Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber" and the Decolonization of Feminine
Sexuality. Author(s): Merja Makinen. Source: Feminist Review, No. 42, Feminist ...
Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber" and the Decolonization of Feminine Sexuality Author(s): Merja Makinen Source: Feminist Review, No. 42, Feminist Fictions (Autumn, 1992), pp. 2-15 Published by: Palgrave Macmillan Journals Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1395125 . Accessed: 19/05/2011 08:35 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=pal. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
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ANGELACARTER'STHEBLOODY CHAMBERAND THEDECOLONIZATION OF FEMININESEXUALITY Merja Makinen
Thelast thingyou'deverneedto dowith an AngelaCartertext is to send it on an assertivenesstrainingcourse.Withher death (andno one has spokenmoreeffectivelyon that than her last novel, WiseChildren,'a brokenheartis nevera tragedy.Onlyuntimelydeathis a tragedy')the obituarieshave started to evoke her as the gentle, wonderfulwhite witchofthe north.But farfrombeinggentle,Carter'stexts wereknown for the excessivenessof their violenceand, latterly,the almostviolent exuberanceof theirexcess.Manya readerhas foundthe savagerywith whichshe can attackculturalstereotypesdisturbing,even alienating. PersonallyI found(andfind)it exhilarating- youneverknewwhatwas comingnext fromthe avant-gardeliteraryterroristof feminism. MargaretAtwood'smemorialin the Observeropens with Carter's 'intelligenceand kindness'and goes on to constructher as a mythical fairy-tale figure: 'The amazing thing about her, for me, was that someonewho looked so much like the Fairy Godmother... should actuallybe so muchlike the FairyGodmother.She seemedalways on the verge of bestowing something - some talisman, some magic token . . .' LornaSage'sobituaryin the Guardiantalkedof her 'powers ofenchantmentandhilarity,hergenerousinventiveness'whiletheLate Show's memorialon BBC2 had the presentercalling her the 'white witchofEnglishliterature',J. G. Ballarda 'friendlywitch',and Salman Rushdie claimed 'English literature has lost its high sorceress,its benevolentwitch queen. . . deprivedof the fairyqueenwe cannotfind the magicthat willheal us'andfinishedby describingher as 'averygood wizard,perhapsthe firstwizardde-ltlxe'.But this concurrenceof white witch/fairygodmothermythologizingneeds watching;it is always the dangerouslyproblematicthat are mythologizedin orderto makethem less dangerous.As Carterherselfarguedstronglyin Sadeian Woman,'if womenallowthemselvesto be consoledfortheir culturallydetermined FemgngstRevgewNo 42, Autumn 1992
Angela Carter
lack of access to the modesof intellectualdebateby the invocationof hypotheticalgreatgoddesses,theyaresimplyflatteringthemselvesinto submission(a techniqueoftenused on themby men).' Thebooksare not by somebenignmagician.The strengthsandthe dangersofhertexts lie in a muchmoreaggressivesubversivenessanda muchmore active eroticismthan perhapsthe decorumarounddeath can allow. For me, the problematicsof Carter'swritingwas captured withmorefranknesswhenNewSocialistdubbedher- wrongly,I think, but wittily - the 'high-priestessof post-graduateporn'in 1987. For Carter's work has consistently dealt with representationsof the physicalabuseof womenin phallocentriccultures,of womenalienated fromthemselveswithin the male gaze, and converselyof womenwho grab their sexuality and fight back, of womentroubledby and even poweredby theirownviolence. Clearly,AngelaCarterwas best knownforher feministre-writing of fairy-tales;the memorialsblurringstories with story-tellerstand testimonyto that. TheBloodyChamberand OtherStories,publishedin 1979, is also midway between the disquietinglysarrageanalyses of patriarchyof the 1960s and 1970s, such as TheMagicToyshop,Heroes and VillainsvPassionofNewEve;andthe exuberantnovelsofthe 1980s and early l990s, Nights at the Circusand WiseChildren.This is not to arguethat the latter novelsare not also feminist,but their strategyis different.The violencein the errentsdepictedin the earliernovels(the rapes, the physicaland mental abuse of women)and the aggression implicit in the representations,are no longer foregrounded.While similareventsmayoccurin these twolast texts, the focusis on mocking and explodingthe constrictiveculturalstereotypesand in celebrating the sheerabilityofthe femaleprotagoniststo survive,unscathedby the sexist ideologies.The tales in TheBloodyChamberstill foregroundthe violenceand the abuse,but the narrativeitself providesan exuberant re-writingof the fairy-tales that