on the archetypes and stereotypes of women in these well-known and celebrated stories. In particular, and especially in "The Bloody Chamber", Carter creates familial ties between her heroines and their mothers, where in the original fairy tales their mothers would have either died at the beginning of the story, or gone unmentioned. By creating and strengthening said bond, Carter inverts the trope of a lone woman and creates a chorus of agency, where once there was none. It is notable that the conventions Carter analyzes and reimagines are of a patriarchal nature. Many of the original fairy tales that she draws inspiration from illustrate female characters in a vulnerable, damsel-in-distress position. In giving her female characters more agency, Carter is directly responding to and critiquing these traditional patriarchal tropes.
The stories deal with themes of women's roles in relationships and marriage, their sexuality, coming of age and corruption. Stories such as "The Bloody Chamber" and "The Company of Wolves" explicitly deal with the horrific or corrupting aspects of marriage and/or sex and the balance of power within such relationships. Themes of female identity are explored in the "Beauty and the Beast" stories such as "The Tiger's Bride". In one instance, Beauty, the story's heroine, is described as removing the petals from a white rose as her father gambles her away; this is a seeming representation of the stripping away of the false layers of her personality to find her true identity, an image that finds a mirror in the story's fantastical conclusion.
Gothic fiction
Carter continues to toy with Gothic fiction and gender, in a way that utilizes classic Gothic symbolism to push the narrative forward. She writes of Gothic fiction that "characters and events are exaggerated beyond reality, to become symbols, ideas, and passions,"[13] all of which work towards the singular purpose of creating an uneasy atmosphere. In "The Bloody Chamber", she extrapolates on the importance of symbolism, by placing emphasis on images such as the ominous Gothic castle, the blood on the key, or a blood-red choker awarded the heroine as a wedding gift. As in the Gothic tradition, these artefacts foreshadow the story to come, and the fate of the heroine as she spills blood on the bed sheets after consummating her marriage, the blood of her husband's previous wives as she learns his dark secret, and the blood that is meant to be spilt from her neck, once the Marquis vows to chop her head off. Gothic images placed within these short stories emphasise terror and the gruesome, attempting to build an atmosphere, while also working to flip certain gendered tropes on their heads: in the end, it is the virgin's own blood, her feminine energy in the form of her mother and her quick thinking, that save her from a terrible fate.
Furthermore, Carter seems to draw heavily from the understanding of Gothic literature as following specific, gendered structures. As English Professor at University of Georgia Anne Williams states, "The male Gothic plot employs the Oedipus myth, while the female Gothic plot draws on the myth of Psyche and Eros."[14] The tale of Psyche and Eros, or Cupid and Psyche, can often be found in such story iterations such as "Beauty and the Beast", of which "The Tiger's Bride" is heavily based. Within this framework, as well, Carter bases many of her stories off of the female tradition. Particularly, in "The Bloody Chamber", she reflects on the sexual nature of Psyche and the beast that is Eros, as the narrator is trapped in a castle and ravished for her virginity. Though, unlike the original tale, Carter continues to darken the narrative in order to fit the Gothic landscape, in such ways as emphasising the nature of sexual acts in accordance to such horrors as cannibalism. While from Eros and Psyche bloom love, the Marquis is constantly looking to devour the heroine, to mutilate her body and objectify her in a show of Gothic horror that Edgar Allan Poe often used to influence the dark undertones in his short stories.[11]
Aestheticism
In "The Bloody Chamber", Angela Carter reflects on the nature of artistry. Here, the Marquis, based on the character of Bluebeard from the original tale, is an art dealer, whose art comes in the form of his murder, and the "aesthetic" display of his former wives' corpses. His current wife's role, in this case, "is to act as his Muse... he instructs her with pictorial representations, which functions as self portraits," in the form of his wives, "that depict his birth as an artist."[14] The Marquis is first drawn to our narrator because of her artistry in her piano playing, and by lavishing gifts onto the heroine, such as the choker, he attempts to show her mirrored in the bodies and pictures of his previous wives. Here, Carter displays patriarchal values through her antagonist. By presenting himself as the typical artist, and his wife as the muse, he is literally attempting to kill her and her unique proclivities in order to indoctrinate her into his artistic method. He attempts to fetishize her and strip her of agency, a criticism of Carter's on the "male literary tradition" of martyring women (literally and metaphorically in fiction) in order to present the fruits of their artistic labour.[14]
Reception
Awards
The Bloody Chamber won the Cheltenham Festival Literary Prize in 1979.
