Angela Carter: The Bloody Chamber (York Notes Advanced) 9781405896

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The right of Steve Roberts to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 YORK PRESS 322 Old Brompton Road, London SWS 9JH PEARSON EDUCATION LIMITED Edinburgh Gate, Harlow, Essex CM20 2JE, United Kingdom Associated companies, branches and representatives throughout the world

© Librairie du Liban Publishers 2008 Quotations from The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter copyright © 1979 Angela Carter. Reproduced by permission of the Estate of Angela Carter c/o Rogers, Coleridge and White Ltd, 20 Powis Mews, London W111JN All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without either the prior written permission of the Publishers or a licence permitting restricted copying in the United Kingdom issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS First published 2008 Third impression 2009

Phototypeset by Pantek Arts Ltd, Maidstone, Kent Printed in China

CONTENTS PART ONE I

INTRODUCTION Studying short stories ...................................................................... 5 Reading The Bloody Chamber .......................................................... 6

PARTTwo THE TEXT Note on the text .............................................................................. 11 Synopsis ........................................................................................ 12 Detailed summaries The Bloody Chamber, pages 1-14 ............................................ 13 The Bloody Chamber, pages 14-26 .......................................... 20 The Bloody Chamber, pages 26-8 ............................................ 27 The Bloody Chamber, pages 28-42 ........................................ 30 The Courtship of Mr Lyon ........................................................ 36 The Tiger's Bride ...................................................................... 40 Puss-in-Boots .......................................................................... 44 The Snow Child ........................................................................ 47 The Lady of the House of Love ................................................ 50 The Company of Wolves .......................................................... 54 Wolf-Alice ................................................................................ 57 Extended commentaries Text 1- The Bloody Chamber, pages 8-11. ............................... 60 Text 2 - The Eri-King ................................................................ 63 Text 3 - The Werewolf .............................................................. 65 Text 4 - The Lady of the House of Love, pages 113-16 .............. 67

PART THREE CRITICAL APPROACHES Characterisation .......................................................... ·· .. ··· .. ···········70 The narrator protagonist .......................................................... 71 The predatory patriarch and the absent father ........................ 73 The innocent male .................................................................... 75 The matriarch .......................................................................... 75 The victim ........................................................................ ········77 The independent woman ........................................................ 79 The human animal .................................................................. 79 Themes Marriage .................................................................................. 80 Sexuality ................................................................................ 82

Metamorphosis ...................................................................... 8S Beauty and wealth .............................•••••.•.............................. 86 Man, woman and nature ........................................................ 88 Structure ........................................................................................ 92 Narrative techniques ...................................................................... 92 Language and style ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• :............... 95 Metaphor •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 98

Imagery, allusion and intertextuality ...................................... 100 Origins ••.••...•.••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••.••••••••••••• 102

PART FOUR CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES

Reading critically ............................••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••..........•••• 105 Original reception .......................................................................... 10S

Later criticism ........•..................................................................... 106 Contemporary approaches Feminism •......•..•.••..••••••.•••••••••••.••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 108 Marxism •••••.•..•....•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 111

PART FIVE BACKGROUND Angela Carter's life and works ...................................................... 114 Literary background The Gothic tradition ................................................................ 116 Medieval influences .............................................................. 120 Postmodern and Mannerist influences .................................. 120 Historical background .................................................................... 121 Chronology••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• :•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••.••••.••• 124 FURTHER READING •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 130 LITERARY TERMS •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 141

AUTHOR OF THESE NOTES ............................................................................................................ 147

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4 The Bloody Chamber

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PART ONE

INTRODUCTION ~

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STUDYING SHORT STORIES Reading short stories and exploring them critically can be approached in a number of ways, but when reading the text for the first time it is a good idea to consider some, or all, of the following: •

Format and style: how do short stories differ from other genres? How are paragraphs or other divisions used to reveal information? Is there a narrator, and if so, how does he or she convey both his or her emotions and those of the characters?

•

The writer's perspective: consider what the writer has to say, how he or she presents a particular view of people, the world, society, ideas, issues, etc. Are, or were, these views controversial and are there different perspectives within the collection?

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Shape and structure: explore how the narrative of the story develops - the moments of revelation and reflection, openings and endings, conflicts and resolutions. Is there one single plot or are there multiple ones? How do the different stories within the collection compare in this regard?

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Choice of language: does the writer choose to write formally or informally? Does he or she use different registers for characters, narrators or groups, vary the sound and style, or employ language features such as imagery and dialect?

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Links and connections: what other texts does this short story or collection of stories remind you of? Can you see connections between its narrative, characters and ideas and those of other texts you have studied? Is the story or collection part of a literary movement or tradition?

•

Your perspective and that of others: what are your feelings about the short story or collection? Can you relate to the narrators, characters, themes and ideas? What do others say about it - for example critics, or other writers?

These York Notes offer an introduction to The Bloody Chamber and cannot substitute for close reading of the text and the study of secondary sources.

CONTEXT

In her introduction

to The Virago Book of Fairy Tales

Carter states that 'fairy tales, folk tales, stories from the oral tradition, are all of them the most vital connection we have with the imaginations of the ordinary men and women whose labour created our world' (1990, reprinted in Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales

in 2005, p. xi). The Bloody Chamber 5

READING TH.E BLOODY CHAMBER

CONTEXT

The notion of feral children, still current in the cliched phrase 'wild child', has a long historical tradition in folklore and legend - Greek mythology has many examples of the maternal role being fulfilled by animals. For more on this see Detailed summaries: Wolf-Alice.

G)CHECK THE FILM

Carter wrote the screenplay for The Magic Toyshop in 1987, and this was directed by David Wheatley for Granada TV.

6 The Bloody Chamber

Introduction

READING THE BLOODY CHAMBER In this collection of short stories, Angela Carter offers the reader an unsettling experience - from the first tale, provocatively derived from the most notorious works of eighteenth-century erotic literature, to the last, a powerful combination of medieval and modern notions on the feral nature of children. The artifice of the tales and the narrative devices used to interweave old and new material into stories that seem so familiar and yet so strange invite the reader to question the purpose of the collection. In turn, this leads us to consider what effect Carter intends the stories to have on us as readers and how she achieves this effect. Carter established her early reputation as a writer in the 1960s with the novels Shadow Dance (1966) and The Magic Toyshop (1967). Grotesque elements recalling the Gothic genre were already a feature of her writing. In the 1970s The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (1972) and her first collection of short stories, Fireworks: Nine Profane Pieces (1974), marked a turn towards more consciously feminist views. Her second collection, The Bloody Chamber, was published in the same year as her writings on the Marquis de Sade: The Sadeian Woman (1979). Her later novels, Nights at the Circus (1984) and Wise Children (1991), explore at greater length some of the themes developed in The Bloody Chamber (1979). The stories in The Bloody Chamber take their inspiration from fairy tales, variants of older European folk tales that existed long before they were ever captured in writing. Carter uses versions of the stories that are attributed to the French authors Charles Perrault ('Bluebeard', 'Little Red Riding Hood', 'Puss-in-Boots', 'Sleeping Beauty') and Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve ('Beauty and the Beast'), to the Brothers Grimm ('Snow White') and to German and Scandinavian folklore ('The Erl-King'). Helen Simpson, in her introduction to the 2006 Vintage edition of The Bloody Chamber, suggests that Carter did not want to present a simplistic feminist revision of these fairy tales. Her declared intention, in her own words, was 'to extract the latent content from the traditional stories and to use it as the beginnings of new stories' (pp. vii-viii).