actively engages the reader in a feminist deconstruction.I am therefore focusing my discussion on Carter'sfairy-talesto allowa specificanalysisof Carter'stextualuses of violenceas a feminist strategy,alongsidea case study assessing the relationshipof sucha strategyto an assessmentofher readership. Fairy-taleelementshad been presentin Carter'sworkas early as TheMagicToyshopin 1967, but she didn'tcometo considerthem as a specificgenre of Europeanliteratureuntil the late seventies. In 1977 she translatedfor Gollancza series of Perrault'sseventeenth-century tales, andin 1979publishedTheBloodyChamber,her re-writingof the fairy-talesof PerraultandMadameLeprincede Beaumont.In 1982 she translated another edition, which includedthe two extra stories by Madamede Beaumont,'Beautyand the Beast'and'Sweetheart'.Three ofthe storiesfromBloodyChamberwererewrittenforRadio3,1andshe tookpartin adaptingoneof them,'CompanyofWolves',into the filmby Neil Jordan(1984).Finally,she editedthe ViragoBookof Fairy-Talesin 1990,andthe SecondViragoBookof Fairy-Talesfor1992. Cartersawfairy-talesas the oralliteratureof the poor,a literature
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that spannedEuropeand one that encodedthe dark and mysterious elementsof the psyche.She arguedthat even thoughthe seventeenthandeighteenth-century aristocraticwriters'fixed'these tales bywriting them down and added moral tags to adapt them into parables of instructionfor children,they could not erase the darkness and the magicof the content.2She arguedthat bothliteratureandfolklorewere 'vast repositoriesof outmodedlies, whereyou can checkout what lies used to be a la modeand findthe old lies on whichnew lies are based. But folk-tales,unlikethe moredangerousmyths(whichshe tackledin Passion of New Eve) were straightforwarddevices whose structures couldeasily be re-writtenwith an informing,feministtag, where the curiosityofthe womenprotagonistsis rewarded(ratherthan punished) and their sexuality is active (rather than passive or suppressed altogether).Carter'sRedRidingHoodin 'Companyof Wolves'is more than a matchforher werewolf: What big teeth you have . . . All the better to eat you with. The girl burst out laughing; she krsewshe was nobodynsmeat. She laughed at him full in the face, she ripped off his shirt for him and flung it into the fire, in the fiery wake of her own discarded clothing. (Carter, 1979a: 118)
FeministcriticswhohavewrittenonBloodyChamberarguethat the old fairy-tales were a reactionaryform that inscribed a misogynistic ideology,without questioningwhether womenreaderswould always and necessarilyidentifywith the female figures(an assumptionthat Cartertoo shares in). They arguethat Carter,in using the form,gets locked into the conservative sexism, despite her good intentions. PatriciaDunckeruses AngelaDworkin'sPornography: MenPossessing Womento argue that Carter is 're-writingthe tales within the straitjacket of their originalstructures'and thereforereproducingthe 'rigidlysexistpsychologyofthe erotic.'AvisLewallenagrees,Carterhas beenunableadequatelyto revisionthe conservativeformfora feminist politics,and so her attemptsat constructingan activefemaleeroticare badlycompromised - if not a reproductionof malepornography. I would argue that, conversely,it is the critics who cannot see beyondthe sexist binaryopposition.In orderto dothis, two issues need to be addressed:whethera 'reactionaryformcanbe re-written;andthe potentialperversityof women'ssexuality. The discussionof the first issue will leadto an argumentfora feministstrategyofwritingandalso of reading,andhencethrowsomelight on Carter'spotentialaudiences. Firstly, the question of the form of the fairy-tale:is it some universal,unchangeablegivenordoesit changeaccordingto its specific historic rendition?Narrative genres clearly do inscribe ideologies (thoughthat canneverfix the readings),but later re-writingsthat take the genreand adaptit will not necessarilyencodethe same ideological assumptions.Otherwise,one would have to argue that the African