Critical reception
The Bloody Chamber has received heavy praise and attention from numerous critics such as Jack Zipes (who called it a "remarkable collection"[15]) and Marina Warner (who, on its inspirational nature, said it "turned the key for [her] as a writer"[16]). Neil Gaiman cited the book as one of his inspirations.[17] In a 2019 essay in the book Lost Transmissions,Grady Hendrix said of Angela Carter: "She's someone who fantasy doesn't claim, and she's huge. The Bloody Chamber is one of the all-time great fantasy novels."[18]
The critic Patricia Duncker, however, was more reserved in her praise, criticising it for not breaking enough taboos. She said "Carter could never have imagined Cinderella in bed with the fairy God-mother."[19]
Several critical works have been published that focus on Carter's use of fairy tales in The Bloody Chamber and her other works.[20]
The collection has been taught and studied in University literature courses.[21] It has been used as part of the AQAEnglish Literature, the OCR English Literature and Edexcel English Language & Literature syllabus for A-Levels in schools and colleges across the United Kingdom.
Adaptations
Radio
Carter later adapted "The Company of Wolves" and "Puss-in-Boots" into radio plays which were broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in 1980 and 1982 respectively. The 1982 adaptation of "Puss in Boots" (as it was retitled) starred Andrew Sachs in the title role.[8] The scripts for both of these plays were published in Carter's Come Unto These Yellow Sands and later the posthumous collection The Curious Room, which also included production notes.
Film
The 1984 film The Company of Wolves by Neil Jordan was based upon the werewolf stories in this collection, in particular the Little Red Riding Hood analogue "The Company of Wolves".[22] Carter also directly contributed to the screenplay of this film.[22] Carter's original screenplay for this film is published in The Curious Room. Jordan and Carter also discussed producing a film adaptation of "Vampirella", the radio drama that became "The Lady of the House of Love", but this project was never released.[23]
Music video
Punk band Daisy Chainsaw adapted the story of "The Lady of the House of Love" for their 1992 music video for "Hope Your Dreams Come True" (from the EP of the same name and also later the album Eleventeen).[24]
Theatre
The stories within The Bloody Chamber are a popular subject for theatrical adaptation. The story "The Bloody Chamber" has been adapted for the theatre more than once, including a performance by the "Zoo District" which was accompanied by an amateur film adaptation of "Wolf-Alice".[25] "The Company of Wolves" is also a popular subject for adaptation by amateur/student theatre groups (e.g. by a Welsh drama college[26]).
Neil Murray directed a haunting and erotic theatre production of Carter's story 'The Tiger's Bride' in 2001 at the Gulbenkian Studio, Newcastle Playhouse. Murray comments on his interest in Carter's work and refers to her discussion of fairy tales as 'an important medium.'
In August 2013, Melbourne's Malthouse Theatre presented a stage adaptation of The Bloody Chamber by writer Van Badham, directed by Matthew Lutton, with composers David Chisholm (scoring for three live harps) and Jethro Woodward (live and replayed electronic soundscore). Set and costumedesign were by Anna Cordingley with lighting designer Paul Jackson. Save for a relatively brief appearance by Shelly Lauman, the piece was in essence performed by Alison Whyte. The three harpists were Jacinta Dennett, Jess Fotinos, and Yinuo Mu.
