Angela Carter
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Study Guide
Bibliography
Course Hero. "The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories Study Guide." Course Hero. 1 Mar. 2019. Web. 28 Sep. 2023. <https://www.coursehero.com/lit/The-Bloody-Chamber-and-Other-Stories/>.
In text
(Course Hero)
Bibliography
Course Hero. (2019, March 1). The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories Study Guide. In Course Hero. Retrieved September 28, 2023, from https://www.coursehero.com/lit/The-Bloody-Chamber-and-Other-Stories/
In text
(Course Hero, 2019)
Bibliography
Course Hero. "The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories Study Guide." March 1, 2019. Accessed September 28, 2023. https://www.coursehero.com/lit/The-Bloody-Chamber-and-Other-Stories/.
Footnote
Course Hero, "The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories Study Guide," March 1, 2019, accessed September 28, 2023, https://www.coursehero.com/lit/The-Bloody-Chamber-and-Other-Stories/.
Angela Carter
1979
Short Stories
Fairy Tales, Fantasy
In The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, author Angela Carter reimagines popular fairy tales to give them a distinctly feminine bent. In the title story, French author Charles Perrault's (1628–1703) "Bluebeard" tale (1697), which is a warning to wives to respect their husband's privacy, becomes a tale of a young woman drawn into a trap in which the only escape comes through a mother's love. Other stories take tales of trapped women and empower them to free themselves. Carter's stories were groundbreaking and liberating for women at the time they were published, encouraging female empowerment, exploration of women's sexual desires, and transformation of gender roles. Her thought-provoking fantasies, with their imaginative and alluring style of storytelling, still serve to inspire readers today.
The title story is narrated in the first person by an unnamed 17-year-old music prodigy who marries an abusive man. The rest of the stories are narrated either in the first person or the third person.
Some of the stories are told in the past tense while some are told in the present tense. One of the stories, "The Snow Child," mixes past and present tense.
The title story, "The Bloody Chamber," contains a literal chamber with the blood of curious wives who dared to defy their husband's orders. Across all the stories, it also refers to womanhood—the bloody chamber being a woman's womb.
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