Context

Angela Carter

• Famous feminist writer

• Born in 1940 she was brought up during the war by her grandmother in a female dominated household

Love Life

• Divorced her first husband, moved to Japan from 1969-72, where she felt ungainly, oddly foreign and huge

• Estrangement said to have affected her writing about constructs of gender, representation of self, awareness of multiple possibilities of identity and reality

Critical Evaluations

Critical evaluations on constructions, power, gender and sexuality ‘exposing constraining myths’

Writing

• Novel, stories and topical

• “Fond of Poe and Hoffman - gothic tales, cruel tales, tales of wonder, tales of terror”

• Influenced by 19th century writing (Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë)

Demythologising

“I believe that all myths are products of the human mind and reflect only aspects of material human practice. I’m in the demythologising business” - Angela Carter

Angela’s short stories

• Share characteristics and features of Gothic

• Gothic was an attempt to warn, in a sensation and entertaining way about the personal and social consequences, off going against accepted beliefs of the time

• Mostly set within dreary European landscape → bleakness and hardships

• Carter relieves the gloomy tone with focus on the possibilities of change

Key overall themes

• Use of Gothic as a social critique

• Gender performance and construction

• Myths/demythologised

• Horror

• Breaking down of established binaries

  • Male/female

  • Good/bad

  • Normal/other

Feminism

Patriarchy = Social system in which the role of the male as the primarily authority figure is central to society. Implies institutions of male rule and dominance, and is dependent on female subordination

Feminism = Political project seeking to challenge this power structure and change the roles and perceptions of women → want women to be depicted as equal to men

Fairy Tale

• Adults were as likely as children to have been the original audience

• Part of oral tradition → handed between generations

• In later versions, moral lessons and happy endings were more common. Villain was most often punished

• Modern era → violence removed so they were suitable for children

• Miraculous entertainment or disguised morality rates