MY FINAL QUESTION

'Carter deconstructs and reconstructs gender roles in her collection of short stories' Using ideas from the Critical Anthology to what extent do you agree to this?

GOTHIC

Elements of a gothic genre in The Bloody Chamber:

• Romantic literature because of the obvious love stories throughout the short stories
• Influenced by the past e.g. Angela Carter was influenced by Charles Baudelaire and The Grimm Fairy Tales (which were over 100 years ago)
• Setting has an atmosphere of horror/dread/deterioration e.g. in The Tiger's Bride the male protagonist lives in a run down manor house, that looks abandoned
• Plot blurs fantasy and reality e.g. in The Bloody Chamber, the names of characters are also the names of real people
• Plot is usually pursuit, entrapment and escape like in The Erl King.

MEN

• Protagonist is isolated e.g. The Beast in The Courtship of Mr Lyon
• Usually of high social rank e.g. all the men apart from The Erl King are upper class because they are desirable to women
• Striking physical presence
• Consists of actions not feelings (the usual gender binaries)
• Villain is evil e.g The Erl King

WOMEN

• Victims (the usual gender binaries) e.g. all the women in all of her short stories
• Dark haired women over power the men by threatening them sexually

THEMES

• Sublime and Supernatural - The Courtship of Mr Lyon, The Tiger's Bride, Puss-in-Boots, Lady of the House of Love, The Werewolf, The Company of the Wolves and Wolf-Alice
• Madness, Secrets and Lies - all of the short stories
• Fear - all of the short stories
• Savagery - the male characters (The Erl King)
• Doubles/Opposites

The Snow Child

1 - In what way does the tale allude to (link to) others stories or fairy tales? Name them.

The Snow Child is similar to Carter's other stories because it features the usual features of a traditional fairy tale, such as:
- The Damsel in distress (the young child)
- The monstrous character (the count and the countess)
However there is not a happy ending, which is what usually happens in the traditional fairy tale.
2 - How does this story link to the other stories in The Bloody Chamber Collection?
The Snow Child is set in an isolated area, like the other stories, but instead of it being an isolated house/castle, it is in the isolated countryside whilst the Count and the Countess are riding their horses.
Also the male protagonist is presented as a beastly character, for example the Snow Child comes after The Courtship of Mr Lyon and The Tiger's Bride, and you can see the slight differences in the antagonist. This can be seen by the Count being obviously selfish because all he thinks about is his own needs e.g. 'I wish I had a girl as white as snow'. This differs to Mr Lyon because, although he still thinks about himself, he also takes into consideration Beauty's feelings.


3 -  The girl melts at the end.  Why do you think this is the case?  What do you think Carter could be trying to communicate?
The young girl is sexually assaulted and melts away because her virginity has been taken away from her and because she lacks control compared to the male protagonist. During a patriarchal society, women were desirable if they were pure (virgins) which made them wife worthy, however this young girl had now lost her virginity therefore losing her worth to men. The child has fulfilled her purpose which was to be there for the Count's sexually desires. Thus representing how women were presented in the past.
4 - What do you think it means when Carter says "it bites!" at the end? What is "it"?
'It' is the rose that the Countess tries to hold but pricks her in the process. This could represent several things; first I thought Carter must be showing that the Countess does not agree with the Count's actions. However she does not voice this to the Count as she wants to impress her husband so she focuses her distress from the situation on the thorn of the rose.
Secondly, the rose is a symbol of purity, something which the Countess is not. The rose pricks her because it rejects her (as the men in the society that she lives in would). She is not wanted in a patriarchal society because she has already been used by the Count so everyone else would reject her.

The Erl-King

1) How is the Erl-King presented?

Angela Carter presents the Erl-King as desirable yet deadly, as if he is the ultimate predator for the female protagonist. From previous German texts, we know that the Erl-King is not a pleasant character, his name is known to be someone who lures and tricks people. To the female protagonist in The Erl-King, something that impresses her is someone who can help out around the house, so the Erl-King has this feature 'he is an excellent house wife' because it adds to her attraction to him. From looking at the gender binary opposites, the reader would not expect this quality in a male but it could be this private quality that draws her to him even more.
On the other hand the Erl-King is also portrayed as the monstrous dominating character a female would expect to meet in a patriarchal society. Carter makes the character sound like a predator by describing him with 'white, pointed teeth with the spittle gleaming on them'. From looking at this with a female lens, we can conclude that the Erl-King is only being kind to the female because he wishes to make her his. In other words 'pointed teeth' creates a semantic field of hunger, giving the impression that he wishes to devour her, thus representing men who think they are dominant to women.

2) How is the narrator presented?

The narrator in the Erl-King proves to be unreliable from the start of this story as it is written in 1st, 2nd and 3rd person. This is done through fluidity to make the reader see the story from different view points. The 1st person viewpoint sees the story through the eyes of the protagonist, 2nd person sees the story as if the reader is the protagonist and 3rd person sees the story as reminding you it is all just a fairy tale and that it was written by Angela Carter.
When Carter uses the 1st person narrator she makes the reader sympathise with the protagonist because you see and think as she does. When the narrator says 'I knew from the first moment I saw him how Erl-King would do me grievous harm' it is showing the reader how innocent and vulnerable the female is, which therefore leads to the reader foreshadowing what will happen during the story - the Erl-King taking advantage of her virginity.

3) How does Carter use symbols in this narrative?

Throughout this short story, Carter's narrator keeps focusing on the Erl-King's eyes as if they control the female protagonist 'he winds me into the circle of his eye on a reel of birdsong'. By describing him winding her in, it gives the impression that she has no free will around this man, even if she wanted to she cannot because she is drawn in by his beauty. This demonstrates the obvious gender binary opposites of the male being active and the female being passive so the Erl-King has complete control. The ideology of his eyes being the centre of her trance carries on through the story until the end when she kills him, however she cannot kill him if she looks at him; 'Lay your head on my knee so I can't see the greenish inward-turning suns of your eyes any more'. She is active when she cannot see him, which means that he is manipulative around her, leading him to be more dominant. At the end of the story his power over her is suppressed because she cannot see his eyes.
The Erl-King is a representation of the Green-man (who is usually depicted as a kind and good character) in his descriptions 'the rusty fox, its muzzle sharpened to a point, laid its head upon his knee'. The green man motif is usually symbolism of rebirth, thus representing the rebirth of the female protagonist when she loses her virginity and gains her strength when she kills him.

4) How does carter use allusion (inter-textual references) to tell the story?

Angela Carter uses inter-textual references to tell her story by using different ideas (such as the green-eyed monster from Othello and 'Light is sufficient to itself' by Emily Dickenson). All these allusions from other sources add to make the story more interesting and give it a different spin, compared to other 'normal' fairy tales.

5) 'The Erl-King' is the most innovative and experimental of the narratives.

‘The Erl-King’ can be seen as the most innovative and experimental of the narratives as it plays around with the voice of the narrator and tenses of the the text. 'The woods enclose and then enclose again' is in third person but also present tense, when Carter says 'It is easy to lose yourself in these woods.' she reverts to second person. This suggests that 'The Erl-King' is the most experimental as none of the other texts do this and it also gives the reader a sense of reality, as in they are the protagonist in the story.

6) How does 'The Erl King' connect to other 'TBC' narratives?

'The Erl-King' is the middle story of the collection and therefore isn't completely transcending of the binary opposites and isn't completely supporting of them either. It involves similarities with the fact that the setting is isolated and there is a female narrator (the same with all the stories minus Puss In Boots). The protagonist kills the male figure (the same with The Bloody Chamber, and company of wolves).