Wolves

In 'The Company of Wolves', the wolves are initially described as terrifying predatory 'assassins' who desire the smell of 'meat'. Already, echo's of Carter's previous themes are present. 'Meat' has been used to describe how men view woman, objectifying them and degrading them. Also, the animalistic wolves have in common with the predatory males, such as the Marquis, possessing 'unkind' power, which foreshadowing the symbolic meaning of the wolves which will develop.

Reinforcing this link is the shape-shifting between men and wolves. A hunter kills a wolf in a trap, but as he does so the wolf turns back into "the bloody trunk of a man", which suggests Carter is highlighting the bestial nature of men. This bestiality of men is also linked to the idea of sex. If you burn a werewolves clothes, leaving the man naked, you "condemn him to wolfishness for the rest of his life". The wolf is therefore associated with a naked man, and nudity is associated with sex, clarifying the link.

The werewolf's connection to the bestial nature to man is applied when we finally reach the actual story. When the werewolf reveals himself to the Grandma, she is threatened by his "huge" genitals, conveying the idea of men using sex as a threat perhaps, or that Carter is wary of the dangers of sex.

The wolves "huge" eyes "fixed upon her" (the girl), which refers to the male-gaze; the objectification of women physically, which is Carter again conveying the predatory nature of men to claim women purely as their 'prey', a trophy or an object. However, the girl turns the situation around, and knows that she is "nobody's meat". She refuses to be objectified by the man, and seizes control of the situation by burning the werewolves clothing. As he can no longer take the shape of a man, he is no threat to her. Carter is making the point that masculinity can be more dangerous and deadly to women than any carnivore. The declaration of defiance is a model of Carter's view that women should refuse to accept the allotted passive role of victim.

In 'The Werewolf', the wolf is widely considered to be the embodiment of a preceding generation of mothers. The wolf is in fact the child's grandmother, and the discovery that the wolf's paw she cut off is in fact "a hand toughened with work and freckled with old age" shows her realising she cannot respect women of previous generation who have taken on the role created for them by men. This is shown through Carter's condemning descriptions of the "crone", "old woman" and "witch" that is the grandmother. The child's act of resistance to her grandmother shows how she resists the fate of her nature being warped by men into something which Carter considers, monstrous, into an active, independent woman who 'prospered. She does not have to be a shift-shaper like her grandma, pretending to be something she is not.

Rest of The Erl King

There are various references to Rossetti's poem 'Goblin Market', therefore the themes connected to the poem are introduces in this story; sexual temptation. "He spreads out a goblin feast of fruit" for the girl, which directly refers to the symbolic goblin fruit which tempts the girls in Rossetti's poem to, as considered, give the men their virginity. This suggests the 'goblin-ridden' girl has been sexually temped by the Erl King, relating to the Gothic themes of female sexuality.

The issue of female repression is also presented through the metaphorical use of the Erl King's eyes. The eyes are a "reducing chamber", where the girl states she becomes "as small as my own reflection". This suggests that the girl, when looking into the eyes of the Erl King, realises she is being pushed down to a low, or "small" status, she is smaller, weaker, and less important than he is. She then describes after that after the Erl King has captured her, he shall "mock her loss of liberty". Carter is perhaps here suggesting that men enjoy being the dominant sex, and enjoy repressing women and denying them freedom, which may fit into her previous criticisms of the male perceptive of women in her previous stories.

The Erl King.... So Far

Initially 'The Erl King' pulls the reader into a dream-like realm, with constant paradoxes and ambiguous language, making the narrative difficult to grasp onto. "Perfect transparency must be impenetrable", the juxtaposition of the contrasting ideas of light throws the reader into an unsettling world. The personification of the forest enhances this dream world which Carter creates; the light is "nicotine-stained fingers", the trees are "anorexic", and the wood seems conscious of itself, one "must stay there until it lets you out again". This creates feelings of entrapment, making the reader feel claustrophobic, and describes the foreboding and sinister characteristics of the wood.

The visual colour scheme - "brass-coloured", "sulphur yellow", "russet slime"- evokes the transition from autum to winter, a hard and dirty season where everything is "withered" and "discoloured". This may be a metaphor for the theme of mortality and death, which is a theme reffered to throughout the narrative. An awareness of the impermanent condition of exsistance is presented through the forest, where "all will fall still, all lapse", and "a haunting sense of the imminent cessation of being" is embodied, reinforcing the forest's connection with death.

The narrative seems to cling onto a state of certainty, trying to persuade the reader that the "ambiguities" of the forest are purely ones "own illusion", and that "everything in the wood is exactly as it seems". This seems contradictory to the pervasive personification of the wood previously, where "the trees stir with a noise like the taffeta skirts of women who have lost themselves in the woods and hunt round hopelessly for the way out". The narrative is claiming that although it is dreamlike, it is absolutely certain, suggesting it is the human imagination that creates supernatural ideas, and unlike the other stories in the collection, tries to allow no room for a suspension of disbelief. We are trying to be made to disbelieve the magical aura of the wood. However, when the image of "an imaginary traveller walking towards an invented distance" is presented immediately after this claim of reality, it is hard not to fall into the dreamlike, supernatural state of the story.

