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Fairytales In The Bloody Chamber By Angela Carter

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Fairy tales often show that it is the boys and men who are the ones allowed to go on adventures and save the day, Angela Carter changes that by making it that anyone - even girls and women, can share those same curious, adventurous, and even heroic characteristics. The term is mainly used for stories with origins in European tradition and, at least in recent centuries, mostly relates to children's literature. Fairytales have been around for a long time, starting off as oral stories later to be collected by the Grimm brothers in the early 19th century. It is normally males that would gather fairy tales; although women, especially elderly ones, were the best sources of fairy tales in many of the cultures. It is a characteristic of fairy tales …show more content…

Our names are what give us our identity. In fairytales it is no different, a name can be a powerful thing. An example of this is in the tale of Rumpelstiltskin, just by guessing Rumpelstiltskin's name breaks the bargain made for the first-born child. In "The Bloody Chamber," we know that the first-person narrator is female, but her name is unmentioned. This is difference between the original story and Angela Carter’s is in the original the wife is not addressed other than wife whereas as in the Bloody Chamber is called by multiple names, but mostly pet names by her husband. She is called “Madame” by workers at the castle and with some diminutive words such as “My little nun,” “Baby” (17), “My little love,” and “My child” (18) by her husband. The female narrator labels herself by some words such as “I, the orphan,” “the châtelaine” and “I, the little music student” (13), “a little girl” (18), “child” (18), and “his bride” (13). It seems that she adopts the adjectives attributed to her by the outer world. On the other hand, the man she marries to holds an ancestral name of “The Marquis” (36) which symbolizes mastery and power, and the heroine calls the Marquis, “my husband” and “my purchaser” (15). Having these names in the story not only gives the story a fable feel but also shows the power dynamic between the narrator and the Marquis. The main character goes on to describe how the Marquis looks at her like a house wife would look at meat at the supermarket, the narrator compares herself to a female figure in an etching described as “a lamb chop” (17). Comparing herself to a lamb, which is normally seen as the victim, and the Marques is equated to a lion, the hunter, shows that the narrator sees how the dynamic will

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