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novels that have sought to decolonizethe Europeancultural stereotypes of themselves,must always fail. One wouldneed to argue that Ngugi'sor Achebe'snovels, for example,reinforcethe coloniallegacy becausethey use the novel format.This is clearlynot true. Whenthe formis used to critiquethe inscribedideology,I wouldargue,then the form is subtly adaptedto inscribea new set of assumptions.Carter arguedthat BloodyChamberwas 'a bookof storiesaboutfairystories' (my emphasis) and this ironic strategy needs to be acknowledged. Lewallencomplainsthat Dunckeris insensitiveto the ironyin Carter's tales, but then agrees with her assessmentof the patriarchalinscriptions, seeing the irony as merely 'blurringthe boundaries'of binary thinking.Now I want to push the claim for irony a lot furtherthan Lewallen,and argue that rather than a blurring,it enacts an oscillationthat is itself deconstructive. NaomiSchorin an essay on Flaubert'sironicuse of Romanticism,3 states that irony allows the author to reject and at the same time re-appropriatethe discoursethat s/he is referringto. (i.e., Romanticism is both present and simultaneouslydiscreditedin Flaubert's texts). Schorhistoricizesthe continuitybetween nineteenth-century and modernistironyas inherentlymisogynistic(becauselinkedto the fetishizationof women)and calls fora feministironythat incorporates the destabilizingeffects,whilerejectingthe misogyny.She cites Donna Haraway'sopeningparagraphfrom 'A manifestofor cybergs':'Irony . . . is a rhetoricalstrategyand politicalmethod,one I wouldlike to see morehonouredwithin socialist feminism'.Utilizing this modelof an ironic oscillation,I want to argue that Carter'stales do not simply 'rewrite'the old tales by fixingrolesof activesexualityfortheir female protagonists- they 're-write'them by playing with and upon (if not preyingupon)the earliermisogynisticversion.Lookagainat the quote from'Companyof Wolves'given earlier.It is not read as a story read forthe first time, with a positivelyimagedheroine.It is read,with the originalstoryencodedwithinit, so that one readsof bothtexts, aware of how the new one refersbackto and implicitlycritiquesthe old. We read 'Thegirl burst out laughing;she knew she was nobody'smeat'as referringto the earlierLittleRedRidingHood'spassiveterrorof being eaten, before she is saved by the male woodman.We recognizethe author's feminist turning of the tables and, simultaneously,the damagedoneby the old inscriptionsof femininityas passive.'I am all forputtingnew winein oldbottles,especiallyif the pressureof the new wine makesthe old bottlesexplode'(Carter1983:69). What should also not be overlooked,alongsidethis ironic deconstructivetechnique,is the role of the reader;the questionof who is readingthese tales. These are late twentieth-centuryadult fairy-tales conscious of their own fictive status and so questioning the very constructionsof roles while assertingthem. Whena younggirl resolutely chopsoff the paw of the wolf threateningher, and we read 'the wolf let out a gulp, almost a sob . . . wolves are less brave than they seem'- we are participatingin the re-writingof a wolSscharacteristics
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and participatingnot only in the humourbut also the arbitrariness. 'Nature'is not fixedbut fluidwithinfiction. Carterwas insistentthat hertexts wereopen-ended,writtenwitha space for the reader'sactivityin mind. She dislikednovels that were closedworldsand describedmost realist novels as etiquettemanuals. Andshe placedMarilynFrench'sTheWomenvs Roomin sucha category, as well as the novels of Jane Austen. The fact that the formerwas feminist didn'tlet it off the protocolhook.Bookswritten to show the readerhowshe shouldbehave,werenot onlyan insult to the readerbut also a bore to write. Carter'sown fiction seems always aware of its playful interactionwith the reader'sassumptionsand recognitions.4 The Bloody Chamberis clearly engaging with a reader historically situated in the early 1980s (and beyond)informedby feminism,and raisingquestionsaboutthe culturalconstructionsoffemininity.Rather than carryingthe heavyburdenof instruction,Carteroften explained that forher 'a narrativeis an argumentstated in fictionalterms'.And the twothingsneededforanyargumentare,somethingto argueagainst (somethingto be overturned)and someoneto makethat argumentto (a reader). The questionthereforearises of whetherthis deconstructiveirony is activatedif the readeris uninformedby feminism.The answermust be, on the whole,no.BloodyChamberdrawson a feministdiscourse- or at least an awarenessthat feminismis challengingsexist constructions. MaryKelly,the feministartist,when challengedon the same question of the accessibilityof her Post PartumDocumentto a wideraudience, cogently argued, 'there is no such thing as a homogenousmassaudience.Youcan'tmakeart foreveryone.Andif you'reenjoyedwithin a particularmovementor organisation,then the work is going to participatein its debates.'LucyLippardgoes on to suggestthat Kelly's art 'extendsthe level of discoursewithin the art audiencefor all those who see the art experienceas an exchange,a collaborationbetween artistandaudience- the activeaudiencean activeart deserves.'