The narrative voice is also constantly shifting; the reader is positioned in various perspectives which creates an unsettling effect. The initial first person narrative adopts the ominous perspective of the third person, she knows everything about all the animals in the Erl King's garden, notices the "ash-soft doves", "diminutive wrens", and "freckles thrushes". She subtly shifts to the second person, addressing the Erl King directly; "I feel your sharp teeth", placing us in the perspective of the Erl King before we realise we have left the first person narrative. The cohesion of the events in the story are not chronological; no direct speech between the girl and the Erl King allows this, and the reader is shifted between past, present and future tenses, creating both a disorientating and entrancing effect.

The Snow Child- Alternative meanings

The Count wishes for a girl "as white as snow". This could mean that as the colour white symbolises purity and virginity, these are the characteristics he desires his girl to encompass. This idea is reinforced by the juxtaposition to the blackness surrounding his wife. She wears "high, black" boots and rides a "black horse", black symbolising darkness and evil, suggesting his wife embodies these characteristics. The contrast between the suggested darkness of his wife and the whiteness of the girl he longs for accentuate that this is perhaps the meaning behind this wish is the Counts desire for a "Madonna", rather than a "Whore".

However, this wish may also be symbolising the male visual obsession with women. He is only concerned with the visual elements of his fantasy girl, the colour of her as perfect as "snow". The male-gaze is a notion repeatedly referred to within Carter's previous stories, therefore it is possible that it is referred to again here.

Conversely, the unmissable intended contrast between the wife and the girl he wishes for strengthen the argument that the Count's main priority is a pure virgin, and not the evil, 'whore' of his wife. Therefore, this may undermine slightly the visual obsession element of this wish.

However, whilst considering that the man wishes for a girl who is the antitheses to his wife, we can note how Carter may be subtly criticising the unsatisfiable disposition of men. One woman is not enough for men, therefore he always desires a more beautiful, or in this case more innocent female.

Litgothic.com post

Ok so on the website I came across a link that lead to a page called "The Monstrous Woman", which I thought would have ideal references to what we were currently studying. However, most of the links were broken, yet I did find this information on Angela Carter explaining where her themes she includes in her stories came from, which I found really interesting.

Carter was a notable exponent of magic realism, adding into it Gothic themes, postmodernist eclecticism, violence, and eroticism. Throughout her career, Carter utilized the language and characteristic motifs of the fantasy genre. "A good writer can make you believe time stands still," she once said. Her work represents a successful combination of post-modern literary theories and feminist politics.At the age of 20 she married Paul Carter, and moved with him to Bristol. Before starting her English studies at the University of Bristol.

The article also said how one of her early novels, 'The Magic Toyshop' first saw her developing themes of sexual fantasy, and revealed Carter's fascination with fairy tales and the Freudian unconscious. It tells a modern myth of an orphaned girl and the horrors she experiences, when she goes to live with her uncle and grows through a rite of passage into adulthood.

It then quotes Carter herself; "I can date to that time and to that sense of heightened awareness of the society around me in the summer of 1968, my own questioning of the nature of my reality as a woman. How that social fiction of my "femininity" was created, by means outside my control, and palmed off on me as the real thing."

In 1970, having separated from her husband, Carter went to live in Japan for two years. During this period she worked at many different jobs, among others as a bar hostess. The experience of a different culture had a strong influence on her work.In 1979 Carter published 'The Sadetan Woman', where she questioned culturally accepted views of sexuality, and sadistic and masochistic relations between men and women. Surprising some of her readers, Carter defended the Marquis de Sade's images of women. Maybe the Marquis she defends is the Marquis she refers to in 'The Bloody Chamber"?

"I am the pure product of an advanced, industrialized, post-imperialist country"

The article describes her as the "high-priestess of post-graduate porn." 'Wise Children" her last novel, which focused on the female members of a theatrical family, was was marked by optimism and humor.

The Tiger's Bride

"My Father lost me to The Beast at cards"
This initial sentence of the story epitomises many of the main themes Carter includes in her collection. This sentence addresses the taking of a child, a weak paternal figure, a reference to a beastial, powerful male figure, and also that women are purely objects of possession; foreshadowing 'The Tiger's Bride's' main issues.

Indeed, we are introduced to very weak paternal figure, who "beggars himself" of all his possessions. The spiteful condemning of the father by his daughter suggests our protagonist is not the naiive, sweet female we follow in the previous stories. She is astute and opinionated; looking down on her father as he "rids himself" of her inheritance. It is her who has to guide her foolish father away from casinos, and it is her that protects him from his own weakness, suggesting in this story, the power lies in females.

Her unprecedented power over men is reinforced by her humiliation and mocking of The Beast. With "heartless mirth" she lets out a "raucous guffaw" at The Beast's embarrassed request to see her naked. She further humiliates The Beast by shaming him, asking him to drop her "in front of the church" after he has had his way with her, to such an extent that she reduces him to tears.

