The Bloody Chamber

DISCLAIMER: These are the transcriptions of my reading journal entries, which reflect my personal opinions and rambling thoughts. Spoiler warning in effect.

I had heard the buzz about Angela Carter (and there were always plenty of copies at Mr. K’s). I am endlessly intrigued by fairy tale retellings (for better or worse). Carter is on my never-ending literary list… So I’m pleased I finally opened this collection.

Feminism is a major topic in this collection; women have bodies that feel and experiences and minds that decide, solve, and negotiate. “I was so unused to my own skin that to take off all my clothes involved a kind of flaying,” says one young woman presenting herself to the Beast. Carter depicts women choosing destinies among the multiple pathways.

The ratio of fairy tales isn’t one to one. Carter reinterprets a couple fairy tales multiple times. For instance, for “Beauty and the Beast,” in one version the Beast becomes a man again while in another, the woman chooses to join the Beast in his beastliness. “The tiger will never lie down with the lamb; he acknowledges no pact that is not reciprocal. The lamb must learn to run with the tigers.” Wolves can be a man or a grandmother or a girl.

Surprisingly, despite dark tones and eerie moods, most of the stories have a “happy ending.” Perhaps this is simply because Carter gives her character choice. Fate is not the puppet master pulling the strings in these stories.

Here is my complaint - seemingly Carter cares not a wit about verb tense, and perhaps that a creative choice - suspension of time - but it could honestly uproot me from the narrative, just floating through. It could be a little distracting, and it happened in every story.

However, on top of everything is Carter’s absolutely stunning prose. “My earrings turned back into water and trickled down my shoulders; I shrugged the drops off my beautiful fur.” She can construct a sentence to bring a reader to their knees; her vocabulary is peak.