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Perrault's The Bloody Chamber

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Dead women, entombed women, threatened women: many have argued that a fear of the feminine is at the root of much Gothic fiction. Outline how this fear of the feminine is present in, or perhaps challenged by, 2 of the gothic fictions we’ve looked at this semester.

The fear of the feminine is a constant in gothic fiction, especially during its infancy; women were the unknown; the world of the maternal and feminine was engulfed by male paranoia, ignorance, and fear. This universal trepidation is a defining connection between the tale of Bluebeard and its female-centred 1979 retelling The Bloody Chamber, written by Charles Perrault and Angela Carter respectively.
The blatant distrust and fickle representation of women is conveyed to the reader …show more content…

Perrault, for example, recites his tale in a traditional and classic manner, beginning with the cliché “Once upon a time. . .”(104) allowing the reader to anticipate the direction of the story, based on their own knowledge of the ‘fairy tale morphology’ devised by Vladimir Propp (Cardell, 2017). The remainder of the story is told in a very simplistic, unambiguous, third-person-omniscient fashion. This lack of embellishment advertises the treatment of the female characters openly, …show more content…

In Perrault’s telling of the tale, it was the “two brothers [who] went after him. . . they caught him. . . they cut him open with their swords, and left him dead” (Perrault 113). The bride’s champions who safeguard her against her murderous husband are men, therefore reinforcing the gender stereotype that a ‘woman needs a man to save her’. In Carter’s the Bloody Chamber, however, she offers and alternative conclusion to the tale with this role of saviour being placed upon the young girl’s mother, as “she raised my father’s gun, took aim and put a single, irreproachable bullet through my husband’s head” (Carter 142) and thus gives immense power to the otherwise ‘weak and submissive’ woman, shattering the stereotypical

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In doing so, examine the feminist lens’s interpretation of the text. How are gender roles defined? Where to women fit into the text’s plot line. What do you notice about the women in this text? Is this congruent (similar) to society’s view of women, by today’s standards?

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Women were stereotyped by not having the ability to be independent. They were not allowed to have the same roles as men, instead they were controlled by men. In the story, Breaking Tradition Ernst states, people in “polite society” demanded that ladies live under the guidance and protection of fathers, husbands, or other male relatives” (Ernst P2). Women were told what their life would consist of.

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Gothic fiction has been around for centuries and many great works were created with gothic fiction being the main role. “The Vampyre” by John William Polidori is amongst one of the most famous works under the gothic fiction genre. In “The Vampyre” reflects several themes which also reflect current real life problems and issues of the 19th century. Those themes that are going to be discussed are time and place, power, sexual power, the uncanny, the sublime, crisis, and the supernatural and the real.

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Because the main character felt free after the death of her husband, it is logical to assume that all women in relationships with men are under this same element of control. This leads perfectly into the inference that the same is true in society- women are always seen as feeble and powerless. Lastly, when discussing the many elements associated with gender present in this novel, readers should reflect on their own lives and the elements of control present in their relationships with those of the opposite sex. This is a viable point for discussion because it is an idea that is supported by every event in the story- from the main character’s reaction to the news of her husband’s supposed death, to her heart attack at the conclusion of

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Furthermore, since Dacre subverted the role of female protagonists in gothic fiction, we will devote one subchapter to

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She relies “on [her] brothers” (Perrault par. 7) to save her from her tyrannical husband and is, quite literally, at the mercy of her husband’s “great cimeter” (par. 7) — a phallic symbol of destructive patriarchal authority— that threatens the female’s capacity to voice her opinion. In fact, the wife’s ability to speak is constantly threatened in Perrault’s tale; it is almost destroyed by the wife herself, who is so “eager to see what was in [Bluebeard’s] closet” (par. 3) that she is “in danger of falling down [the] stairs and breaking her neck” (par. 3), and by Bluebeard, who nearly “strike[s] off her head” (par. 7) as a punishment for her disobedience. As the wife is forced to obey the vocal commands of Bluebeard to “come down at once” (par. 7), she falls “on her knees, [and] beg him to spare her life” (par. 7) in a display of submission.

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'Transgression is often an important element in Gothic writing'. Compare its uses and effects in 'The Bloody Chamber'. Angela Carter celebrates transgression through the form of short stories. The gothic element is the understanding of going beyond boundaries and testing the limits of oppressive power structures.

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Throughout the story, we see that women are only seen as objects of pleasure, as women only can hold onto their power through loyalty, beauty, sex and desire. Some of the in-framed stories depict women as defiant wives, as beautiful mistresses and slaves who are always eager to please men, and as prisoners secluded from the outside world. The main reason for

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311). ‘The Bloody Chamber’ and the other short stories featured in The Bloody Chamber do show violence and abuse which generally can conflict with the feminist writing style of the twentieth century. Some find ‘The Bloody Chamber’ to be disturbing because of its violence and sexual content, but “Carter, however, uses the language of the story not to lull the reader into ignoring the dangers posed by Bluebeard but instead to heighten the readers awareness of the threat posed by the sadomasochistic underpinnings of much of decadent culture, which created a dangerously passive and readily victimized feminine ideal.” (Kaiser 32). Since the collection of short stories in The Bloody Chamber are rewrites of fairy-tales, it draws critics to its irony.

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The reader’s understanding of the fairy tale genre changes when reading this story and reading Atwood’s. Perrault follows all of the generic conventions of a fairy tale while Atwood challenges them. The reader would have a new perspective on Perrault’s story after reading Atwood’s because it allows them to recall how all fairy tales are very similar and stick to their generic conventions. This allows people to think about the way society sees women as homemakers and men as breadwinners,

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In literature, an archetype is a character whose actions represent a certain type of person or a reoccurring symbol. Every one person has their own archetype that they can relate to, which forms personalities and certain behaviors. In Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, modern archetypes can be applied to Huck as the seeker and Jim as the caregiver. Hucks behavior can relate to the modern archetype known as the seeker.

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All throughout the novel, there is the constant reminder of a women’s stereotypical role as the

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In addition to virginal innocence, during her funeral, the girl wore white “fitting for a virgin” to increase the significance of this chastity. Reaching the end of the story, the same innocent girl comes back into view. She “put on [her] white burial dress, [her] white veil, as befits a virgin” and excepts her fate just as women accepted their place in society (Atwood 266). Quite unexpectedly, I have attempted to show this story in a new light. Through the reading of Margaret Atwood’s short biography and her clever “Lusus Naturae,” I found an interesting symbolic connection between the treatment of women and the monster in this story.

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Feminist literary criticism’s primary argument is that female characters have always been presented from a male’s viewpoint. According to Connell, in most literary works, female characters often play minor roles which emphasize their domestic roles, subservience and physical beauty while males are always the protagonists who are strong, heroic and dominant (qtd. in Woloshyn et al.150). This means that the women are perceived as weak and are supposed to be under the control of men. Gill and Sellers say that feminist literary criticism’s approach involves identifying with female characters in order to challenge any male centred outlook.

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