The Bloody Chamber

I happened to walk through a book fair a few weeks ago on my way to something else and felt compelled to purchase something considering I had interrupted an enthralled group of people listening to an angry man with dreadlocks talk about how capitalism has ruined culture in this society. One of the books that caught my eye was the The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter.

It is an anthology of short stories which mostly originate from traditional fables and western fairytales. Carter has used well-known stories and created new stories from them in which I believe she explores more modern concepts. I also find that her writing has a feminist angle to it. I saw this mostly with her re-telling of the 'bluebeard' story entitltled 'the bloody chamber'. This story has more of the same qualities of Clarissa Pinkola Estes' analysis in 'Women Who Run with Wolves' than the classic story.

I also enjoyed her three wolf stories which go from a morbid re-telling of Red-riding Hood to highly sexualised version that explores the budding sexuality of the Red Riding Hood character and then one where the reader is not completely sure who exactly the wolf is.

For me, the most interesting two stories are the two different retellings of the 'Beauty and the Beast' story. The first gives a more classical view of the story while showing the more human side of 'Beauty'. Yet 'The Tiger's Bride' provides a different format to this classic story by inverting the roles of transformation.


All in all it was an interesting anthology of stories. Carter is very talented with description and prose and the stories in this collection were very compelling.