However, despite her evident power over men, she is astute enough to show awareness of her social standing as a woman. She knows her father values her "at no more than a king's ransom", no more than an object he possesses. Her request to have her face covered whilst the rest of her body is bare suggests she wishes to have her identity separated from her body, as she realises her body, the female body, is just a mere object of usage without holding it's own identity.

Her awareness of the "male-gaze" is far more prominent than in any other story so far. She describes life as "a market place, where the eyes that watch you take no account of your existence". Women are bought and sold like objects in a market place, being constantly looked and objectified down to the status of "white meat".

Yet the ending of the story seems to give hope to women. She acknowledges that "the tiger will never lie down the with the lamb", if the tiger is symbolic of men, and the lamb represents women, this phrase suggests she believes men will never subject themselves to fall down to the same low standing as women. However, she states that "the lamb must learn to run with the tigers". This appears to be a strong, feminist message; that women must step up and become equals with men, a feeling which was very prominent in the 1960's at the time of publishing. Indeed, the ending of the story, where the protagonist does become equal to The Beast; acquiring "lovely fur" and turning into a tiger like her host, reiterating the main message of the story.

The setting of "The Tiger's Bride" contrasts with that of "The Courtship of Mr Lyon", to that this story follows classic elements of the Gothic, set in a foreign "sunless" and "treacherous" place far away, allowing us to suspend our disbelief and accept the magical happenings of the story. The Beast's home is also a classic Gothic, "ruined" setting; with "infinite complexity" and "broken windows", the palace seems "uninhabited", the place almost seems dream like, again allowing a suspension of our disbelief of the story, in comparison the modern, city setting of London in the previous story, which makes our suspension of disbelief less likely.

Is The Courtship of Mr Lyon intended to be in the style of a traditional fairy tale?

Evidently, Carter employs explicit elements of traditional fairy tales into her story. We are initially introduced to a sweet, innocent “lovely girl” who completes “her chores” whilst her father is absent; the epitome of a traditional fairy tale character. Even her name highlights her characteristics and her purpose, “Beauty”. Even here, Carter is using the traditional narrative fairy tale tool of giving characters names which purely reflect their purpose. Her father is “Beauty’s father”, and Mr Lyon is initially merely “the Beast”; underlining his primary role and characteristic.
Expectantly, “the Beast” fulfils our expectations of an animalistic, violent figure of fairy tales. His hands are “claws”, and he speaks in a “renewed roar”. By employing such animalistic descriptions, we are led to believe that the Beast is indeed, a lion, not man; “for a lion is a lion, and a man is a man”. These supernatural, magical connotations are used frequently in traditional fairy-tales.
On the theme of magic, the alternative reality Carter places the Beast’s residence in reflects the setting outside of reality adopted in traditional fairy tales. His house “barred all within it from the world outside the walled, wintery garden”, and absorbs the reader into “a suspension of reality”. However, the modern city setting of London which Beauty returns to contrasts with the entirely magical fairy tale settings employed in traditional fairy tales. Carter seems to be, as she does in ‘The Bloody Chamber’, humanising her stories, and adding a twist to traditional fairy tales.
This modern twist seems to be reflected also in Carter’s characterisation. Beauty, as the plot develops, seems to move from her “inner light” and virtuous, innocent disposition into one of vanity and petulance. She develops in London, away from her fairy tale cottage and the magical Beast’s house into a “spoiled child”, with her father’s new found fortune. This contrasts with traditional fairy tales, through which the female character remains merely an object of innocence and virtue throughout. Again, Carter seems to be humanising the situation, as modern readers may expect a girl living a life of luxury in London to fall to vanity.
The Beast also seems to break away from his designated role of the violent animal. His actions resemble that of a respectful, yet shy gentleman when he is around Beauty. He flings himself “at her feet” to kiss her hands, and finds himself “hesitant” when he is around her. This idea is reinforced by his biblical descriptions; his “halo” and references to the “Gospel” evoke positive, heavenly connotations, suggesting the Beast is not intended to conform to the traditional fairy tale villain.
Perhaps the most significant, yet subtle contrast to traditional fairy tales is the effect Beauty has on the Beast. The women in fairy tales are usually objectified as objects of possession, to be claimed and married by the male hero. However, in ‘The Courtship of Mr Lyon’, it is the woman whose eyes “pierce appearances and see your soul”. The woman is the one looking at the man, almost an inverted option of the “male-gaze”, a notion describing the visual objectification of woman found in traditional fairy tales. Conversely, the Beast still “inspected” the photo with “wonder”, suggesting Carter intends to retain some elements of the male aesthetic appreciation seen in traditional stories; yet the emphasis on Beauty’s piercing look undeniably adds a certain twist to a traditional fairy-tale.
The other elements of traditional stories Carter intended to employ in her story are that of a condition; Beauty’s stay with the Beast is “the price of her father’s good fortune”, and also a happy ending. The phrase “Mr and Mrs Lyon” suggests marriage at the end of the story, an ending usually seen in traditional fairy tales. These elements, and the points above all point to the conclusion that Carter did intend her story to be in the style of a traditional fairy tale; however she still adds modern twists to break away and humanise the story.