Introduction

READING THE BLOODY CHAMBER

These 'new stories', presented to us in such lurid and exotic fashion, include a memoir of an innocent young girl rescued from her marriage to a serial murderer by her mother, aided by her blind lover; two retellings of 'Beauty and the Beast', first in unspecified modern times with the beast transforming into a man, and then its inversion where a woman beautifully transforms into the beast; a pantomime Puss-in-Boots revelling in anthropomorphic anarchy; a dreamlike fantasia of desire and loss in a wild wood; a tale of sexual jealousy that bears little resemblance to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Hollywood's first full-length animated film; a vampire's reprieve foreshadowing the calamity of war; and three variants on 'Little Red Riding Hood': one with Grandma as a werewolf, one with the girl embracing the wolf, and one where the girl and the wolf are virtually indistinguishable. Despite the individual power of these tales, another theme can be traced through them as a collection - the development of the female role. The progression of this development is striking in its obvious simplicity: Carter's female 'victims' become gradually empowered by embracing desire and passion as a human animal. To exaggerate this aspect of the collection would diminish the impact of each tale in itself, but it does reveal The Bloody Chamber as very much a product of its time and of the concerns of the feminist movement in the late 1970s. The issue of the empowerment of women and, particularly, the challenge to conventional depictions of .heterosexual relationships in literature, art and the media were part of the controversial agenda advanced by the feminist intelligentsia of the period. Feminists today might argue that it is easy, with hindsight, to underestimate how male-dominated British society was at the time. They might also argue that it is just as easy to exaggerate the progress towards equal opportunity that has rendered feminist perspectives almost passe for many young people now. Carter's experiment with forms and content of traditional tales may or may not provide 'new stories' to a twenty-first-century audience, but her attempt to explore female sexuality as human behaviour challenged her contemporaries. Her work, whatever her intentions, does not represent stereotypical feminist views of women as either

CONTEXT

The ability to change, through transformation or metamorphosis, can be both a negative and a positive attribute in folklore. Many creatures in nature have the ability to adapt their appearance or go through some form of radical change. In popular tales, these abilities are often transferred to human or inhuman shape-shifters who deceive or entrap the unwary child.

CONTEXT

The term 'secondwave feminism' arises from Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch (1970). Greer acknowledges the political differences between earlier feminists and later generations when she writes that for many women activists in the 1960s and 1970s 'the call for revolution came before the call for the liberation of women' (1981 edition, p. 16).

The Bloody Chamber 7

READING THE BLOODY CHAMBER

Introduction

heroic fighters against, or passive victims of, patriarchal dominance. Neither do these tales comment on or describe directly the experience of women in late 1970s Britain, a time of radical political and social change where new laws were offering hope of an end to sexual discrimination in employment and education; medical advances in birth control such as the pill were changing the conventions of sexual conduct; and positions of real political power and influence were being taken by women. The election of Margaret Thatcher as the first female prime minister in 1979 was seen by many as a significant historical moment for women.

eCHECK .. THE FILM

Willy Russell's play Educating Rita (1980) was made into a film in 1983 starring Julie Walters and Michael Caine. Russell gives the notion of how men shape women to their own desires, previously explored by George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion (first performed in 1913), a modern feminist slant. Shakespeare, in The Winter's Tale (1611), also draws on the Greek myth of Pygmalion and Galatea.

8 The Bloody Chamber

Issues of class and power are as present in Carter's stories as they are in the 'traditional' tales from which they are derived, but not in the same idealised, noble or benign form. Carter makes use of the stereotypes of greed and cruelty associated with aristocratic privilege to define her male characters, and wealth and luxury appear as evidence of the decadence of male authority. For Carter, personal conflicts are shaped by gender and by social class. Her stories examine relationships between individuals affected by an imbalance of power. The resolution of the conflict is often surprising, however. Carter plunges into the realm of fantasy, exploring the mysteries of sexual attraction in ways that are informed by, but do not entirely conform to, the conventional wisdom of feminist and socialist perspectives (much to the annoyance of some of her contemporaries). The short stories in The Bloody Chamber require the reader to consider the uncertain point at which the grossly repellent becomes attractive and desirable. For some communities, any and all depictions of sexuality are shocking. Carter moves from using graphic depictions of 'beast-like' behaviour to sensual reveries that entice and almost seduce the reader into strange and disturbing reactions, such as the description of the unnamed 'slim volume' ('The Bloody Chamber', p. 12) containing the picture of the 'Reproof of curiosity' (p. 13) and the 'certain queasy craving' the piano-player feels for the 'thousand, thousand baroque intersections of flesh upon flesh' (p. 19). At times the tone is mocking or aggressively confrontational; at others the reader is allowed to see even the most monstrous of creatures in a sympathetic light. By choosing the form of traditional tales as the place to expose

Introduction

READING THE BLOODY CHAMBER

the content of social myths and narratives - such as the supposed gentle nature of the 'fair sex'; the purity of virginity; and the alleged attractions of the 'alpha male' - Carter is perhaps asking the reader to follow a new but carefully signposted pathway through familiar psychological territory. One of the problems of deliberate use of symbolism in literature and art is, of course, the assumption that the symbol employed will convey the associated meaning to the audience. Many children, for example, encounter revisions of fairy stories, by Roald Dahl and others, without first knowing the tales in an earlier or original form. Through the globalisation of the media we are more aware of the great diversity of international cultures than ever before - a far cry from the oral, word of mouth tradition in which the fairy tale originated. On the surface, these narratives may appear to have lost their dominant position in the imagination of younger readers. But are the psychological landscapes they map out (for example the forest as a place of fearful discovery and metaphor for the dangers of the adult world; the wolf as sexual predator and metaphor of human appetites) so unrecognisable? Do they not function in Carter's tales just as in those original stories, regardless of any familiarity on the part of the reader with other texts? Where does that leave us with the deliberate, intricately ornate layers of intertextuality employed by Carter in these stories? . Carter flirts with elements of Gothic literature in many of the tales. The imagery of blood and passion, the overwhelming forces of nature and supernatural entities, and the tremulous anticipation of horrible events are all derived from the genre established in the latter part of the eighteenth century by works such as Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764), Matthew G. Lewis's The Monk (1796) and Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794). The intricacies of human behaviour are constructed by Carter within the typically Gothic architecture of towers and secret passages (the sexual metaphor is neither accidental nor masked). 'The Bloody Chamber', the tale that gives the collection its title, is an allegory of female self-discovery. The search for knowledge as a means of personal emancipation defined feminism for many women

