In an interview with John Haffenden published in 1985, Carter abruptly and comically dispatched Hans Christian Anderson and J. As she wrote in the preface to her edition of Perrault, these old tales represent “the great mass of infinitely various narrative that was, once upon a time and still is, sometimes, passed on and disseminated through the world by word of mouth-stories without known originators that can be remade again and again by every person who tells them.” However, Carter had little interest in fairy tales as vehicles for mere fantasy and escapism. The title also highlights some of the other kinds of narratives informing Carter’s tales: the gothic fictions of writers such as Poe, Hoffman, and Lefanu and, most controversially, the pornographic writings of the Marquis de Sade.Ĭarter’s interest in fairy tales was an abiding one, evident throughout her body of fictional writing for both adults and children, and even more so in her work as an editor and translator, which yielded The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault (1977), Sleeping Beauty and Other Favourite Fairy Tales (1982), The Virago Book of Fairy Tales (1990), and The Second Virago Book of Fairy Tales (1992). The combination of sex and violence implied by The Bloody Chamber gestures back to the often gruesome nature of the ancient oral tales that began to enter the literary realm only when they were gathered and recorded by such early folklorists as Charles Perrault and Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. The Bloody Chamber collects 10 of Angela Carter’s short stories, linked by their common source material, familiar tales from the folk tradition including “Bluebeard,” “Snow White,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Puss in Boots,” and “Little Red Riding Hood.” As the volume’s title suggests, in Carter’s hands these tales often bear little resemblance to the generally tamer versions best known to contemporary readers and moviegoers.

Analysis of Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter