The Bloody Chamber - Halfway Through

The Bloody Chamber is a story told in first person retrospective, unusually for a fairy-tale, and is based upon the story of Bluebeard. Although she has completely re-written it which could perhaps go along with my first idea that these are stories that have been passed on through time but have been miss remembered and some things over exaggerated. When I was younger I thought that Bluebeard was in fact a terrible and seriously feared pirate but it appears that I was very wrong. According to Carters version of this story he is a rich gentleman, a Marquis, who had three wives before he marries the new. He appears to have a thing for women who have the potential to be tempted and corrupted which you can see by looking at his previous wives descriptions and by the fact that each time he leaves the key to the forbidden room, the bloody chamber, with his wife, giving them the opportunity to tempted and corrupted. There are two quite clear semantic fields of loss and sexual imagery, and you can see how this story is one of how a girl becomes a woman because of marriage and how the train symbolizes this as its travelling from one destination to another but it could also symbolize her death as well. Furthermore it is quite clearly a story about feminism which you can about tell about two pages in when she says "Our destination, my destination" she is talking about her new house and she will bear an heir being a typical Victorian woman and all.

That's all well and typical of a story but there is a massive problem with this story that must be commented on and that is that the main character is pathetic (the girl not Marquis). Marquis demands her to go down to her death over the phone not even face to face and she does! Who would do that? She has an opportunity to flee but she doesn't, there are many more times when she is as stupid as this such as when she marries the guy. I mean three of his wives are missing and yet she still marries him surely she would have noticed and stayed away from him but she doesn't she goes along with and to make it worse she doesn't even love she is just dong for the money. This makes me more frustrated with her because she is marrying a murderer for lust of money not for love of him.

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The Courtship of Mr Lyon is an adaptation of Beauty and the Beast which is my favourite Disney film of all time so I was slightly apprehensive about reading this one because I didn't want it to ruin it. Carter’s version lies very close to the child's version of the story told in third person in the same style that most fairy-tales are told in; with a few modern changes such a car instead of a horse. Although the woman is still seen as the weaker character as she is in the kitchen doing chores, its the men in the story that are rich not her and all that we know of her is that she is beautiful and that is all the Beast is interested in at first at least. Also she seems unable to be whole without a man/beast "Yet, with this exhilaration, a desolating emptiness". She managed to get freedom and yet all it is that she want is the Beast, she is empty without him.

The Beast despite his looks comes across as nice man even though he does have a voice that is like "a cave full of echoes", as in the beginning of the story we find out that he has made it his custom to pay for all car problems that are called in from his house, he also stays true to his word and allows Beauty to leave when her father’s case is cleared when he was in love with her and could have easily made her stay. He follows the cliché that love fixes all as he goes from Beast to man due to Beauty's love for him and his love for her. It has the same kind of moral of a story that the Disney version has, don't judge a book by its cover, which actually surprised me as I was imaging it to be more like the Bloody Chamber with a more of an adult spin on it. I quite liked the way Carter connected the Beast to the house and how when he was dying the gardens and house to were also going into a state of decay, it made his death seem like more of a significant thing which I don't think she could have achieved without the description of the house, as there wasn't that much of a connection built with characters due to the fact that it was a short story.

Also the way she reverses the characters roles I find interesting. Beauty begins poor and living in a small house with only her fathers. She is the subservient woman and doesn't refuse when her father tells her she must go and have dinner with the Beast. And when the Beast says she is to live him she also doesn't decline even though she wants to. As the story develops she becomes the one that is going around the house and investigating things. When she leaves the Beasts house she goes to London and lives quite a high profiled lifestyle, whilst the Beast is the one hiding from people and the world living in solitude in a tower in his house. So although at first Beauty is timid and scared of the Beast she doesn't stay that way, perhaps it is because she lived with the Beast and survived so has a sense of empowerment from that or perhaps it is because she comes to realise that the Beast is actually more afraid of her and is the one in need from rescuing from the prison (his house) that he has created. Carter appears to have made the Beast the princess and Beauty the knight; as she is the one who saves him in the end.

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The Tigers Bride is another adaptation of Beauty and the Beast and I have to say this one is my favourite so far. This is the first story where I have felt the woman has actually had a brain and taken her own initiative even though she has been put into a bad situation. She is objectified by her father who uses her as a wager in a poker game like she is a possession rather than a human being; the Beast is the same, as in that he calls her a "treasure" and that all he wants to do is to look at her. The heroine hates that she is thought of this way which is why she hates the robotic doll and the Beasts mask because they are both perfect and she doesn't like the fact that they are imitations of humanity they are objects and they remind her that to normal civilization she is one.

I actually feel sorry for the Beast at times because he is so ashamed of what he looks like he goes around covered from head to toe and is misunderstood, and the person he has to talk to is his valet who is an ape. Although what he asks for is unacceptable you can understand why because he would not be able to see a woman any other way. When the heroine rejects his offer and says her own that he can use her like a common prostitute he cries a single tear of shame. So you can see that at heart the Beast is a man of virtues and that he doesn't want her like that he just wants to know what a woman looks like and he takes her rejection personally. Perhaps the Beast thinks that it is due to his nature that she will not show herself to him. This is backed up by the fact that he sheds another tear when he sees the dread she has at disrobing in front of him and if he was just interested in her sexually then he would have taken up her offer for sex.