«l>

CHECK . ' THE POEM

Dahl's poems in Revolting Rhymes (1982) reinterpret the fairy tales 'Cinderella', 'Jack and the Beanstalk', 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs', 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears', 'little Red Riding Hood' and 'The Three little Pigs'.

o

CHECK THE BOOK

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) was originally dismissed as 'an artistic mistake' by a reviewer in the Manchester Guardian, though others regarded it favourably in comparison with the works of Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) and Mary Shelley (1797-1851). The Bloody Chamber 9

READI NG THE BLOODY CHAMBER

~CHECK

THE BOOK

In the chapter entitled 'Storytelling at home and at school' in Supporting Children in the Early Years (1995), edited

by Robin Campbell and Linda Miller, Carol Fox examines the imaginative oral storytelling of pre-school children with extensive experience of hearing stories read aloud. She shows that 'the impact of hearing so many stories before school started was enormous, and affected their linguistic, narrative, and cognitive development profoundly' (p. 30). Fox highlights how 'Fantasy can liberate us all from the restrictions of real here-and-now experience' (p. 39).

10 The

Bloody Chamber

Introduction

at the time. Whether this search remains as urgent for younger readers today, who might not see themselves and their concerns in these stories in quite the same way, is debatable; but questions about the place of the female voice in society and the presence or absence of female sexuality in the mainstream media are still raised by texts such as Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues (first staged in 1996) that present a provocative challenge to the perceived male-dominated culture of the twenty-first century. The Bloody Chamber, three decades after its publication, is still compelling and alienating, horribly fascinating and startlingly sensuous. The stories carefully combine wonderful, rich and complex patterns of exotic, sometimes esoteric, language into crafted prose that works on the reader's imagination with the precision of poetry. Carter, telling her stories with great skill, draws us always on towards some inexplicably attractive and dangerous place where we are invited to question what we might have been led to believe, once upon a time, about how to behave in the adult world.

PARTTwo

THE TEXT

NOTE ON THE TEXT When this collection of stories was published as The Bloody Chamber in 1979 by Victor Gollancz, only two tales, 'The Bloody Chamber' and 'The Tiger's Bride', had not been seen or heard before (though, in one sense, all the stories have been seen and heard before by most of us). The other eight are revisions of Angela Carter's earlier stories or radio scripts. 'The Erl-King' and 'The Company of Wolves' appeared in the literary magazine Bananas that had been set up in 1975 by the novelist Emma Tennant. 'The Lady of the House of Love' appeared in a 1975 edition of the American literary magazine The Iowa Review, having been adapted by Carter from her radio drama script Vampirella (not broadcast on BBC Radio 4 until 1976). 'The Werewolf' appeared in 1977 in the October edition of South-West Arts Review. 'Wolf-Alice' appeared in a 1977 edition of the literary magazine Stand. 'The Courtship of Mr Lyon' appeared in the April 1978 edition of Vogue magazine. 'The Snow Child' was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4. 'Puss-in-Boots' also appeared in Emma Tennant's anthology The Straw and the Gold, published ·by Pierrot Books in 1979.

•

CHECK

THE NET A very useful resource on fairy tales can be found at www.surlalune fairytales.com

After The Bloody Chamber was published, Carter went on to adapt 'The Company of Wolves' and 'Puss-in-Boots' for radio. 'The Company of Wolves' was developed into a screenplay for the cinema by Carter and director Neil Jordan in 1984. The version of the text used in the preparation of these Notes is the edition of The Bloody Chamber published by Vintage in 2006, featuring an introduction by Helen Simpson (published in much the same form as an article in the Guardian the same year).

The Bloody Chamber 1.1.

The text

SYNOPSIS

CONTEXT

Pantomime, in its modern form a peculiarly British tradition, combines various traditions of the commedia del/'arte, medieval theatre, Renaissance theatre and the Victorian music hall. The first recognisable pantomimes were eighteenth-century harlequinades and featured much physical comedy and clowning.

CONTEXT

'Panto time', being typically around Christmas, is a connection with the Iice nsed temporary chaos of the medieval Feast of Fools presided over by a 'Lord of Misrule'. Magical beings, cross-dressing, transformation scenes, bawdy humour and rude audience participation are the distinctive traditions of British pantomime. 12 The

Bloody Chamber

SYNOPSIS The tales, singularly and as a collection, revolve around themes of death and love; treachery and cruelty; redemption and salvation; and, above all, the possibility of change. Nearly all the t~es are framed in a European winter landscape that signifies the bleakness and miserable hardship of life. But the tone of the collection as a whole is not characterised by that coldness alone. The dourness is relieved by the exuberance of pantomime mockery and madness; and Carter's determined perspective on the powerful possibilities of transformation brings hope and strength to the women in the tales. Below is a synopsis of 'The Bloody Chamber', the longest story in the collection. Summaries of the other stories can be found in Detailed summaries; 'The Erl-King' and 'The Werewolf' are analysed in Extended commentaries. Carter tells the first story through the narrative voice of the main female character, who recounts her experience of 'The Bloody Chamber' in seven major episodes. Each episode is marked by a break in the text indicating a pause in the narrative flow. These breaks help to mark the passage of time and add emphasis to significant moments in the story. The first two episodes establish the young bride's arrival in the matrimonial home, her relationship with her husband, and the contrast between her former life in the French capital and the opulence of her new circumstances in a remote part of Brittany. It becomes clear that the story is taking place at some imprecise time around the end of the nineteenth century. The third and fourth episodes develop the young wife's boredom and curiosity into a dilemma that threatens her relationship with her husband: should she obey his instruction or follow her desire to discover more about him? The fifth episode shows her experiencing the transformation of her dilemma into a crisis of mortal danger. The sixth and seventh episodes show the crisis moving towards its climax, where she faces the consequences of her actions, aided by a true companion (the blind piano-tuner) against the murderous

The text

THE BLOODY CHAMBER

intentions of her husband. The resolution of the crisis, provided by her heroic mother, leaves the wife widowed with rich rewards: wealth, love and happiness. These pleasures are handled with care in the denouement of the story, which restores the character of the young woman through love and personal fulfilment.

DETAILED SUMMARIES THE BLOODY CHAMBER, PAGES 1-14 -

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• A young bride travels from Paris through the night with her much older husband towards her new home, a large and isolated castle in Brittany. • She describes her introduction to a world of luxury and pleasure. • Their honeymoon unfolds in ways she had not expected.