(Kelly, 1984:xiii) I would argue that Carter'stales evoke a similar active engagementwith feministdiscourse. At first sight, such a conclusionmay soundodd,becauseif anyone has taken feminist fictioninto the mainstream,it is Carter.But if a feministwriteris to remaina feministwriter(ratherthana writerabout women) then the texts must engage, on some level, with feminist thinking.Thereis a wide constituencyof potentialreaderswho satisfy the minimum requirementof having an awareness that feminism challengessexist constructions.One does not need to be a feminist to read the texts, far fromit, but if the reader does not appreciatethe attackonthe stereotypesthenthe paybackforthat levelof engagement, the sheercerebralpleasureandthe enjoymentofthe iconoclasm,will be missing. And without the humouror the interest in deconstructing cultural gender stereotypes,the textual anger against the abuse of womenin previousdecadescanproveverydisquieting,evenuncomfortable,to read.To enjoythe humour- the paybackwith manyof Carter's
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texts - readers need to position themselves outside phallocentric culture(at least for the processof reading).The last two novels,with their lighter tone and more exuberantconstructionof interrelationships, probablyhave the widest readershipof all. This mellowingof textual aggression is not the only explanation for the increasing popularityof Carter'slatertexts. HelenCarrnotesthat the mid-eighties saw the arrivalof SouthAmericanmagicrealismon the Britishscene. Fromthat moment,Carter'sreaderscouldassignher anarchicfusionof fantasyandrealismto an intelligiblegenre,andso feel moresecure. However,a fullerexplanationof Carter'spopularityneeds to take accountofmarketinganddistribution:notjust accessibilityof ideology, but accessibilityof purchase. Is the text on the general bookshop shelves?Is it marketedundera feministimprint,thus signallingto the potentialreader,for feministeyes only?Nicci Gerrardin her examination of how feministfictionhas impactedon mainstreampublishing, argues that Carteralong with Toni Morrisonand Keri Hulme, have beenmorewidelyreadbecausewhilestill remainingexplicitlyfeminist, they have brought feminism out of its 'narrowself-consciousness'. Narrowis always a difficultadjectiveto quantify.In Britain,Angela Carter- like MorrisonandHulme- has beenpublishedby mainstream publishersfromthe beginning.Thepublishinghistoryforherhardback fictionruns:Heinemann1966-70, Hart Davis 1971-2, Gollancz197784, Chatto&Windus198S92. As faras marketinganddistributionare concerned,Carterhas always been presenteddirectlyto mainstream audiences. Both Passion of New Eve (1977) and Bloody Chamber(1979) initiallycameoutunderGollancz's'Fantasy'series,placingthemwithin a specificgenre, and the formerwas the first into paperback- being issuedbyArrowin 1978.In 1981PenguinissuedBloodyChamberalong with Heroes and Villains and The Infernal Desire Machine of Dr Hoffman.In the same year Viragopublishedthe paperbackof Magic Toyshop,followedby Passionof New Eve the year after,andFireworks in 1987. The coversof both publishinghouses initially focusedon the surreal,vaguelysci-fielements,Penguindoinga niceline in suggestive plants,designedbyJamesMarsh.(Thankfully,Viragohas scrappedthe originaltawdrycoverof the sci-ficoupleembracing,on Fireworks,for the more tasteful modernistdepictionof a Japanese urban environment.)ViragoalsopublishedCarter'snon-fictionandcommissionedher to edit collectionsof stories. Nights at the Circusreacheda very large audience,in paperback. Picadorpublishedit in 1985andit was takenup as a majorleadtitle for Pan to promoteand distribute.Gerrardcites Virago'saveragefiction print-runas 5,000-7,000in the secondhalf of the eighties.By the early nineties,Nights at the Circushad achievedsales which exceededthis figureten timesover.But eventhis successneedsto be placedin context. It still onlyreachesabout20 per centof the sales fora numberone best seller, such as MartinAmis'sLondonFields or Julian Barnes'sHistory of the Worldin 10l/2Chapters.5
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So Carter's involvement with feminist publishers came relatively late in the day and seems to have stemmed from Virago's publishing of her first piece of non-fiction, Sadeian Woman:An Exercisein Cultural History(1979). Her fiction's reputation was made from mainstream publishing houses and was reinforced by the awards of mainstream literary prizes: the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for Magic Toyshop; Somerset Maugham Award for SeveralPerceptions;Cheltenham Festival of Literature Award for BloodyChamber;and the James Tait Black Award for Nights at the Circus.The shortlisting of the 1984 Booker Prize caused a minor furore whenNightsat theCircuswas not included