I was slightly confused by the ending of the story but I believe I understand now. The heroine is beginning to accept herself for what she is and understands that in the Beasts house she is more of an equal than she has ever been due to the fact that women and beast cannot have a soul so on those terms they are alike. She comes to the understanding that the beast has the ability to transform her into something more than what she is now "magus", and at the end he does by licking of her skin to show her fur. Perhaps he is revealing her true nature which is animalistic through an act which can be viewed as intimate. She is in a way claiming her true nature as she has chosen to be reborn a tigress so now she can be nobody's object because she belongs to nature and her own thoughts.

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Puss In Boots confused me the first time I read because it comes from the biased view of the cat himself. For example, where he thinks he is getting praised with all these gifts it is actually people who are throwing things at him in anger of his yowling. It is a story of how Puss helps his master get the girl of his dreams. Carter uses the girl trapped in the tower fairy-tale story line, but this time she is in a house in the middle of the city and the only monster keeping her trapped is her husband and the "old hag", the cat is the trusty steed and his master the knight. Although in this version Puss is the one who has the brains and is the one who comes up with the plan to get the girl.

In the story the woman is objectified and subjugated by many of the other characters. Firstly by the town’s people who do nothing to help her and just seem to accept the way she is being treated. Then by her husband, Signore Panteleon, who keeps her locked away in a room like a possession, only allowing her to look out of the window for one hour a day. The way he describes her, "hide", "flanks", and "bargain" shows that he sees her as subhuman and just a thing to show off his wealth. Then by the master as he at first is content to just looking at her and having sex with her, he doesn't seem to care whether he gets to know her or not at first (he appears to change his tune after he has sex with her the first time though as he wants her forever). And lastly Puss who just comments on her looks and when his master does have sex with her he sort of narrates it like she is an item "target" and he is athlete merely using her, he dehumanises her and he never seems to see a problem in doing that.

Puss is very unreserved about things of sexual nature and he finds it almost amusing that the woman found it slightly embarrassing to be getting undressed in front of man because for him his species all women are naked all the time. He sees sex as a way of claiming and dominating a woman and when he first meets Tabby he treats her as all male cats would, he thinks what he has done as a gift and that Tabby should feel honoured. He thinks in the same way Signore Panteleon's does, he believes that just fingering his wife is honour enough and he need not waste any more energy or time on her. Although, Puss does sort of contradict his own actions by making marriage seem like a choice "your husbands if you want them" so perhaps he actually thinks that sex should be pleasurable on both sides and nothing like the woman's first marriage. I think that perhaps one of the reasons Puss actually agrees to help his master bed the woman he has fallen in love with is so that he would forget about her like his master did with all the other girls and give him all his attention again.

I don't really have much to say about this story because I didn't really enjoy it and I thought it a bit tedious after the stories I had read. The way it was written and the characters didn't really capture my interest like they did in other stories, I thought that whilst it was interesting to do it from the view of the cat as things would be different from their perspectives I didn't really feel any connection to him, perhaps because he was personified enough and the things he was saying I didn't really agree with and some things like the way he greeted Tabby was more disgusting to me than anything else I have read and perhaps this is what Carter wanted us to feel but I just didn't really find the story that interesting to read, maybe in class when we analyse it I will change my mind.

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To understand what fairy tale the Erl-king came from I had to Google it and it turns out that he isn't really in any common fairy tales he is from folklore. He is generally an omen of death and is often referred to as a mischievous sprite. This certainly fits in with Carters description of him as the Heroine is aware that the "Erl-king will do you grievous harm", in fact she even puts it into its own paragraph to make the warning stand out more. Although she gives us a warning she does not heed it herself like in the Bloody chamber when the Heroine there is warned and yet she still goes towards danger, perhaps Carter is trying to show us that women are incapable of resisting danger and corruption, or maybe she is trying to show that woman can handle danger just as well as men can.

In some ways I do believe Carter was to obviously foreshadowing what was about to happen when she says things like "vertical bars of brass-coloured distillation of light" and "darkening opening". She makes it clear right from the start that something is going to happen but when she gets to it she sort of dis-attaches the narrator and goes into third person which I believe leads to a anti-climax of the story, as what happens fells less powerful as you are only a spectator not a participator so the intensity of the murder is lost. Although she does twist the ending to make it different from her other story's, she makes male domination submissive to female domination by killing the Erl-King. This is the only story in which the heroine rejects the idea that she can be happy with man and whilst that might be out of fear of being caged it is still an unusual ending in this collection of short stories.

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Overall I have so far enjoined Carters stories even though I have some of them slightly predictable such as the Bloody Chamber when he leaves the key with her because I mean like she wasn't going to go and have a look. Although I do think that if some of these stories like The Courtship of Mr Lyon where slightly longer then they could have been made better, as there would have been more of a connection built with the characters. I have found that I definitely find the characters with more human traits easier to sympathise with and I have found those stories more interesting to read even if from the outside they are considered an animal (e.g. The Tigers Bride). There is the continuing theme so far that woman are objects and are thought of as subhuman; now some of the attitudes to women (such as Signore Panteleon's attitude to his wife) would be questioned but perhaps in the 1960's this was an acceptable way of thinking. I think it is fair to say that whilst they do have the fairy tale stories lines they are not the ones you would tell a child as I believe that Carter has restored them to their original intent and has is showing all sides of the story's not just the comforting bits.