The story begins as a memoir, a tale remembered by its principal character some time after the events described. The story is set, vaguely, at the turn of the century, when the end of the nineteenth becomes the beginning of the twentieth century. A young woman, . anticipating her wedding night, lies awake on a train taking her far away from her childhood home. She recalls her mother's concerns about her feelings for the rich aristocrat who is now her husband. She ponders the age difference between them and his delicate courtship, realising she does not know him very well. She is aware of his three previous marriages and his almost unimaginable wealth; although she feels there might be something strange in the Marquis's desires, she is excited and enthralled by him. The couple arrive at the castle for their honeymoon and are greeted without much warmth by the housekeeper. The moment of the consummation of their marriage is postponed by the Marquis, and the wife is left to her own devices. Frustrated to find her wedding gift, a piano, is slightly out of tune, she browses in the Marquis's

CONTEXT 'The Bloody Chamber'is set during the Third Republic in France, a period synonymous with corruption, decadence and defeat. La Troisieme Republique began following the collapse of Napoleonic imperialism in 1870, and the politically unstable situation saw the rise and fall of the Paris Commune (1871); the Panama Canal Company bankruptcy scandal (1893); and the famous Dreyfus Affair that led to the publication of Emile Zola's open letter 'J'Accuse' (1898). The Third Republic ended with the capitulation to fascism in 1940 and the establishment of the Vichy regime. The Bloody Chamber 13

THE BLOODy-CHAMBER

The text

PAGES 1-14 continued

CONTEXT In Perrault's tale Bluebeard is a wealthy aristocrat who persuades a local girl to marry him. Immediately he announces he has to go away, and gives his new wife the keys of the chateau, including one to a room she is forbidden to enter. Unable to resist temptation, she enters it and discovers her husband's three dead wives. She relocks the door, but the key is bloodstained. Bluebeard returns and threatens to kill her, but her brothers rescue her at the last moment. Bluebeard is killed; with her inherited wealth she restores the fortunes of her family and finds herself a decent husband. CONTEXT The structure of Carter's 'The Bloody Chamber' is close to Perrault's original model, though her intended moral is different.

14 The Bloody Chamber

library. She discovers some books with explicit sexual content, and shocks herself by viewing the images. The Marquis finds her with his books and leads her back to the bedroom to take her virginity. COMMENTARY The structure of the story is provided by the plot adapted from the European fairy tale 'Le Barbe Bleue' ('Bluebeard'), written in 1697 by Charles Perrault as a moral tale instructing children to be wary of being overcurious, but that is not immediately appp-ent - and indeed it may not be obvious to many who are unfamiliar with this tale - as Caner begins by deliberately parodying the linguistic style of erotic literature, mostly written by men, that presents the 'sexual awakening' of young women as a spectacle for voyeuristic entenainment. The first paragraph sets a feverish tone, as the narrator recalls the' delicious ecstasy' of a young woman, just seventeen years old, anticipating her wedding night, with her 'burning cheek' and 'pounding ... hean' linked to the mockery of cliched mechanical phallic imagery: the train's 'great pistons ceaselessly thrusting' (p. 1). We get a sense that the narrator sees her younger self as an entirely different person, and the adoption of a detached narrative perspective positions the reader at a cenain distance from the immediacy of the character's experiences. The narrator implies she has been changed by the events of this story, though it is not clear how much older she has become since the events took place. The first part of the story is ~et up as a journey, a metaphor for the emotional and physical journey the young girl is experiencing as she leaves the security of her childhood home and enters the adult world for the first time as an individual in her own right. Her view of her destination, 'the unguessable country of marriage' (p. 1), is reminiscent of Hamlet's 'undiscovered country' as Shakespeare has his dithering prince contemplate the journey from life to death, 'from whose bourne / No traveller returns' (Hamlet, Act III Scene 1). Caner seems to be suggesting at the stan of this journey, with this intertextual echo, that there is a connection between sex, marriage and death.

The text

THE BLOODY CHAMBER

Marriage is represented in the symbol of the wedding ring, the traditional love token that signifies marital status. Carter's narrator introduces this symbol with her awareness of a 'pang of loss' for her youth and freedom (p. 1). The female life roles of mother, daughter and wife are interwoven in the image of the wedding ring, with the 'gold band' (p. 1) symbolising the ownership of the woman and the price agreed between the mother and the Marquis for the exchange. The act of putting on the ring marks the end of childhood, a severing of the link with her mother, and prepares her for the process of becoming a mother herself. The theme of maturation, growing up, and an exploration of what it means for a girl to become a woman are embedded in this story. But Carter, without being obvious or overly didactic, is positioning the reader to become aware of and question the gender stereotypes at work in the typical 'rites of passage' recounting of sexual experience. By working within the conventions of a narrative form devised by men to depict women in certain limited ways, Carter is simultaneously adopting and subverting the genre of erotic literature. How successful her attempt is at turning the genre inside out, as it were, is open to question, and this has been a particular focus for feminist critics (see Contemporary approaches: Feminism).

CONTEXT Bluebeard is sometimes the name given to the English pirate Edward Teach (c.1680-1718), who was also known as Blackbeard. Although he is thought to have had around fourteen wives, this eighteenth-century privateer was not known as a pirate when Perrault's tale was published. The two legends have been confused and sometimes deliberately blurred by various writers.

The character of the mother is established early on as 'adventurous' and indomitable' (p. 1), capable of dealing with pirates, plague and man-eating tigers as a teenager, but reduced to poverty by marrying for love and being widowed by war not long after. The narrator's memory of her father is only the sadness of his loss: 'a legacy of tears that never quite dried' (p. 2). In contrast, the mother is armed and prepared to defend herself against any threat. The male character, the aristocratic businessman, is introduced at first as a mysterious abstraction, a masculine pronoun that only gradually takes on more identity as the story unfolds. He is associated primarily with symbols of wealth - 'gold' and a 'gigantic box', though the mother evidently distrusts the apparent generosity of the 'wedding dress ... wrapped up ... like a Christmas gift' (p. 1) - and takes on direct physical form as a 'kiss' and a 'rasp of beard' (p. 2). The narrator builds his identity through recalling his 'opulent The Bloody Chamber 15

THE BLOODY CHAMBER

The text

PAGES 1-14 continued

CONTEXT

Donatien Alphonse Fran~ois de Sade (1740-1814), known as the Marquis de Sa de (although the title was an adopted rank, de Sade was an aristocrat), was condemned to death in 1772 for his cruelty and sexual transgressions. Escaping, he was later imprisoned at Vincennes and in the Bastille, where he wrote works of perversion and fantasy, among them Les 120 Journeesde Sodome (written in

1784). De Sade's writing reflects the revolutionary upheaval of the times in which he lived, and, though the content is undoubtedly offensive to many, his political and philosophical views have been largely overshadowed by the scandalous nature of his life and reputation.