Angela Carter
(it was wonthat yearby AnitaBrookner'sHoteldu Lac).Evenmanyof the individualtales fromTheBloodyChamberfirst saw the light of day in smallbut fairlyprestigiousliteraryreviewssuchas Bananas,Stand, NorthernArts Review,and Iowa Review(the only academicjournal), none of them notably feminist in their editorial policy. And 'The CourtshipofMrLyon'was firstpublishedin the BritisheditionofVogue. ClearlyI am arguingthat texts that employa feministirony,that engageactivelywith a feministdiscourse,donot automaticallyconfine themselvesto a feministghetto.Thereis a wide and growingaudience for at least some kinds of feministfiction.But I am also arguingthat exuberancesells better than discomfort.The more textually savage books are publishedby Virago in paperback;the more magical by Penguin;and two celebratoryones by the big-moneybidders,Picador andVantage. But what also sells in this commodifiedage of ours, as everyone knows,is sex, and Carter'stexts have always engagedwith eroticism. The quotesincludedby Penguinon the bookcoversinvariablymake referenceto 'the stylish erotic prose','erotic,exotic and bizarre romance'.Andthis clearlyalsohas a lot to dowithherpopularity.In order to counterLewallenandDuncker'sperceptionof her workas pornographic,I needto examinethe feministstrategiesof her representationsof sexuality, particularlythe debate surroundingthe constructionof sexualitywithinthe BloodyChamberstories.I believe Carteris going some way towards constructinga complexvision of female psychosexuality,throughherinvokingofviolenceas well as the erotic.Butthat womencanbe violentas well as activesexually,that womencanchoose to be perverse,is clearlynot somethingallowedforin the calculationsof such readersas Duncker,Palmerand Lewallen.Carter'sstrengthis preciselyin explodingthe stereotypesof women as passive, demure cyphers.Thatshe thereforeevokesthe gamutofviolenceandperversity is certainlytroubling,butto denytheirexistenceis surelyto incarcerate women back within a partial, sanitized image only slightly less constrictedthan the Victorianangelin the house. Carterwas certainlyfascinatedby the incidenceof'beastmarriage' stories, in the originalfairy-tales,and she claimedthey were international.In discussinghowthe wolvessubtlychangedtheirmeaningin the filmof the story,she commentsthat neverthelessthey still signified libido. Fairy-talesare often seen as dealing with the 'uncanny',the distortedfictionsof the unconsciousrevisitedthroughhomelyimagesand beasts can easily stand for the projecteddesires, the drive for pleasureofwomen.Particularlywhensuchdesiresarediscountenanced by a patriarchalculture concernedto restrict its women to being property(withouta libidoof their own,let alonea mindor a room).6 In all of the tales, not only is femininityconstructedas active, sensual, desiringand unruly- but successfulsexual transactionsare foundedon an equalityandthe transfolmingpowersof recognizingthe reciprocalclaimsof the other.Theten tales divideup into the first,'The Bloody Chamber',a re-writingof the Bluebeardstory; three tales
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around cats: lion/tiger/pussin boots; three tales of magical beings: erl-king/snow-child/vampire; and finally three tales of werewolves. Each tale takes up the theme of the earlier one and commentson a differentaspectofit, to presenta complexvariationoffemaledesireand sexuality. In the Finaleto SadeianWomanCarterdiscussesthe wordfleshin .
.
ts varlous
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meamngs:
the pleasuresofthe flesharelrulgarandunrefined7 evenwith an element ofbeastlinessaboutthem7althoughfleshtints havethe sumptuous succulenceofpeachesbecausefleshplus skinequalssensuality. But,if fleshplus skinequalssensuality,thenfleshminusskinequals meat.(Carter,1979b:137-8)
This motif of skin and flesh as signifyingpleasure, and of meat as signifyingeconomicobjectification, recursthroughoutthe ten tales, and stand as an internal evaluationof the relationshipshown.The other recurringmotif is that of the gaze, but it is not always simply the objectification ofthe womanby maledesire,as we shall discover. In each of the first three tales, Carterstresses the relationship between women's subjective sesuality and their objective role as property:younggirls get boughtby wealth,one way or another.But in the feministre-write,Bluebeard'svictimizationof womenis overturned andhe himselfis vanquishedby the motheranddaughter. Thepuppetmaster,open-mouthed7 wideeyed,impotentat the last, saw his dollsbreakfreeoftheirstrirlgs,abandonthe ritualshe hadordained forthemsincetimebeganandstartto live forthemselves.(1979a:39)
