angela carter the bloody chamber and other stories

Here now are Carter’s fiendishly droll versions of fairy and folk tales like Little Red Riding Hood and Puss in Boots. in 1980.įrom original review in the Chicago Tribune, April, 1980: This very uncompromising British writer has unsettled readers before - with her sex-laden futuristic fantasies (such as The Passion of New Eve) and her feminist study, The Sadeian Woman. Here are a pair of reviews that appeared when the book was published in the U.S. As Angela Carte r made clear, ‘My intention was not to do ‘versions’ or, as the American edition of the book said, horribly, ‘adult’ fairy tales, but to extract the latent content from the traditional stories and to use it as the beginnings of new stories.’” In fact, these are new stories, not re-tellings. “ The Bloody Chamber is often wrongly described as a group of traditional fairy tales given a subversive feminist twist. They range in length from very short stories to novellas, and include:Ĭarter bristled at inaccurate descriptions of this collection, as described in this 2006 article by Helen Simpson in The Guardian, “Femme Fatale: Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber”: The Bloody Chamber is a collection of re-envisioned imaginings (not, as often described, retellings) of classic European fairy tales. Her work broke taboos and was often considered provocative. Her influences ranged from fairy tales, gothic fantasy, and Shakespeare to surrealism and the cinema of Godard and Fellini. A novelist, short story writer, and journalist, she earned a reputation as one of Britain’s most original writers.

The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (1979) is perhaps the best-known work by British author Angela Carter (1940 – 1992).

Angela carter the bloody chamber and other stories