16 The Bloody Chamber

male scent' (p. 3), and Carter places her characters in a mating game that links the 'exquisite tact' (p. 2) of his courtship of the girl to the attentiveness of a lion stalking his prey. The explicit reference to his 'dark mane' (p. 3) is the first of many allusions to his bestial qualities. His title is revealed when he is introduced as 'my Marquis' (p. 4), but he bears no other name. His identity is not fully revealed; this is emphasised by the description of his face as a 'perfectly smooth' mask (p. 3). Almost immediately after the Marquis has been introduced as a mysterious enigma, he is explicitly linked to a symbol that will recur throughout the story. Carter allows her narrator to make a strange comparison between the man, as 'a sentient vegetable', and a flower commonly associated with 'funereal' matters: the lily (p. 3). The suggestion here is that his cultured manners, calm detachment and composure are the product of an inhuman nature: he has the capacity to think but no real awareness of other people's feelings. There is 'gravity' (p. 4) in his desire for her which she cannot resist, and this seems to be linked somehow to the impact of lilies, with their beauty and almost overpowering heavy perfume, on the senses. The Marquis remains shapeless and mysterious while the narrator recounts the beauty, talent and tragic demise of his first three wives; and she is clearly flattered by his invitation 'to join this gallery of beautiful women' (p. 5). Carter here is giving her narrator an opportunity to foreshadow the events of the story in a seemingly innocent remark that also alludes to the original story of 'Bluebeard'. The Marquis's wedding gift to her is bound up with a history of cruelty and death. Inspired by the aristocratic remembrance of the guillotine, a 'choker of rubies', 'bright as arterial blood', emphasises his family'S tradition of 'luxurious defiance' (p. 6). She glimpses, indirectly in his reflection, the way he views her as a piece of meat. The narrator's innocence and naivety attract the Marquis's 'carnal avarice' (p. 6). These qualities of inexperience also explain her willingness to expose herself to dangers that her impoverished but secure life with her mother prevented her from knowing. There is a thrill and excitement in taking the risks involved in becoming an adult. The Marquis represents the mysterious appealing risk and the danger of the unknown.

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The Marquis's identity is forming through the particular details that accumulate around him. He indulges in the expensive habits of the bourgeois elite of the era: he goes to the opera; he wears a monocle; he bestows rich gifts to display his wealth and secure the affections of women much younger than he; he smokes cigars; and trains stop especially for him where there is no station. None of these are attributes likely to make him a sympathetic character to a modern audience. He is the 'richest man in France' (p. 8): what more need be said to define this character or direct our suspicion? Carter clearly has a perspective on social class that equates position and wealth with corruption. While the general modern reader may not share this perspective, particularly as the drive for equality in the 1970s has given way to a more entrepreneurial spirit in the twenty-first century, privilege that is inherited rather than earned is still often resented. The superiority inherent in definitions of aristocracy - that some people are born 'noble' and others are not is challenged by Carter's ideal of individual empowerment. For Carter, what women might choose to become is more important than who their parents are or, to be precise, who their father and grandfather might have been. The aristocratic father figure symbolises everything about patriarchal society that stops women having control of their own lives. Carter's villain in 'The Bloody Chamber' is a representative of the past, of patriarchy, of a dying ~ocial order: he is synonymous with death and decay. The symbol of the flower is used for a second time as the couple arrive in their bedroom, which is filled with white lilies. There is something sordid and corrupting about the way in which the Marquis strips the bride he has 'acquired' (p. 10). Carter allows her narrator to make a political and social point linking marriage and prostitution - the 'formal disrobing of the bride, a ritual from the brothel' (p. 11) - which can only heighten our sense of unease as the girl is 'stripped' to resemble the erotic art he collects. Particularly as, despite her awareness of having been a 'bargain' (p. 11), she admits she is aroused by his treatment of her. The postponement of his satisfaction, with no regard for her, hints again at a kind of sadism in the Marquis, who is controlling this

CONTEXT

The Marquis's monocle (p. 6) recalls Cyclops, in Greek mythology a . member of a race of one-eyed giants. These giants were associated with elemental forces, brute strength and vicious temperaments.

CONTEXT

. There was, and still is, much acrimonious debate over whether class or gender should be the focus of political philosophy. American feminist writer Rebecca Walker is associated with what has become known as thirdwave feminism since the early 1990s; this involves the reappraisal of the achievements of Germaine Greer's generation from a perspective that prioritises gender and ethnic identity rather than class consciousness. The Bloody Chamber"7

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1-14 continued

CONTEXT

Sadism is the term given to a number of sexual practices, associated with the Marquis de Sade, that share the characteristic of deriving pleasure from inflicting pain on someone else.

CONTEXT

VI ad Tepes, known as Vlad the Impaler owing to his custom of impaling his enemies on spikes, was a fifteenth-century Balkan ruler. A cruel and ruthless warrior, he was also well educated and a successful politician.

18 The Bloody Chamber

scenario. When she finds herself becoming more acquainted with his collection of erotic art and literature, something begun in his courtship, it is the imagery of violence that is most directly communicated to the reader. The violence of the images is echoed and emphasised by the bluntness of the narrator's language. Words commonly regarded as CHECK THE BOOK

Tess Cosslett's Talking Animals in British Children's Fiction, 1786--1914 (2006) considers anthropomorphism in relation to attitudes to children's literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

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It is this level of wealth he aspires to, and he understands that the privileges of this wealth include the 'suspension of reality' (p. 44) - a distancing from the mundane concerns of ordinary living. Carter is making a political point here within the magical aspects of her tale; the rich are not bound by the 'laws of the world' that apply to the less fortunate (p. 44). The labels on the food and drink provided, in anticipation of visitors, are taken directly from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It is almost disappointing that the man remains the same size and the dog does not start to talk to him. It seems odd that the dog, 'man's best friend', does not undergo some kind of anthropomorphic transformation given the number of such changes in the collection as a whole. But Carter is mostly interested in the independence of spirit associated with cats, rather than the more manageable behaviour of dogs, as the vehicle for her exploration of natural desires and energies. This explains why the dog, at the end of this tale, remains a dog. As the man leaves the house, chance events reveal 'one last, single, perfect rose' (p. 46), which he takes to fulfil his daughter's wish. The connection between the girl and the rose as symbolic images of perfection and simple innocence is made succinctly by this action. The 'leonine apparition', part man, part lion, that seizes hold of him 'like an angry child' is none other than the Beast of the fairy tale (p. 46), and the mere image of Beauty's perfection is enough to calm the savage nature of the Beast. If readers are anticipating an obvious feminist perspective on the part of the writer in the retelling of this tale, they will most likely be disappointed: so far, so conventional. The traditional characters are less distant from us in manners and dress, but they are conforming to the pattern of the tale as we know it of old. Dutiful Beauty, 'possessed by a sense of obligation to an unusual degree' (p. 48), is obedient to her father and to the Beast throughout this story. When she neglects that duty, her good looks are spoiled. She is no longer the perfect woman. One has to consider exactly how ironic Carter is being in offering this version of the story to the reader - particularly when she warns the reader against judging her character: 'Do not think she had no will of her own' (p. 48). But it does seem that her options, such as they are, leave her little to choose between the idle 'enchantment' (p. 50) of the Beast's domain and the 'high living and compliments' (p. 52) of her father's new riches. Beauty's return to the Beast is the traditional race to save the dying

38 The Bloody Chamber

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THE COURTSHIP OF MR LYON

lover by the guilty party. Beauty has neglected her duty and must atone for that fact. The rather pathetic humiliation of the Beast by his own loneliness is swiftly erased by her renewed love. There seems to be a rather mocking edge to Carter's depiction of the man recovering from a near-death experience. In many ways, this is the least satisfying story of the collection. It is engaging enough in the way it is told, and the familiarity of the narrative path is not without its own entertainments, but the mythic properties of the tale are not subverted by Carter at all. This is perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Carter's tale, and perhaps that is its value: in the new form the reader has to question the values embedded in such a story. In 'Beauty and the Beast' the romantic sentiment that the bestial nature of man is tamed and humanised by the submissive sacrifice of woman can be viewed as a rather masochistic notion. Beauty chooses to be with the Beast, but ends up only with the man she has to release from within the Beast. But there is perhaps a moral for our times that arises from this retelling: people need to recognise that they cannot always have what they want. Their life together is depicted as a 'walk in the garden' (p. 55), an allusion to the Garden of Eden and associated meanings of paradise regained and redemption; but the image of happiness also suggests an acceptance of nature's imperfection: Mr and Mrs Lyon can enjoy the snowlike 'drift of fallen petals'. GLOSSARY 43

pallor indicates an unnatural loss of colour; often applied to human features as a sign of ill health or death

44

Palladian Andrea Palladio (1518-80) was an Italian architect who imitated ancient Roman design. The Palladian style became popular in eighteenth-century England . through the work of Inigo Jones (1573-1652)

45

squirearchal an adjective suggesting the self-importance of the minor landowning country gentry or squires

CONTEXT Although the story of a beautiful girl loving or marrying a monster has many origins and variations (for example Titania falling in love with Bottom in Shakespeare's 1595 play A Midsummer Night's Dream), French author Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbotde Villeneuve (c.1695-1755) is considered to be the original author of 'Beauty and the Beast'; her novella was published in 1740. In 1756 this was radically abridged by Jeanne-Marie Leprincede Beaumont (1711-80); this shorter tale is the version we are most familiar with today.

impecunious having little or no money, derived from the Latin pecunia ('money') 47

Queen Anne a decorative style of furnishing and architecture from the early eighteenth century

49

Apocalypse the Christian biblical idea of the end of the world and the revelation of God's will to humanity - the idea of the Beast in apocalyptic terms is a synonym for the devil The Bloody Chamber 39

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THE TIGER'S BRIDE

THE TIGER'S BRIDE - -- -

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• A father loses his daughter to The Beast in a game of cards. • The young woman is taken to an isolated mansion where she resists The Beast's voyeuristic requests. CONTEXT

Maria Alexandrovna, wife of Tsar Alexander II, is said to have initiated the late nineteenth-century fashion for the Russian aristocracy to spend their winters in the sunnier climes of the Italian Riviera.

eCHECK THE FILM

Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), based on

the fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm, is one of the first and most successful feature-length animated films. Pinocchio (1940), Cinderella (1950) Sleeping Beauty (1959), The Little Mermaid (1989) and Beauty and the Beast (1991) are all

taken from the European fairy-tale tradition.

,+0 The

Bloody Chamber

• He reveals himself to her as an animal. • She decides to be with him and also changes into a beautiful animal. In an unnamed city, not so far from Milan but more probably in Tuscany (from the references to the dialect on pp. 57 and 65), an impoverished and avaricious Russian nobleman gambles with his daughter's life. Having enjoyed the luxury of warmer foreign climates, they have found themselves driven further south by the approaching winter. Her father is a drunken, womanising spendthrift who has worn out her mother with his reckless habits and is now busy doing the same to her. The family fortune is being lost at the turn of a card. The feudal lord taking advantage of his foolishness is known as The Beast, who is masked and disguised. Soon the father has lost everything but the girl, and he is prepared to stake her life for the hope of success. He loses and becomes quite changed. The Beast chastises his lack of care. The girl is taken next morning by The Beast's valet. As she travels by carriage to the distant castle she reflects on the mystery of The Beast, recalling childhood stories. In a private room high above the rest of the house, The Beast's desires are communicated to her by his valet. He offers to repay her father and reward her well for showing herself to him naked. She laughs and mocks the incivility of his request with a false acceptance that causes The Beast to shed a tear. She is taken to her own room, where she is waited upon by a clockwork servant. She is presented the next morning with an earring in the shape of a teardrop, which she refuses to accept. When asked a second time to agree to The Beast's demands, she remains silent. Another tear falls from The Beast. Next morning, another teardrop earring is presented to her and again refused. Her own riding clothes are brought for her to go out hunting on horseback with The Beast. They ride together until he

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THE TIGER'S BRIDE

insists that she must see him without his disguising garments. She is profoundly moved by the sight of him in animal form and exposes her naked body to his sight. They return to the castle, clothed again. Through a magic mirror she sees her father is now wealthy again: The Beast has kept his word. She decides not to leave the castle, sending the clockwork servant to take her place in her father's life. She strips again but chooses to wear the earrings to approach The Beast. The valet, now in the shape of a monkey, shows her into the room. The earrings turn back to water as The Beast licks her human flesh away to reveal the animal fur beneath.

COMMENTARY The tone of this version of 'Beauty and the Beast' is in complete contrast to the previous tale, as if Carter is somehow acknowledging the unsatisfactory nature of her other attempt at reworking the myth into a new form (see Detailed summaries: The Courtship of Mr Lyon). The narration is given this time to Beauty, and the reader immediately feels a sense that this is her story. She is not an idealised image of perfection. In this relationship, the daughter is attempting to cope with an inadequate father not from a sense of obligation but from the perspective of damage limitation. She has chosen to come to this region because she was informed that there was no casino. Her attempt to protect the remnants of her inheritance from the hopeless gambling of her father is thwarted by circumstance. Twice she makes the link between cards and evil, the latter reference identifying The Beast with the devil for the ease with which he deprives her father of everything. While the original 'Beauty and the Beast' perhaps underpins the tale in certain recognisable elements, this is not a simple updating. Nor does the narrative have much in common with its closest myth. In terms of setting, however, Carter remains true to the story. She has chosen to set this tale, in the best fairy-tale tradition, long ago, in a far-off place. The distance, in both time and space, helps the reader to accept the tale; the modern setting of the other version does not achieve this sense of distance in the same way. The character of the father, feckless as he is, provides the opportunity for the first moral difference between the tales. Though The Beast is the moral superior of the father in each tale, in this version the admonition of neglected paternal duty to protect the child is much

eCHECK THE FILM Shrek (2001) by

DreamWorks Animation is based upon William Steig's fairy-tale picture book entitled Shrek! (1990). The

film parodies Disney versions of fairy tales and inverts the aesthetic values inherent in the tale of 'Beauty and the Beast'.

