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Ashputtle Or The Mother's Ghost Analysis

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The collection of short stories “Ashputtle or The Mother’s Ghost: three versions of one story” has been taken from the book American Ghosts and Old World Wonders written by the Canadian feminist writer Angela Carter in 1987. Carter, known for her use of irony when writing her feminist stories so as to criticise the patriarchal society, confessed some years ago her interest in rewriting fairytales “I don’t mind being called a spell-binder. Telling stories is a perfectly honourable thing to do ... I do find imagery of fairytales very seductive and capable of innumerable interpretations” (Haffenden, 1985: 82). By making this statement, the writer clarifies her interest in retelling old fairytales using their plot to create a new story. As it has been said before, this is a feminist rewriting of the classical version of Cinderella written by Perrault or the Grimm brothers that consists of three short stories: “The Mutilated Girls”, “The Burned Child” and “Travelling Clothes”. The first one, “The Mutilated Girls” follows more or less the classical plot since Carter says that if she had changed it, she would have had to “provide a past for all these people, equip them with three dimensions ... they would have to learn to think and everything would change” (Carter 1993: 113). In this story she pays more attention to paternity and maternity. The second story, “The Burned Child” deals with how Ashputtle’s mother provides her daughter with everything she needs: she gives her milk, she combs her hair and she gives her a red silk …show more content…

Julia Kristeva is a psychoanalyst and feminist writer who talks about what she calls the “semiotic” and the “symbolic”; for her, all signification is made up of these two elements. On the one hand, the semiotic element can be associated with Lacan’s pre-mirror stage, understanding the “mirror-stage” as the moment when the child starts to “see himself, to find himself” in the mirror. So according to Kristeva, the semiotic element comes before this moment, it is associated with the maternal body which is, according to professor Kelly Oliver “the first source of rhythms, tones and movements for every human

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