In the two versionsofthe beauty-and-the-beast theme,the lion andthe tiger signifysomethingotherthan man.sFora lionis a lionanda manis a man'arguesthe firsttale. In the first,Beautyis adoredby her father, in the second, gambledaway by a profligatedrunkard.The felines signifyotherness a savageandmagnificentpower, outsideofhumanity. In one story,womenarepampered,in the othertreatedas property,but in bothcasesthe protagonistschoseto explorethe dangerous,exhilarating changethat comesfromchoosingthe beast. Bothstoriesare careful to showa reciprocalawe andfearin the beasts, as well as in the beauty, andthe reversalthemereinforcesthe equalityof the transactions:lion kisses Beauty'shand, Beauty kisses lion's;tiger strips naked and so Beautychoosesto showhim'thefleshlynatureofwomen'.In bothcases the beasts signifya sensualitythat the womenhavebeentaughtmight devourthem, but which,when embraced,gives them power,strength and a new awarenessof both self and other.The tiger'sbridehas her 'skinsof a life in the world'lickedoff to revealher ownmagnificentfur beneaththe surface. Each of the three adolescentprotagonistshas been progressively strongerandmoreaggressive,andeachhas embraceda sensualityboth
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sumptuousand unrefined.With the fourthstory, 'Puss in Boots',the cynicalpussviewinghumanloveanddesirein a lightheartedcommedia dell'arterendition,demythologizessex with humourandgusto. Ifthewildfelineshavesignifiedthe sensualdesiresthatwomenneed to acknowledgewithinthemselves,the three fictivefiguressignifythe problematicsof desire itself. 'Erl-king'is a complexrenderingof a subjectivecollusionwith objectivityand entrapmentwithin the male gaze.Thewomannarratorbothfearsanddesiresentrapmentwithinthe birdcage.Theerl-king,wearetold,doesnotexistin nature,butin a voidof her own making (hence his calling her 'mother'at the end). The disquietingshiftsbetweenthe twovoicesofthe narrator,firstandthird person,representthe twocompetingdesiresforfreedomandengulfment, in a tale that delineatesthe vew ambivalenceof desire. 'Snowchild' presents the unattainabilityof desire, which will always melt away before possession.No real person can ever satisfy desire's constant deferral.'Ladyof the Houseof Love',with its ladyvampire,invertsthe genderrolesof Bluebeard,with the womanconstructedas an aggressor with a manas the virginvictim.But with this constructionof aggressor, comesthe questionof whethersadists are trappedwithintheir nature: 'cana birdsing onlythe songit knowsor can it learna new song?'And, throughlove and the reciprocaltheme - he kisses her bloodyfinger, ratherthan her suckinghis blood- this aggressoris able to vanquish ancestraldesires,but at a cost.In this tale the overwhelmingfearof the cat tales, that the protagonistmightbe consumedby the othernessof desire,is givena newtwist. The three wolf stories also deal with women'srelationshipto the unruly libido,but the werewolfsignifies a stranger,more alienated othernessthan the cats, despite the half-humanmanifestations.Old Grannyisthewerewolfinthefirsttale,andthe girl'svanquishingofheris seen as a triumphofthe complaisantsociety(the symbolic)that hounds the uncanny.The tiger'sbridehad been a rebelliouschildand chooses desireoverconventionalwealth;nowwehavea 'good'childwhosacrifices the uncannyfor bourgeoisprosperity.In the secondtale, 'Companyof Wolves',the list ofmanifestationsofwerewolves,the amalgamofhuman andwolf;symbolicandimaginary,concludeswiththe secondRedRiding Hoodstory.Thistime the wolfdoesconsumethe granny,but is outfaced byRedRidingHood's awarenessthatinfreelymeetinghissensuality,the libido will transform'meat'into 'flesh'.After the fulfilmentof their mutualdesire,he is transformedintoa 'tender'wolf,andshe sleepssafe betweenhis paws.Thefinaltaleis ofa girlraisedbywolves,outsideofthe socialtrainingofthe symbolic.Alludingto Truffaut'sL'Enfantsauvage, LewisCarrolland Lacan,the younggirl growsup outsidethe cultural inscriptionsandlearnsa new sense of self fromher encounterswith the mirrorandfromthe rhythmsofherbody.She learnsa sense oftime and routine.Finallyher pitybeginsto transformthe werewolfDukeintothe worldof the rational,wherehe toocanbe symbolized. ReadingCarter'sfairy-talesas her female protagonists'confrontations with desire,in all its unruly'animalness',yields rich rewards.
