I fancied myself a good English student, given that I had read copiously within the highly praised literary canon. Give me any text, though preferably any gothic, written before the twentieth century, I would pour over it like a black cat that had got the cream. My ridged belief that an English student should only read the classic texts of the cannon was quite unexpectedly shot down in a rather unusual way; at a house party where, surrounded by stumbling and sniggering students and punch bowls filled to brim with an inventive cocktail of spirits, I met a rather handsome stranger to whom I sat talking with till the wee hours of the morning, about Literature. Admittedly any female English students dream, I found that whilst I raved about the brilliance of Bronte and the supremacy of Stoker, he was far more interested by the churns of literary press that occurred after the break of the twentieth century. It was this stranger that enlightened me to the fact that to only read within the canon was to seriously limit yourself not as a practitioner of Literature and, disgusted by my close mindedness, he ordered me to read The Bloody Chamber in a bid to open my eyes. He didn’t get off lightly either; I saw it as blasphemy that he had not read Wuthering Heights so if he would read my favourite, I was give his a go.
A couple of weeks ago he told me that he had read the first page and was so far so good. I however was way ahead of him having read The Bloody Chamber in a mere few hours. I had discovered something so warped and disturbing, though arguably nothing short of pure genius, that made Heathcliff digging up a grave and blubbering over the half decomposed corpse relatively tame! Carters employment of taboos, necrophilia, bestiality, murder to name a few were channelled so effortlessly into exposing the latent meaning of fairytales that she created a truly eye-widening new portrayal of all that used to be innocent.
‘The Bloody Chamber’, the longest text in the compendium, is infused with such a rich style that it almost becomes erotica. The ‘pistons ceaselessly thrusting’ as the young narrator travels towards her new home with her new, odious husband lends perfect narrative to the story of a young girl impassioned in youth that hurtles towards sexual awakening at a price. Carter ingeniously threads in constant references to death from the brand a cigar to the pornographic paintings that both rouse and terrify the young narrator. Carter’s perfectly painted but disturbing depiction of the consummation scene as a murder materializes the archaic sex/death link within the text and proves that this traditional gothic emblem can still be just as powerfully portrayed to modern audiences. As a reinvention of the Perrault fairytale ‘Bluebeard’, the novella functions well as a means to translate the original warning of the fairytale: the reproof of curiosity. The narrator being told not to use the key she has been entrusted with and her punishment for disobeying orders is still present within The Bloody Chamber. The story still maintains the plot line of the traditional fairytale but Carter somehow warps this to provide her readers with a much more chilling contemporary fear- do not let your children grow up. The story chooses to focus on the young narrator moving away from her mother as she embodies the role of the Marquis’ wife though Carter’s twist of having the mother save her appeals to today’s parents with the new dangers that society poses for its children.
Her themes are omnipresent throughout her stories but no more than that of female empowerment. Little Red Riding Hood triumphing over the wolf whether through it’s slaying in The Werewolf or it’s seduction in The Company of Wolves, the reader must suspend their disbelief in order to see the latent themes that Carter herself draws from the stories. However the choice to host such didactics in the realm of fantasy provides her with the leeway to literalize metaphors, no matter how much they work to completely stun us.
The ‘virile member’ of the Count in the snow child is forever ingrained in my memory not only for the pure imagery it creates but through the magnificent narrative the language intricately weaves: Carter’s style is blunt; she doesn’t shy away from words that we all flinch from and is more than ready to draw our attention to the genitals no matter how much we, or Dear old Granny wish to divert our eyes. Her words conduct our attention in such a way that we are left slightly rattled after reading, an effect I am sure Carter fully intended to inflict upon her reader. Carter claims she was insulted by the idea that her stories were simply ‘adult fairy tales’. However they are more than that; Carter’s retellings serve to open the eyes of an adult audience rather than lull a child to sleep.
By Lucy Brown
A interesting, if personal, approach to the book, Lucy. You make some interesting points, but you need to go give your prose a little more polish. Just to take the first three sentences:
ReplyDelete"I fancied myself a good English student, given that I had read copiously within the highly praised literary canon."
Why 'high praised'? By whom?
"Give me any text, though preferably any gothic, written before the twentieth century, I would pour over it like a black cat that had got the cream."
You mrean 'pore over', not 'pour over'; but anyway the simile to the cat doesn't work (cats lap up cream; somebody who 'pores over' a book is letting their eyes fall upon it). 'Gothic' should be capitalised.
"My ridged belief that an English student should only read the classic texts of the cannon was quite unexpectedly shot down in a rather unusual way; at a house party where, surrounded by stumbling and sniggering students and punch bowls filled to brim with an inventive cocktail of spirits, I met a rather handsome stranger to whom I sat talking with till the wee hours of the morning, about Literature."
I'll take 'ridged' (you mean 'rigid') to be a typo; but this is a too-long, sprawling, ungainly sentence.
There's stuff tike this all through ('Carters employment of taboos' should be 'Carter's breaking of taboos'); I don't know what you mean by 'the archaic sex/death link' and you need to make sure book titles are italicised throughout (they're not always).