THE BLOODY CHAMBER

by Angela Carter ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 30, 1979

Carter has previously translated the fairy tales of Perrault, for whose wit and self-possession she is a fair match. But these new reworkings of familiar fairy tales and legends would have curled the toenails of the great Academician, and are not for the timid of our own day. It would be clumsy and limiting to say that Carter sexually allegorizes Perrault and Mme. de Villeneuve; of these ten stories every one is couched in a different mode, from the ingenious Gothic-erotic of the title story (Bluebeard, here done in with splendid panache by the heroine's mother) to the picaresque (Puss in Boots, a furry Figaro resolving a commedia dell'arte dilemma into brisk domesticity). Carter's Erlking is a gentle woodland recluse, as amorally innocent as the birds he cages and as terrible as Goethe's child-snatcher; her Little Red Riding Hood bursts out laughing at the threats of the wolf and embraces him in a fearless consummation: for all Granny's bones under the bed, ""she knew she was nobody's meat."" A demure retelling of ""Beauty and the Beast"" is followed by a fierce and magnificent inversion in which it is the Beast who transforms Beauty. Strength and tenderness violently wrested from weakness and cruelty are the recurrent motifs of these extraordinary exercises, though one is rarely tempted to think of any of Carter's people living happily ever after. The writing is vigorous, mercurial, and exquisitely lurid to (though usually not beyond) the point of self-parody. There is no liking Angela Carter; one must either detest her or simply stand in awe.

Pub Date: Jan. 30, 1979

ISBN: 1840028874

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979

Categories: FICTION