(jCHECK THE BOOK

John Webster's The White Devil

(published in 1612), a revenge tragedy, explores themes of murder, debauchery, corruption and revenge. It uses the device of an Italian setting to comment on English society, much in the way Carter's settings are a distancing device that allows the reader to make connections imaginatively. In Webster's case the device was a necessity to avoid censorship. The Bloody Chamber 41

THE TIGER'S BRIDE

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more clearly expressed: 'If you are so careless of your treasures, you should expect them to be taken from you' (p. 60). The father is not permitted to see The Beast's home in this version; Beauty is taken there as a prize, not as a hostage to her father's fortune.

o

The Beast's requests to see her naked are expressed through an almost comically embarrassed valet, who gabbles the deal at top speed. There is no sense of threat in this request, unlike the voyeurism in 'The Bloody Chamber', more a sense of the ridiculous. The woman is able to laugh the proposal off with a challenge of her own: pay no more than you would for 'any other woman in such circumstances' (p. 65). It is a riposte that exposes the cheap and degrading bargain on offer. Her argument is that, no matter what the price may be, the deal denies her identity, so why bother to look at her face? Her silence in the face of his repeated though barely articulated request is evidence of a much more resourceful and resilient character in this version of the story.

CHECK THE BOOK

Art critic, painter and writer John Berger (b.1926) explores the idea of the male gaze in Ways of Seeing (1972). Men gaze at women, he says, in the assumption that they can do something to or for them; this gives them power. Women, however, view themselves being looked at and constantly carry their own image with them: 'Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at' (p.47). 42 The Bloody Chamber

The automaton, an imitation of Beauty, is an intriguing symbol. Beauty does not recognise herself at first, but later decides to send this imitation out into the world. The assumption that no one will notice the difference is a comment on how patriarchal society simultaneously idealises and marginalises women. While considering the allegedly soulless existence of animals, this young woman muses angrily on the emptiness of the 'imitative life amongst men' (p. 70) that she has been allowed by her father. The mutual revelation that takes place between Beauty and The Beast is quite touching, despite its fantastic weirdness. The woman now accepts The Beast as 'courteously curious as to the fleshly nature of women' (p. 72) and she reciprocates the desire to do 'no harm'

(p.71). In deciding not to return to the world of men, represented primarily by the greedy opportunism of her father, the woman realises she has been changed by her experience. She no longer resembles the image of her former beauty as displayed to her by the automaton: a 'smiling girl ... poised in the oblivion of her balked simulation of life' (p. 73). Carter allows the narrator to give a succinct summation of the feminist concept of the 'male gaze' - 'the market place, where the eyes that watch you take no account of your existence' (p. 74) - but she compares that gaze to the blindness of

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THE TIGER'S BRIDE

the automaton, suggesting it is a manufactured and unnatural response, not an irrevocable condition of masculinity per se. The Beast's gift of teardrop earrings seems to be a coded plea for her to listen to his emotional distress. When she fixes them to her ears she finds them 'very heavy' (p. 73), but they are all she chooses to wear to meet The Beast again in his room. In one way this resembles the use of jewellery and nakedness in 'The Bloody Chamber', but in this tale the woman makes the choice of her own free will, without coercion, to decorate herself with the evidence of masculine sentiment. They are the last thing to change in the story, which may be a comment on how sentiments linger on in the world as it changes. It could be that Carter is representing a notion that male ideas of women will not change until women have changed themselves to be as autonomous and independent as men, especially those who have dropped the mask of their masculinity. The ending of the story seems to be advising the reader that it might be a good idea for men and women to see each other as they really are and that mutual recognition of a shared animal nature is the basis of happiness in human relationships. GLOSSARY 56 grappa a form of brandy made from grapes 57 profligate wasteful and self-indulgent 58 civet African mammal, sometimes compared to a cat, whose musk is used as the basis of perfume "59 stock a scarf worn around the neck, usually for riding 60 Capisco Italian verb meaning 'understand' 63 gracile gracefully slender 65 Desnuda naked (Spanish) 66 soubrette in theatre, particularly opera, a female comedy character - a servant or friend of the leading female . character - sexually provocative, talkative and irreverent settecento minuet a term normally used to describe eighteenth-century culture in Italian -literally meaning 'seven hundred' - here a reference to late baroque music style 68 Tantivyl a hunting cry used to urge horses and their riders into a gallop 69 trompe I'esil an artistic optical illusion, used to trick the eye into believing an image is the object it represents 70 Kublai Khan thirteenth-century Mongol emperor, grandson of Genghis Khan

I

«i>CHECK -;:. THE POEM In The World's Wife

(1999), a satirical collection which revises a number of myths and fairy tales, poet Carol Ann Duffy plays with gender roles and allows the female voice to be heard. In 'Mrs Beast' the Beast, as with Carter's Beast in 'The TIger's Bride', is not transformed into a man; instead he remains bestial, at the mercy of Mrs Beast, who 'came to the House of the Beast I ... knowing my own mind' (15-16). There is no sense of equality in this relationship, however; it is the female who is in charge: 'Bring me the Beast for the night' (91). The Bloody Chamber 43

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PUSS-IN - BOOTS

CONTEXT

Danish author Hans Christian Andersen (1805-75),

considered one of the world's greatest storytellers, began publishing his pamphlets of fairy tales in 1835. He wrote over one hundred and fifty of these stories, including 'The Little Mermaid', 'The Wild Swans' and 'The Snow Queen'; they were translated into English in 1846.

•

CHECK

THE NET

You can read Andersen's fairy tales online at http://hca.gilead. org.i1

PUSS-IN-BoOTS

• Puss-in-Boots agrees to work for a penniless young officer. • The officer falls in love with a young woman martjed to a rich old man. • Puss-in-Boots and his companion, a tabby cat, bring the lovers together and arrange the murderous solution to all their problems. • Puss-in-Boots, the tabby cat and the lovers happily set up a new home together. Puss-in-Boots, a ginger tomcat, agrees to be servant to a young cavalry officer and shares his fortunes, both good and bad. The cat's master is besotted by the beauty of Signor Panteleone's young wife. By serenading her at her balcony, the young man succeeds in getting the attention of the young woman, but further contact is prevented by her chaperone, an unpleasant old woman. With the assistance of another cat, a female tabby, one of Puss-in-Boots's lovers, a scheme is plotted for the cavalry officer to be with the young woman while the chaperone's attention is diverted to the problem of a sudden infestation of rats . Posing as expert rat-catchers, the young soldier and Puss-in-Boots gain admission to the house, and the young wife, 'la belle', sends the chaperone away to recover from the 'rising pandemonium', leaving her alone to welcome her new lover (p. 88). The cat keeps up a pretended noise of battle with imaginary rats to disguise the sound of the lovers' mutual pleasure. Puss-in-Boots ensures they do not leave the house without a handsome payment, but it becomes clear that this affair is unlike the man's other adventures. He becomes determined to find a way to be with her, and together the cats plot the murder of the husband, ensuring that they will benefit from the arrangements. The cats take control. The old man is sent tumbling downstairs to a broken neck by the tabby cat; and the young man, posing as a doctor, is able to enjoy another happy moment with his lover. With