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However,PatriciaDunckersimplisticallyreadsthe tales as 'allmenare beasts to women'and so sees the female protagonistsas inevitably enactingthe roles of victimsof male violence.Red RidingHoodof the twicementionedquotation,accordingto her 'seesthat rapeis inevitable . . . anddecidesto stripoff,lie backandenjoyit. Shewantsit really,they all do.'Reading'TheTiger'sBride'Dunckerclaimsthe strippingof the girl'sskin 'beautifullypackagedand unveiled,is the ritualdisrobingof Becauseshe readsthe beastsas men the willingvictimof pornography'. in furryclothing,DunckerarguesCarterhas been unableto paint an 'alternativeanti-sexist language of the erotic'because there is no conceptionof womenas havingautonomousdesire.But Carteris doing that. Readthe beasts as the projectionsof a femininelibido,and they becomeexactly that autonomousdesire which the female characters needto recognizeand reappropriateas a partof themselves(deniedby the phallocentricculture).Isn'tthat whyat the endof'Tiger'sBride'the tiger'slickingrevealsthe tiger in the womanprotagonist,beneaththe culturalconstructionofthe demure?Lookedat again,this is not readas woman re-enactingpornographyfor the male gaze, but as woman reappropriating libido: And each stroke of his tongue ripped off skin after successive skin, all the skins of a life in the world, and left behind a nascent patina of shining hairs. My earrings turned back to water and trickled down my shoulders; I shrugged the drops off my beautiful fur. (Carter 1979a: 67)
Lewallendoes read the beasts as female desire, but argues that the female protagonistsare still locked within a binary prescriptionof either 'fuckor be fucked'.However,I wouldargue she too bringsthis binarydivisioninto the discussionwith her, when she asserts 'Sade's dualism is simple: sadist or masochist,fuck or be fucked,victim or aggressor'.She uses a readingof Carter'sreadingof Sade,in Sadeian Womanto informthe storiesandargues,wronglyI think,that Carteris putting forwardwomanas sexual aggressor(Sade'sJuliette), rather than victim (Sade'sJustine). I wouldsuggest that Carteris using de offemalesexuality,to arguethat Sadeto argueforawiderincorporation it toocontainsa wholegamutof'perversions'alongside'normal'sex. My mainproblemwithLewallen'sdualismis that it incorporatesno senseof the dangerouspleasuresofsexualityandthat is notnecessarilysimplya choice between being aggressor or victim. Her 'fuck or be fucked' interpretationignoresthe notionofconsentwithinthe sado-masochistic transaction,andthe questionofwhois fuckingwhom.Pat Califia'snovel of lesbianS&Millustrateshow it is usuallythe masochistwhohas the real control,whohas the powerto call'enough'.Whileaskingfora more mutualsexual transaction,Lewallendismissesthe masochismin 'The BloodyChamber',as toodisturbing,'myuneaseat beingmanipulatedby the narrativeto sympathisewith masochism'. Now I don't deny that it is disturbing(except,perhaps,for the readerwho is a masochist).And if it was the only representationof
Angela Carter
female sexuality, I wouldbe up in arms against its reinforcementof Freudianviews. But it is only one of ten tales, ten variant representations.Moreover,the protagonistretractsherconsenthalfwaythrough the narrative,whenshe realizesherhusband,Bluebeard,is planningto involveher in realtortureand a 'snuff denouement.Up until then, the adolescentprotagonisthas not denied her own interest in the sadomasochisttransaction: I caught myself, suddenly, as he saw me, my pale face, the way the muscles in my neck stuck out like thin wire. I saw how much that cruel necklace became me. And, for the first time in my innocent and confined life, I sensed in myself a potentiality for corruptionthat took my breath away. (Carter, 1979a: 11)
Throughoutthe narrative,this 'queasycraving'forthe sexual encounters ('likethe cravingsofpregnantwomenforthe taste ofcoalorchalkor taintedfood')is admittedbythe narrator,until she discoversthe torture chamberand the three dead previouswives. Then she removesher consentand,with the help of an ineffectualblindpiano-tuner7and her avengingmother,Bluebeardis defeated.OfcourseI wouldnot denythat the tale, throughits oscillationwiththe originalfable,alsocommentson male sexual objectification and denigrationof women.Clearlymuchof its representationdrawsonthis - butthe maleviolatoris alsoportrayed as capturedwithin the constructionof masculinity(just as the female vampirewas trappedwithin hers). The protagonistcan recognizehis 'stenchof absolutedespair. . . the atrociouslonelinessof that monster'. Carter'srepresentationsof sexualityare more complexthan many of her criticshave allowed. Maggie Anwell, in an excellent analysis of how the film The Companyof Wolveswas unable to get past the binary divide of victim/aggressor,does argue for a more complexpsychic reading of female sexuality represented in the tale. She suggests that the confrontation between'represseddesire'(wolf)andthe 'ego'(RedRiding Hood)ends with the ego'sability to acceptthe pleasurableaspects of desire,whilecontrollingits less pleasurableaspects. The story, with its subversion of the familiar and its structure of story-telling within a stozy suggests an ambiguity and plurality of interpretations which reminds us of our own capacity to dream . . . Not only does the material world shift its laws; we experience our own capacity for abnormalbehaviour (Anwell, 1988: 82).
