Hello! Things have been a bit busy between work, wedding planning, and entertaining my family who came to visit. But I always make time to read, right? I’ve just finished reading The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter after letting it sit on my TBR pile for a hot minute, and I have some thoughts. Let’s get into it.
“She herself is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening.” —Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories
Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber is not just a retelling of classic fairy tales, as it is sometimes lazily summarised. That would be selling it far too short. This collection of short stories is a fiery, daring exploration of desire, power, and human nature, where traditional narratives are completely deconstructed and transformed into something entirely new.
In her reimagined fairy tales, Carter delves into the darker, more primal aspects of humanity, giving the tales a gritty feminist edge that challenges you to reconsider your preconceived notions of love, sexuality, and violence.
Transforming the familiar
One of the key aspects of The Bloody Chamber has to be Carter’s talent for extracting the underlying content from traditional fairy tales and using it to fuel her own storytelling.
These stories are not just ‘adult versions’ of well-known tales; they are entirely new versions that draw on the archetypal imagery and themes of their original counterparts, exploring the latent (often violently sexual) content of these traditional stories.
In the titular story, for example, Carter retells the Bluebeard fairy tale, but instead of punishing female curiosity, she transforms the heroine into an active agent of her own salvation. A bit of a badass, if you ask me.
This idea of transformation is a recurring theme throughout the collection, and it is through this lens that Carter examines the fluidity of identity, gender, and desire.
A dance of sensuality and violence
The stories in The Bloody Chamber are filled with lush, vivid imagery, and Carter’s language reflects a deep pleasure in the physical world. She is a master at describing the sensuous details of her invented universe, from the hot wax dripping on a shoulder in ‘The Tiger's Bride’ to the decadent, richly decorated rooms in The Bloody Chamber’s setting.
But this sensuality is (more often than not) entangled in violence. Desire is not just a matter of romantic or sexual longing but something far darker for Carter. This is not the kind of sanitised love that your favourite childhood fairy tales offer; rather, it’s raw, primal, and laced with danger.
“His wedding gift, clasped round my throat. A choker of rubies, two inches wide, like an extraordinarily precious slit throat.” ― Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories
Viewing female desire through a new lens
Published in 1979, at a time when discussions of female sexuality were still impossibly taboo, The Bloody Chamber was revolutionary in giving a voice to female desire.
Through her heroines, Carter challenges the passive roles that women traditionally occupy in both fairy tales and real life. These women are not just objects of desire, there to be passive playthings for men—they are active participants in their own narratives, often defying the very conventions that seek to constrain them.
In ‘The Company of Wolves,’ Red Riding Hood doesn’t succumb to the wolf—no sir. Instead, she meets him on equal footing, refusing to be his victim. It’s a pretty radical reinterpretation of a story that has traditionally been about the dangers of female sexuality.
Fantasy as a vehicle for radical ideas
Fairy tales are often dismissed as children’s stories, but Carter saw them as a potent medium for exploring ideas about society, gender, and identity.
For her, as is the case for many authors in this genre, fantasy was a way of imagining how things could be different. By working within the structures of fairy tales, Carter was able to smuggle in controversial themes without alienating her audience.
Her admiration for science fiction and utopian literature is clear in her approach. As she once noted, fairy tales are like the “science fiction of the past,” allowing her to speculate on different versions of reality.
The indirection and metaphor of fantasy gave Carter the freedom to explore subjects that might have been deemed too controversial for straightforward fiction.
Final thoughts on The Bloody Chamber
Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber is a masterful exploration of human nature, desire, and transformation. It’s a collection that challenges traditional narratives and forces us to reconsider our ideas about femininity, power, and sexuality.
By using the framework of fairy tales, Carter creates a world that is both familiar and unsettling, where the boundaries between fantasy and reality blur, and where her characters are free to break out of the moulds that society has created for them. It’s subversive, but hopeful.
Ultimately, The Bloody Chamber is a celebration of the idea that human nature is not fixed—that we are capable of change, growth, and reinvention. And that kind of theme is 100% up my badly lit, morally grey street.
I hope you enjoyed this review! I don’t do these as often as I’d like to so I’d love to get your feedback. More of these? Less of them? Are they useful? I want to know. Thank you for reading ♥️