Angela Carter The Snow Child and The Tiger's Bride

• Which Fairy story does this remind you of and why?
• How would you describe the tone of the opening?
• What do you know about the cultural depiction of step mothers?
• How is the girl objectified in the second paragraph?
• What ias established betweeen the girl and the Countess?
• How would you describe the language of the fourth paragraph and what is the effect?
• What are the key binary oppositions in this text? How is the concept used in paragraph 5?
• What do you make of the ending? How could you describe it as gothic?

How could you use this story to answer the following questions?

To what extent do you agree with the view that, in gothic writing, death is the

punishment for sin?

“Gothic literature demonstrates the consequences of disrupting the natural order

of things.”

Consider the texts you have read in the light of this comment.

How do you respond to the idea that gothic villains make evil seem attractive?

Learning Objectives:

To improve my essay writing skills

To explore The Tiger's Bride

To compare The Tiger's Bride to The Courtship of Mr Lyon?

To relate some critical theory to both stories.

Now what band would you put this essay into and why?

What would you put this one into - what does it do?

Make notes on the questions in pairs

How does this story differ from The Courtship of Mr Lyon?

How does the Beast differ?

How does Beauty differ?

What is similar about the two stories?

How would you compare the endings to both stories?

What does Margaret Atwood say about both stories?

In the Bloody Chamber Angela Carter reverses gothic traditions so that the males become the victims instead of the females.

Consider at least two of the stories in the Bloody chamber in light of this comment.

What is the most important quotation to remember from The Tiger's Bride

The Tiger

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,

In the forests of the night;

What immortal hand or eye,

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies.

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? what dread grasp,

Dare its deadly terrors clasp!

When the stars threw down their spears

And water'd heaven with their tears:

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

What traditional fairy Story do these stories both draw on?

What would be the latent sexual content of that story?

Helen Simpson The Femme Fatale The Guardian 2006

The Bloody Chamber is often wrongly described as a group of traditional fairy tales given a subversive feminist twist. In fact, these are new stories, not re-tellings. As Angela Carter made clear, "My intention was not to do 'versions' or, as the American edition of the book said, horribly, 'adult' fairy tales, but to extract the latent content from the traditional stories and to use it as the beginnings of new stories." She knew from the start that she was drawn to "Gothic tales, cruel tales, tales of wonder, tales of terror, fabulous narratives that deal directly with the imagery of the unconscious". She drew a sharp distinction between what she described as "those fragments of epiphanic experience which are the type of the 20th-century story", and the "ornate, unnatural" style and symbolism of her favoured form, the tale. When, in her second collection, The Bloody Chamber, she continued in this Gothic mode but with narratives suggested by traditional west European fairy tales, she found she had conjured up an exotic new hybrid that would carry her voice to a wider audience than it had reached before.

The Bloody Chamber is like a multifaceted glittering diamond reflecting and refracting a variety of portraits of desire and sexuality - heterosexual female sexuality - which, unusually for the time, 1979, are told from a heterosexual female viewpoint. This was the year, remember, that Penelope Fitzgerald's Offshorewon the Booker prize, and Penelope Lively's Treasures of Time won the National Book Award. Anita Brookner's first novel, A Start in Life, would not appear for another two years. Margaret Thatcher, 53, had just been elected Britain's first prime minister. Angela Carter, 39, had seven novels to her name, none of which had so far received more than marginal recognition.

To be the object of desire is to be defined in the passive case.

To exist in the passive case is to die in the passive case - that is to be killed. This is the moral of the fairy tale of the perfect woman.

The Snow Child