44 The Bloody Chamber

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her husband dead and the chaperone under her control, the young widow takes charge of financial matters to everyone's satisfaction. The story concludes with a contented tomcat congratulating himself on his talents, enjoying the delights of family life having fathered three ginger kittens with the tabby, and conceitedly not recognising that it was the tabby cat that had all the best ideas. COMMENTARY Carter clearly enjoys this tale. It is a bawdy romp drawing on the stock characters of commedia delrarte, which transferred from the professional performance troupes of Italy to influence the theatrical traditions in Britain. Pantomime remains one of the most common early childhood memories of theatre for British theatregoers and non-theatregoers alike. In its current form pantomime has no equivalents in modern European theatre or elsewhere, despite the common heritage. Carter takes the familiar pantomime tale and resites it in Bergamo, the place of commedia dell'arte's origins, returning it to its roots in popular entertainment and grossly exaggerated, often violent, physical comedy. Anthropomorphism is not problematic in pantomime or fairy tale. Puss-in-Boots's enduring appeal as a rascally but inventive Everyman character is complemented well by the narcissism of his feline attributes and manners. The origins of this character lie itt the mockery of the uncouth aspirations and pretensions of provincial types from Bergamo, who sought their fortune in urban Venice. Puss-in-Boots is faking it, but comes out on top; he represents the triumph of the 'little man', While Carter gives this character some of the attributes of the stock servant character Arlecchino, or Harlequin, such as tremendous and superfluous acrobatic agility, the young officer is the inamorato of the tale, the typical young lover motivated by lust, love, music and passion but lacking in common sense. The chief obstacles to youthful fulfilment in this tale are direct models of commedia dell'arte characters known as the vecchi, the old ones. Signor Panteleone is the equivalent of the stock type Pantalone, though Carter makes an obscure etymological connection to the word 'lion' in the spelling of his name.

PUSS-IN-BoOTS

•

'

CHECK

THE NET

A useful illustrated introduction to the characters and masks of commedia dell'arte can be found at www.delpiano.com - click on 'Carnival', 'Venezia' and 'Commedia dell'Arte'.

e.

CHECK THE FILM

The Carry On films, a long~running series that began in 1958, directed by Gerald Thomas and produced by Peter Rogers, were a combination of slapstick, parody, innuendo and double entendres, the comedy seen as typically British humour derived from farce and music hall. The humour stems as much from the same company of actors playing stock characters from film to film as it does from the script or situation in each film. The Bloody Chamber 45

PUSS-IN-BoOTS

CONTEXT Harlequin Doctor Faustus (1723),

staged at London's Drury Lane Theatre, is thought to be the first English pantomime. Its popular success led to a theatrical rivalry between Drury Lane and Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, whose Necromancer, or Harlequin Executed, was

stagedin December 1723.

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This typically mean old man, usually played as impotent and desperate to relive his youth through the pursuit of younger women in equal measure, is rich and powerful. His young wife appears at first to be the counterpart inamorata to the young man, usually called Isabella or Lucinda, but her active part in the resolution of the story makes her a more direct match for Columbine, the female counterpart to Harlequin: energetic, acrobatic and feisty; The role of Columbine, the agile and resourceful servant, is shared with the tabby cat that Puss-in-Boots so happily impregnates but fails to appreciate. The chaperone, variously called 'dragon', 'hag' or 'man-hater' in the tale, is based on La Ruffiana, the gossiping old woman who keeps the inamorati apart. This is the role that would be performed by a man in drag on stage, as an impersonation of an archetype of the female, the role of the pantomime 'dame'. There is a sense in which she is the substitute for the patriarchal figure in the story, acting as guardian of his property, so the idea that she is a man in woman's clothing is not as ridiculous as it might seem. Disguise and pretence are themes that Carter exuberantly explores in her use of the devices and characters of the commedia dell'arte tradition. The young man assumes the mask of Signor Furioso (Mr Frenzy) to enter both the house and his lover in a frenetic display of youthful energy. When he later returns as a bogus doctor, Carter is playing with the stock commedia character 11 Dottore, who is useless as a medic, useless with women and speaks only pseudo-intellectual nonsense. Beneath his disguise, the young man is the very opposite of this member of the vecchio

It is the only story in the collection in which the narrative voice is masculine, and the self-aggrandisement is punctured for the reader by the knowledge that it was the young female characters who took control of the situation and ensured a happy outcome. Puss-inBoots remains very pleased with himself, unaware that in his new role as 'family man' he is still an impostor.

46 The Bloody Chamber

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THE SNOW CHILD

GLOSSARY 76

Figaro central character in the comic opera by Rossini based on the traditional commedia dell'arte character Brighella, liar and schemer, from Bergamo obbligato usually a particularly difficult solo in a piece of music

77

rococo originally meaning 'old-fashioned', now applied to a definite and highly ornamental style of design and decoration popular in eighteenth-century France and Italy genuflection from the Latin genuflectere, meaning 'to bend the knee'; a sign of respect, particularly in Christian rituals pontiff's a pontiff is a Catholic clergyman of high status, a bishop or the pope

78

billet-doux a love letter

79

Aldebaran a star in the constellation of Taurus, one of the brightest stars in the sky

83

discommoded inconvenienced, given trouble or discomfort mountebank a confidence trickster, particularly a bogus medical doctor or 'quack' zany derived from the Italian zanni, 'buffoon', a familiar form of the name Giovanni, the nickname given to mad acrobatic clowns in the commedia dell'arte tradition

88

saraband a slow, graceful court dance of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

eCHECK THE FILM New versions of classic tales were shown in 2008 on BBC One in the series Fairy Tales. Rapunzel was set in the competitive world of tennis, Cinderella in the academic world of anthropology, The Empress's New Clothes in the celebrity world of award ceremonies, and Billy Goat in the music industry. The BBC's approach shared elements with Carter's - the head of drama for Northern Ireland, Patrick Spence, stated: 'these stories offer such fantastic scope for comedy drama'.

THE SNOW CHILD -

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• The Count and his wife go riding. • He wishes for a beautiful girl. • The girl appears and the Countess is jealous. • The Countess destroys the girl. • The Count still desires the dead girl; and the Countess, though she has everything, learns that jealousy can be painful. An aristocrat riding with his wife wishes for a girl as beautiful as the objects he sees in nature. The child of his desire appears before . them. The Countess hates her and attempts to kill her, but each The Bloody Chamber 47

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THE SNOW-CHILD

CONTEXT

The revision of fairy tales and myths is common in women's poetry. A poem may contain a single image from a myth or tale, or a complete collection may be given over to rewritings, such as Carol Ann Duffy's The World's Wife (1999), Liz Lochhead's The Grimm Sisters (1981) and Anne Sexton's Transformations (1971).

CONTEXT

Poe's 'The Raven' (1845) was published in the newspaper the New York Evening Mirror to popular acclaim.

•

CHECK

THE NET

You can read Poe's poem 'The Raven' online at www.onlineliterature.com 48 The Bloody Chamber

attempt leaves her worse off than before. She succeeds at the third attempt when the child pricks her finger on a rose and dies. The Count is upset and briefly has intercourse with the dead girl, who melts away. The Countess regains everything she has lost and the Count gives her the rose that killed the girl, which she drops. COMMENTARY