An Exploration of Angela Carter’s Feminist Approaches in The Bloody Chamber
Candidate code: jbd581
Word Count: 1506
, How do Angela Carter’s feminist approaches in literature transform gender stereotypes and
concerns?
Angela Carter is an author renowned for her bold, influential work, reshaping feminist
motifs, mythology, legends and fairy tales with a feminist perspective. She writes in the
midst of the ‘second wave’ of the 20th century feminism movement, which was particularly
focused around increasingly radical issues, including sexuality and women’s reproductive
health. One of Carter’s most well-known works, The Bloody Chamber (a collection of short
stories), picks out latent content from traditional fairy tales and imbues this with a feminist
perspective to advocate women’s rights and justices. Traditionally conceived as stories for
children, fairy tales often reinforced stereotypes, such as the feminine beauty ideal, the role
of men and women in society, good and evil. Using fairy tales to challenge concepts that are
planted so early on in a child’s consciousness is a shrewd choice. This essay considers the
ways in which Carter incorporates her radical feminist approaches in the first short story The
Bloody Chamber (based on the traditional fairy tale Bluebeard) to challenge traditional
notions of gender stereotypes, with reference to other stories in the same collection.
Carter begins The Bloody Chamber with a first person narration. As the distinguished literary
critic Terry Eagleton said: ‘To narrate is to exercise power’.1 A female narrator and
protagonist creates a powerful outlet to express feminist ideas and opinions and allows the
protagonist to reclaim her own story and to have a distinctive voice. In traditional fairy tales
the female characters were customarily passive, silent and beautiful – all characteristics
1
Terry Eagleton. From his Keynote Speech at “1 st International Conference on English Language and Literary
Studies CELLS,” University of Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina, June-2013
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