Are we to call only for constructionsof sexualitywith whichwe feel at ease, at this pointin time,still withina phallocentricsociety?Especially whenall we haveto inscribeourownsexualidentitiesfromare cultural constructions?I wouldarguethat just as it is the debatesaroundthe marginalizedand pathologized'perversities'that are breakingup the phallocentricconstructionof sexuality,so Carter'stexts are beginning
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to sketch the polymorphouspotentialitiesof femaledesire.These new representationsmay not fit into comfortablenotionsof sisterhoodbut they may well proveliberatingall the same. And Carterclearlyknew what she was doing. In her forewordto her edition of the Perrault stories she caricaturesthe seventeenth-century rationalisticresponse: The wolf consumes Red Riding Hood;what else can you expect if you talk to strange men, comments Perrault briskly. Let's not bother our heads with the mysteries of sado-masochisticattraction. (Carter, 1977: 17-8)
Until we can take on boardthe disturbingand evenviolentelementsof femalesexuality,we willnotbe ableto decodethe fullfeministagendaof these fairy-tales.Wewill be unableto recognizethe representationsof drivesso far suppressedby ourculture. Yet this, of course, is why it is so enormously important for women to write fiction as women - it is part of the slow process of decolonising our language and our basic habits of thought. I really do believe this . . . it has to do with the creation of a means of expression for an infinitely greater variety of experience than has been possible heretofore,to say things for which no language previously existed. (Carter, 1983: 75)
With the death of Angela Carterwe have lost an importantfeminist writerwhowas ableto critiquephallocentrismwith ironicgusto andto developa widerandmorecomplexrepresentationoffemininity.Neither the mystificationof her gentleness nor the assumptionthat representatiotrsof sexuality are locked into pornography,should blind us to Carter'sworks'attemptsto decolonizeourhabitsof thought.If we need to expandourcriteriato encompassherachievementsX then so muchthe better. Notes MerjaMakinen lectures in English literature and history of ideas at Middlesex University. She is the co-author,with LorraineGamman, of Female Fetishism: A New Look,forthcomingfrom Lawrence & Wishart. 1 Later published together with another of her radio plays, as ComeUnto These YellowSands. 2 For all that I will go on to question Patricia Duncker's reading of Carter's representation of female sexuality, she does give a good historical reading of fairy-tales, with much more analysis than Carter'sversion. 3 The European literary movement of the last quarter of the eighteenth century, which stressed the claims of passion and emotion and a sense of mystery in life. 4 'I try when I write fiction, to think on my feet - to present a number of propositionsin a variety of differentways, and to leave the readerto construct her own fiction for herself from the elements of my fiction'(Carter, 1983). 5 I am indebted to Helena Blakemore's forthcoming doctoral thesis 'Reading
Angela Carter
Britishfiction',Middlesex strategies:problemsin the studyof contemporary University. especiallythe notoriousGoblinMarket, 6 ArguablyChristinaRossetti'spoetryR employeda similardevicein the nineteenthcenturyandEllenMoersargued fora traditionof'femalegothic'tales that suchstrategiescouldbelongto. 7 That Duncker argues the blind piano-tunerrepresents castrated male sexuality,referringto Rochesterin JaneEyre,situatesherfeministstrategy. She doesnot incorporatelater psychoanalyticfeministreadings,that could allowCarter'sprotagonistto elect for a man with whomshe will not be the objectofthe malegaze,as she waswithherhusband. References (1988)'Lolitameetsthe werewolf,TheFemaleGaze:WomenAs Viewersof Popular Cultureeditors LorraineGammanand Margaret Marshment,London:TheWomen'sPress. Sluts Boston,Mass.:Alyson. CALIFIA,Pat (1989)Macho Pandora. CARR, Helen (1989)editor,FromMyGuyto Sci-FiLondon: Gollancz. CARTER,Angela (1977)FairyTalesof CharlesPerraultLondon: (1979a)TheBloodyChamberand OtherStoriesLondon:Gollancz. (1979b)The Sadeian WomanAn Exercisein CulturalHistoryLondon: Virago. (1983) 'Notes from the frontline'in On Genderand Writingeditor MicheleneWandor,London:Pandora. (1985) ComeUnto TheseYellowSands: Four Radio Plays Edinburgh: BloodaxeBooks. the fairytales:AngelaCarter'sbloody DUNCKER, Patricia (1984)'Re-imagining chambers'LiteratureandHistory10(1)Spring,pp.3-14. London:Pandora. GERRAElD^Nicci(1989) IntotheMainstream 17February,p. 37. GUARDIAN (1992) 'Thesoaringimagination', Routledge. KELLY,Mary (1984) PostPartumDocumentLondon: presentedbyTracyMcLeod. THE LATE SHOW (1992) BBC2,18 February, on LEWALLEN,Avis (1988)Waywardnrls but wickedwomen?'in Perspectives editorsGaryDayandCliveBloom,London:Macmillan. Pornography WomenLondon:TheWomen'sPress.Observer, MOERS,Ellen(1978)Literary 23 February1992,'Magictokenthroughthe darkforest',p. 61. tokenthroughthe darkforest,'23 February,p. 61. OBSERVER (1992)sMagic PALMEEkPaulina (1987)'Fromcodedmannequinto birdwoman:AngelaCarter's magicflight',in WomenReadingWomenWritingeditorSue Roe,London: Harvester. FrenchStudies17 SCHOEt,Naomi (1988)'Fetishismandits ironies'l9th Century (1 + 2) Fall-Winter198S9, pp.89-97.
ANWELL,Maggie
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