the bloody chamber literary context

what is the name of the original fairy tale of courtship of my lyon, tiger's bride and wolf alice?

beauty and the beast

describe the original fairy tale of courtship of mr lyon, tiger's bride & wolf alice

- traditional french fairy tale: villeneuve, 1740; beamont, 1756
- beauty is a passive counter of exchange between her father and the beast
- beauty is a passive carer of her father
- beauty is a life giver to the beast through marriage, transforming him into a handsome prince; they live happily ever after

how did carter reinvent beauty and the beast? (COML)

- beauty is not naïve nor innocent; her 'sweetness' is combined with 'gravity'
- she is aware that she is being exchanged
- beast is complex mix of melancholy and aggression
- beauty and the beast are both presented as entering a new, strange, unconventional relationship
- beauty on return to her father falls into patriarchal trap of her 'beauty', becoming increasingly materialistic
- her return to the beast is her breaking out of this construct; her feminine sexuality releases him from the patriarchal construct of his beast identity

how did carter reinvent beauty and the beast? (TB)

- female protagonist is even more liberated, active, wise and not named 'beauty'
- she is given first person narrative; fully aware that she is being exchanged
- her final going to the beast is primal, undomesticated - earrings melt and she becomes animal as both enter a pre civilised world beyond patriarchal traps

how did carter reinvent beauty and the beast? (WA)

- female protagonist is undomesticated, primal from the start - extreme contrast to original beauty
- handed to the duke / beast by nuns who fail to domesticate her
- she is 'the wise child' page 143 (thus also the echo of 'the wise little girl' - carter's favourite fairy tale - from russia - 'the tsar asks the heroine for the impossible and she delivers it without batting an eyelid' - marina warner)
- her active female sexuality finally releases the duke / beast from his patriarchal construct role of violence / aggression

what is the name of the original fairy tale of the bloody chamber?

the bluebeard

describe the original fairy tale of the bloody chamber

- french folktale, 1697 (charles perrault)
- the tale is about a cruel men who murders his wives so that he will inherit their wealth; he puts their corpses in a secret room opened only by a magic key
- brothers of the wife and sister arrive and kill bluebeard
- the wife inherits his fortune and castle, and has the dead wives buried
- she uses the money to buy officer commissions in the military for her brothers and for marriage dowries for her and her sisters

what is the name of the original fairy tale of the snow child?

the snow white

describe the original fairy tale of the snow child

- 1812 brothers' grimm fairy tale
- snow white is the wish of her mother, the queen, who later dies
- the king remarries and the evil stepmother queen plans to have snow white killed out of jealousy; the mirror says she is now the fairest
- snow white nearly dies from the poisoned apple but is rescued by the prince and they get married

how did carter reinvent snow white?

- took patriarchal aspect of the original narrative; prince (hero) rescuing snow white and extends in the most extreme, grotesque way (implying the 'rescue' was only ever further entrapment in patriarchy)
- snow white becomes the 'girl' - objectified as the idealised patriarchal sexual fantasy of the count who engages in necrophiliac, paedophilic rape
- carter takes 'latent' patriarchal 'content' to its most extreme in order to implicitly satirise it, while also showing pragmatic sense of deeply embedded nature of patriarchy in society

what are the 2 original fairy tales of the erl king?

1. goethe: erl king is 'king of the fairies' - ensnaring little children to satisfy his lust
2. robert browning's poem 'porphyria's lover': a male lover strangles porphyria with her own hair

how did carter reinvent goethe's erl king as 'king of the fairies' & browning's poem 'porphyria's lover' ?

- carter made goethe's erl king an ensnarer / murderer of women in order to represent predatory patriarchal male sexuality
- carter inverted browning's male lover to female who strangles the patriarchal erl king with his own hair to present a woman liberating herself from passive patriarchal complicity to strong, independent woman

what is the name of the original fairy tale of the werewolf and company of the wolves?

little red riding hood

describe the original fairy tale of the werewolf and company of the wolves

- perrault, 1697; brothers' grimm, 1812
- girl walks through the woods to deliver food to her sick grandmother
- big bad wolf wants to eat the girl and the food in her basket - he stalks her and when he approaches her, she tells him where she is going
- he goes to the grandmother's house, and eats her, then lies and wait for the girl; he eats the girl when she arrives
- in the perrault version, a woodcutter, and in the grimm version, a hunter, comes to the rescue and cuts open the sleeping wolf and the little red riding and her grandmother emerge unharmed
- they fill the wolf's body with stones and when he wakes up and tries to escape, the stones cause him to collapse and die

how did carter reinvent little red riding hood? (the company of the wolves)

- carter satirises conventional predatory / horrifying presentation of wolf, taking it to a ludicrous, cliched extreme
- 'the wolf is a carnivore incarnate' is used to critique portrayal as a patriarchal construct of male identity that is entrapping
- as the expected / cliched 'all the better to eat you with, the girl, naked and already having kissed the wolf, laughs in his face and they have sex to the sound of 'the terrible clattering' of the grandmother's 'old bones' under the bed, and sleeps in the paws of the now 'tender wolf'
- carter thus replaces patriarchal male rescue story with presentation of an undomesticated, fearless, sexually active female identity that liberates both, the girl and the male wolf, from patriarchal constructs of passive and aggressive into an equal empowerment

how does carter reinvent little red riding hood? (the werewolf)

- the girl attacks the wolf in the woods with her father's knife; the wolf then retreats 'sobbing'
- later holds down wolf in the house and it transforms into the grandmother and the girl's cries alert the townspeople who come and stone her to death as a witch, after which the girl stays in the house and 'prospers'