This document provides a multitude of critical comments for the book 'The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories' by Angela Carter, used in the gothic section of the English literature Exam.
Critic What does it mean?
Gothic tales seem to satisfy a deep-seated Gothic tales satisfy the deep dark desires of the human being. Just
fascination with the limits of human like in Jekyll and Hyde, Dr Jekyll’s beast like-self rested in Mr Hyde.
experience – Kenneth Brannagh The classic example for duality, and everyone having two sides. In
TBC- the tigers bride- the girl has her skin licked off to transform into
a feline, this shows the inner beast within everyone, it also shows
that woman can have this side too and to not be ashamed of it.
These excluded areas… often retain a strong Gothic tropes, opposed belief of the orthodox religion as there was
peripheral or inverted relationship with no benign God out there to save the victims or murder the villains.
orthodox religion - Bloom
The imagination of the reader is to be It means that the imagination is excited but not entirely fulfilled.
excited if possible, without being gratified. – Humans containing a dark nature with the gothic explores, are free
Sir Walter Scott to imagine events that may occur in the story with some description.
For example, the highly erotic scene causes the imagination to
wonder but the description within the story does not gratify it.
Terror and horror are so far opposite, that It means that we are open to exploring terror but when horrified by
the first expands the soul and awakens the something our body shuts off to it, in order to save ourselves from
faculties to a higher degree of life; the other further fear. This is explored in The Bloody Chamber when the girl is
contracts, freezes and nearly annihilates the about to be killed by the Marquis. Our terror is heightened yet she is
– Ann Radcliff not killed as the horror that would bring to the readers is
tremendous, instead she is rescued by a female hero.
One of the most chilling fears that informs Repeating what occurred before us, our family etc. A prime example
these stories is the threat of ancestral of this being the Lady of the House of Love. The Lady is horrified by
repetition - Kranzler her ancestral crimes and shuts herself away in order not to do what
was don e before her. She hears voices that call her to feed yet she
does not give in showing the strength of the woman which
juxtaposes the bible with Eve and the apple. Her ancestors would
have given in, and her being strong enough not to repeat the crime
is due to her chilling fear of repeating what her family did before
her.
Gothic writers work… on the fringe of the Gothic writers explore what is uncomfortable for us to put into
acceptable, for it is on this borderland that words, the gothic also explores the uncanny and the terror within us
fear resides - Punter etc. The writing is often focused on the edge of what is morally
acceptable and what is completely not.
To make anything very terrible, obscurity The gothic enhances the idea and emotion of fear and the
seems in general to be necessary – Edmund abnormality within gothic life. The Gothic defying the norms and
Burke creates beliefs and stories that are viewed as shocking and obscure,
they often create much discomfort which was a key trope when
developing the gothic genre. The gothic created discomfort in the
narrowminded society and if the elements of the gothic were not
viewed as uncomfortable etc then the idea of fear itself would
dramatically diminish.
The prospect of an apocalypse… has The progression of the idea that the orthodox community was being
redefined the contemporary psyche. The defied as the society transgressed into more science and logical
consolation that western souls once found in thinking. The threat that God may not be actually there created
religion has faded… now hell is decidedly on much discomfort amongst the community as they no longer were
earth - McGrath thought to of had an omniscient power. This created a feeling of
unsafety. The defiance of religion had caused a mindset so hellish as
if nothing was there to purify it, the gothic played with this fear.
Part of the terror to be derived… arises not Terror I crated through our thoughts and imagination, although the
from the ways in which the stories overturn gothic tales create an underlying fear, the images created in our
out predictions but precisely from the way in head and the emotions running through our blood create the
which they conform to them – Punter ultimate discomfort. No one in the society is prepared for the
unnatural or prepared to conform to the likes of a change- urban to
the rural.
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