User:SoggyTimbit/sandbox

Themes and Styles: Sexuality and Pleasure
Common themes within Carters work is sex, sexuality and eroticisms. She created stories that look at themes such as feminism, women's sexuality and the erotic form it can take on. Not only that by the physiological roll sexuality takes on, how for many, sex is about power and that power brings liberation to the characters (Lau,2008).

In “Wolf Alice”, a loose retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, the main character is a feral child that was raised by wolves and walks on all fours, doesn't speak as a human would and uses smell as her way to understand the world around her. It is the animal qualities that Wolf Alice still possess that creates the eroticism of the story and the subtle ways the story takes on an almost pornagraphic feel. “Wolf-Alice smells her way through the world, thus recalling the Freudian association between feminine sexuality and the olfactory, an association whose logic Gallup makes clear: “The penis may be more visible, but female genitalia have a stronger smell”. Deeply connected to women, to women’s smells, to the smell of menstruation, the olfactory is marginalized by the privileging of the visual, is made “odious, nauseous, because it threatens to undo the achievements of repression and sublimation, threatens to return the subject to the powerlessness, intensity and anxiety of an immediate connection with the body of the mother”. It is also the way that Carter chooses to describe our character that plays with the concept of pornagraphy and subtle eroticism with the description of Wolf Alice. Her lips are red, thick and fresh; her legs are long, lean and muscular; Her nose a quiver.

Carter has talked before about the sexual context of her stories in The Bloody Chamber, saying “I was taking ... the latent content of those traditional stories and using that; and the latent content is violently sexual" . The stories in The Bloody Chamber have been described as being filled with deep and unmistakable imaginative pleasure. That the short stories within the book contain characters seeking pleasure, and sex, but also contain sensuous detail, like the candle which drops hot wax on to the girl's bare shoulders in "The Tiger's Bride", for the readers pleasure.

Inspiration:
The main inspiration for the stories within The Bloody Chamber came from the French author Charles Perrault and his versions of stories such as ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, ‘Puss in Boots’ and ‘Bluebeard’ as well as, Beauty and the Beast by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve. Many of these tales are based in folklore and myths from the 16-17th century. A fairy tale’s basis in folklore provides a traditional framework upon which modern fears can be explored. Carter used this idea to explore contemporary attitudes towards sex and gender in western society which is considered to still be a largely patriarchal society. Carter also took inspiration for The Bloody Chamber, from the work of Marquis de Sade, and especially his novels Justine and Juliette. She also took much inspiration from the American author Edgar Allan Poe. In the afterword of her first collection of short stories entitled Fireworks, she makes that following observation: ‘I'd always been fond of Poe and [Ernst] Hoffmann – Gothic tales, cruel tales, tales of wonder, tales of terror, fabulous narratives that deal directly with the imagery of the unconscious – mirrors; the externalized self; forsaken castles; haunted forests; forbidden sexual objects’.

References:
Carter, Angela. The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories. Penguin Books, 2015.

“Angela Carter, Gothic Literature and The Bloody Chamber.” The British Library, The British Library, 29 July 2016, www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/angela-carter-gothic-literature-and-the-bloody-chamber#.

“Helen Simpson on Angela Carter's Bloody Chamber.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 24 June 2006, www.theguardian.com/books/2006/jun/24/classics.angelacarter.

Lau, J Kimberly. “Erotic Infidelities: Angela Carter’s Wolf Trilogy”. Wayne State University Press. Vol 2. 2008. Pg 77-94

Orenstein, Catherine. Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: Sex, Morality, and the Evolution of a Fairy Tale. BasicBooks, 2003.

Sivyer, Caleb. “Angela Carter, Gothic Literature, and The Bloody Chamber.” Angela Carter Online, 8 Nov. 2016, angelacarteronline.com/2016/11/10/angela-carter-gothic-literature-and-the-bloody-chamber/.