Music
The band The Parlour Trick featured a song called "The Lady of the House of Love" on their 2012 album A Blessed Unrest. Angela Carter is listed as an inspiration in the album notes.[27]Wolf Alice is a band which named themselves after the story in the collection. The band Honeyblood also released a song, "Choker", on their 2014 self-titled album which retells "The Bloody Chamber".[28]
Related Research Articles
"Beauty and the Beast" is a fairy tale written by French novelist Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve and published in 1740 in La Jeune Américaine et les contes marins. Her lengthy version was abridged, rewritten, and published by French novelist Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont in 1756 in Magasin des enfants to produce the version most commonly retold. Later, Andrew Lang retold the story in Blue Fairy Book, a part of the Fairy Book series, in 1889. The fairy tale was influenced by Ancient Greek stories such as "Cupid and Psyche" from The Golden Ass, written by Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis in the second century AD, and "The Pig King", an Italian fairytale published by Giovanni Francesco Straparola in The Facetious Nights of Straparola around 1550.
"Bluebeard" is a French folktale, the most famous surviving version of which was written by Charles Perrault and first published by Barbin in Paris in 1697 in Histoires ou contes du temps passé. The tale tells the story of a wealthy man in the habit of murdering his wives and the attempts of the present one to avoid the fate of her predecessors. "The White Dove", "The Robber Bridegroom", and "Fitcher's Bird" are tales similar to "Bluebeard". The notoriety of the tale is such that Merriam-Webster gives the word "Bluebeard" the definition of "a man who marries and kills one wife after another". The verb "bluebearding" has even appeared as a way to describe the crime of either killing a series of women, or seducing and abandoning a series of women.
"Little Red Riding Hood" is a European fairy tale about a young girl and a sly wolf. Its origins can be traced back to several pre-17th century European folk tales. The two best known versions were written by Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm.
Angela Olive Pearce, who published under the name Angela Carter, was an English novelist, short story writer, poet, and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism, and picaresque works. She is mainly known for her book The Bloody Chamber (1979). In 1984, her short story "The Company of Wolves" was adapted into a film of the same name. In 2008, The Times ranked Carter tenth in their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". In 2012, Nights at the Circus was selected as the best ever winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
The Evil Queen, also called the Wicked Queen or just the Queen, is a fictional character and the main antagonist of "Snow White", a German fairy tale recorded by the Brothers Grimm; similar stories exist worldwide. Other versions of the Queen appear in subsequent adaptations and continuations of the fairy tale, including novels and films. One particularly notable version is Disney's depiction, sometimes known as Queen Grimhilde. The character has also become an archetype that inspired unrelated works.
Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics, also known as Grimm Masterpiece Theater in the original version and The Grimm's Fairy Tales, is a Japanese anime anthology series by Nippon Animation based on the Grimms' Fairy Tales.
Robin McKinley is an American author best known for her fantasy novels and fairy tale retellings. Her 1984 novel The Hero and the Crown won the Newbery Medal as the year's best new American children's book. In 2022, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association named her the 39th Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master in recognition of her significant contributions to the literature of science fiction and fantasy.
The Company of Wolves is a 1984 British gothic fantasy horror film directed by Neil Jordan and starring Angela Lansbury, David Warner, Micha Bergese, and Sarah Patterson in her film debut. The screenplay by Angela Carter and Jordan was adapted from her 1979 short story of the same name.
The Sisters Grimm is a children's fantasy series written by Michael Buckley and illustrated by Peter Ferguson. The series features two sisters, Sabrina Grimm and Daphne Grimm, and consists of nine novels that were published from 2005 to 2012.
Little Red Riding Rabbit is a 1944 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon, directed by Friz Freleng, and starring Bugs Bunny. It is a sendup of the "Little Red Riding Hood" story, and is the first time in which Mel Blanc receives a voice credit.
No Rest for the Wicked is a fantasy webcomic by Andrea L. Peterson. The characters are loosely based on characters from traditional fairy tales, including those by Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Perrault, and the Brothers Grimm. The plot revolves around a princess who has been an insomniac since the disappearance of the moon and her journey to restore the moon to the sky. As of August 2007 it is on the fourth chapter, with a total of 200 pages thus far. The story has a generally elegiac mood, an undercurrent of sadness leavened with humor throughout. No Rest for the Wicked is now also available in Italian, German, and Japanese.
