Angela Carter’s gothic retelling of fairy tales adopts the
style of 2nd wave feminism to expose the latent inequalities within
family relationships. The gothic transgressions, of both excessive violence and
emotion, allows Carter to explore the boundaries and accentuate the hidden
aspects of family relationships. Carter specifically focuses on the patriarchal
structure behind traditional notions of family which she then disputes through
her use of heroines. Whilst stories such as the Snow Child could be considered
a ‘sinister distortion’ of family relationships through the incestuous
implications, it also exposes the empowered male, subordinate female and
Freudian subconscious within the family unit. Other stories such as the Tiger’s
Bride and the Werewolf further show the Marxist and feminist criticisms of the
traditional family, especially in regard to profits, inheritance and values.
The Snow Child, based off of the fairy tale Snow White,
appears to depict the perfect traditional family, ‘the Count and his wife’ and
their daughter. The inherent patriarchy within the family unit is highlighted
instantly as the Countess is objectified into ‘his wife’ and qualified by her
relation to the Count. Their daughter is also ‘the child of his desire’,
instead of the expected dual effort showing once again a male dominance within
the established system. Carter subverts the original tale to emphasis
underlying patriarchy as he is the driving force behind the creation of the
girl. This girl is created through magical realism and the fairy tale form, ‘there
she stood’, suggesting that these patriarchal forces are hidden within these
seemingly innocent stories. The story appears to resemble the childbirth stage
of womanhood, after previous lust, loves and marriages within the collection. However
the moral ambiguity, gothic transgressions and mystery mean that the girl could
be interpreted as a lover rather than a daughter. This would still trespass
into what is considered taboo within family relations. The man’s desire to
create the perfect women; ‘white skin, red mouth, black hair and stark naked’,
shows an obsessed with sexuality and nudity. When applied in terms of family
relationships this transgresses into the realm of incest and the Freudian
subconscious which, as is typical with the gothic, makes the reader feel
uncomfortable and shocked. The Count’s act, he ‘thrust his virile member into
the dead girl’, is one of the most shocking in the book for its immorality and
disregard for social norms. But the gothic extreme violence combined with
taboos and sexuality exposes the twisted desires represented by the Bloody
Chamber motif, which appears as the foreboding ‘hole filled with blood’ they
encounter. As foreshadowed by the last line of the previous story (the
Erl-king); ‘Mother, mother, you have murdered me’ it is also the actions of the
Countess that could be considered a distortion of family values but expose this
inherit subconscious desires in everyone. The image of the mother is usually
one that is caring and protective of her child, first seen in the collection
when the Mother saves the heroine in the Bloody Chamber, however here if the
child is read as their daughter then the Countess is jealous. The daughter
represents her replacement, both in Marxist terms of inheritance but also in
the desires of her husband. Through the gothic theme of violence, the Countess
wishes to kill the girl but only perpetuates her own fate, as her clothes ‘leapt
off the Countess… and onto the girl’ until she was left ‘bare as a bone and the
girl furred and booted’. It is also the rose the Countess asks for that when
the girls picks she ‘bleeds, screams and falls’. The rose, as a gothic motif
for female purity and objectification, symbolises the power of the male gaze
and desire. The thorns illustrates the suffering under this sexual oppression
and objectification which this both kills the young girl and enlightens the Countess
to the dangers of subordination, which is part of traditional family values, when
she realises; ‘it bites’. This revelation tries to act as a moral for that traditional
family relationship that are closely mirrored, exposing inherent and darker
trends within the patriarchy.
This
gothic mirroring of conventional families is also found in other stories such
as The Tiger’s Bride, where the heroine is ‘lost to the Beast at cards’ by her
father, and The Werewolf, where a Grandmother is lead to her death by her
grandchild who usurps her position. Both tackle the gothic theme of objectification
and Marxist themes of inheritance and substitutes. Objectification appears in
the Tiger’s Bride through the repeated image of the rose and her likening to a ‘pearl’.
She is bartered for in a game of cards and lost ‘for a King’s ransom’ which
exposes the inherent capitalistic superstructures in the family structure
alongside patriarchy. The narrator, Beauty, is unable to speak out as tradition
to the family values and gender roles but must follow. She also says that her
mother who died of her fathers ‘gaming, his whoring’ which subverts the
stereotypical image of the father as the provider to show a starker and more vivid
interpretation of some family structures which are broken. This defective unit
foreshadows the end when she leaves her father and rejects society for a reciprocal
and loving relationship with the Beast. In the Werewolf, family could appear to
be distorted in a different way, with the parricide of the grandmother by Red
Riding Hood subverting traditional family stereotypes. The grandmother is
conventionally vulnerable and represents heritage. From a Marxist perspective
this act represents inheritance and the idea that children supplant their
elders within the line of production, this is establish through the last line.
The child inherits the house, another gothic and Marxist trait, where ‘she
prospered’ showing an emphasis on value. This would suggest, rather than a
sinister distortion, the stories are closer look at the patriarchy and hegemony
within the superstructures and social values.
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