The Langs' Fairy Books are a series of 25 collections of true and fictional stories for children published between 1889 and 1913 by Andrew Lang and his wife, Leonora Blanche Alleyne. The best known books of the series are the 12 collections of fairy tales also known as Andrew Lang's "Coloured" Fairy Books or Andrew Lang's Fairy Books of Many Colors. In all, the volumes feature 798 stories, besides the 153 poems in The Blue Poetry Book.
Politically Correct Bedtime Stories: Modern Tales for Our Life and Times is a 1994 book written by American writer James Finn Garner, in which Garner satirizes the trend toward political correctness and censorship of children's literature, with an emphasis on humour and parody. The bulk of the book consists of fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood, the Three Little Pigs and Snow White, rewritten so that they represent what a politically correct adult would consider a good and moral tale for children.
The Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale has often been adapted, and into a wide variety of media.
Nourie Hadig is an Armenian fairy tale collected by Susie Hoogasian-Villa in 100 Armenian Tales. Her informant was Mrs. Akabi Mooradian, an Armenian living in Detroit.
The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography is a 1978 non-fiction book by Angela Carter. The book is a feminist re-appraisal of the work of the Marquis de Sade, consisting of a collection of essays analyzing his literature, particularly the tales of sisters Juliette and Justine.
Feminist revisionist mythology is feminist literature informed by feminist literary criticism, or by the politics of feminism more broadly and that engages with mythology, fairy tales, religion, or other areas.
The Land of Stories is a series of children's fiction, adventure and fantasy books written by American author, actor and singer Chris Colfer. The first book, The Wishing Spell, was released on July 17, 2012. The sixth book was published in July 2017. Colfer revealed plans for a prequel series in 2016, and has since published three books in this prequel series beginning with A Tale of Magic... in 2019.
Regal Academy is an Italian animated series co-created by Iginio Straffi and Joanne Lee. The series was produced by the Rainbow studio, which at the time was co-owned by Straffi and Viacom. Viacom's Nickelodeon channels broadcast the series worldwide. Rai YoYo aired the series in Italy, and it premiered on Rai YoYo on May 22, 2016, and on Nickelodeon U.S. on August 13, 2016.
↑ "Gothic Fiction."The Oxford Companion to English Literature n.d.: n.pag. Web. 23 October 2011.
↑ Frayling, Christopher (2015). Inside The Bloody Chamber: On Angela Carter, The Gothic, and Other Weird Tales. London: Oberon Books Ltd. p.252.
1 2 3 Pyrhonen, Heta (2010). Bluebeard Gothic: Jane Eyre and Its Progeny. Canada: University of Toronto Press. p.216. ISBN978-1-4426-4124-2.
↑ Jack Zipes, "Crossing Boundaries with Wise Girls: Angela Carter's Fairy Tales for Children" in Angela Carter and the Fairy Tale, ed. Danielle M. Roemer and Christina Bacchilega (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998), p 159.
↑ Marina Warner, "Ballerina: The Belled Girl Sends a Tape to an Impresario" in Angela Carter and the Fairy Tale, ed. Danielle M. Roemer and Christina Bacchilega (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998), p 250.
Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber (Croydon: Vintage, 1979 (1995)), ISBN0-09-958811-0.
Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber (London: Vintage, 1979 (2006)), p 4 ISBN0-09-958811-0: source for Helen Simpson quotations and references (in introduction).
Angela Carter, The Curious Room (London: Vintage, 1997), ISBN0-09-958621-5: source for Mark Bell's production notes, which include a quotation from Neil Jordan.
John Haffenden, Novelists in Interview (New York: Methuen Press, 1985), ISBN978-0-416-37600-5: source for Angela Carter quotation.
Danielle M. Roemer and Christina Bacchilega (ed.), Angela Carter and the Fairy Tale (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998), ISBN0-8143-2905-5: source for Jack Zipes, "Crossing Boundaries with Wise Girls: Angela Carter's Fairy Tales for Children" and Marina Warner, "Ballerina: The Belled Girl Sends a Tape to an Impresario".
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