How is a feminist message contained in 'The Snow Child'?

 

Setting in 'The Bloody Chamber'

Setting in a gothic text is one of the most significant part of the narrative. The setting in 'The Bloody Chamber' reaffirms the images of rebirth and sexuality that continues throughout the text. The sea is described as smelling of 'amniotic salinity', this is a reference to birth. The ocean also surrounds the castle so Carter could be making a comment on how women are tapped by motherhood. The sky is described as being 'pink as roses' and 'orange as tiger-lilies', the flowers are symbolising the flowering of the young woman as she is becoming a woman. She arrives in November, and this juxtaposition between the colour of the new day and the harsh landscape of winter could possibly show the difference between the two characters. The narrator is a girl, blossoming into a young woman, but the Marquis is a man associated with death. This analogy links into the gothic fascination with the motifs of darkness and light.

The castle is a typical gothic setting, occurring in many gothic texts. It is described as being in 'faery solitude', and this is a classic gothic theme of blurring the boundaries between reality and fantasy. This description also links into the genre of fairy tale, relating back to the original text 'Bluebeard'. Carter comments how she wanted to rework old stories. By doing this, Carter is able to expose the much more frightening reality of fairy tales. The narrator also says 'That lovely, sad, sea-siren of a place', this foreshadows the death that surrounds the place. A sea-siren lures sailors to small islands and this eventually kills them. A sea-siren is typically a femme fatale, and Carter may be subverting the trope by making the siren the Marquis lure women to their deaths.

Within the Castle, the bridal chamber is used to foreshadow the Marquis' obsession with decapitation and martyrdom. There is a picture of Saint Cecilia in the room, and Cecilia told her husband that if he consummated the marriage an angel would punish him, she was later beheaded but survived for three days. This painting symbolises of the story, the narrator gives her virginity to her husband, and then she is punished by being killed. The picture can also be another example of the typical gothic theme: an obsession with the past. In the bridal chamber, there are a 'dozen mirrors and this could be interpreted as a reference to the twelve apostles, and how the Marquis is captivated by this idea of martyrdom, again foreshadowing her death. In the bedroom, there are 'undertakers’ lilies’; this funereal description represents the death of the narrator's innocence and autonomy. The symbols of death in the bedroom connect to the narrators views about the consummation as she says that the Marquis 'impales' her.

In the Marquis' library, there are books that demonstrate the Marquis' murderous ways. The narrator finds the engraving by Rops "Reproof of Curiosity”. The engraving depicts a man becoming aroused by whipping a naked girl. This shows how the Marquis is a man who loves the power that is given to him by the patriarchal structures. Carter is making a point about how within art the abuse of women is romanticised and fetishized. By artists, without seeing how dangerous the reality is. The quote 'there was a pungent intensification of the smell of leather' demonstrates the Marquis' power over every aspect. It seems that after the woman discovers the extent of her husband's obsession with pornography the smell suddenly becomes more intense. This adds to the gothic element of creating fear and tension, as it shows how the Marquis is there even though he isn't. The narrator finds 'The Pandora's Box’ and this is significant because it foreshadows the discovery of the chamber. Both women within these stories damn themselves but the narrators discovery of the bloody chamber saves her. Pandora and the narrator are worried about the consequences of their actions, but they are told by men that curiosity was expected of them. This highlights how men stereotype women and how women always want to have something they are denied. This could be a phallic symbol or how women are denied the same opportunities as men.

The Bloody Chamber-Intertextual references

Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
The Debussy prelude "La terrasse des audiences au clair de lune"

• The protagonist is lost in a Debussy prelude- associated with femininity.

Odion Redon (1840-1916)

• Symbolism, a late 19th Century movement of Post-Impressionist painting, flourished throughout Europe between 1886 and 1900 in almost every area of the arts.
• Symbolist painting had strong connections with the Pre-Raphaelites and Romanticism, as well as the Aestheticism movement.
• Like all these movements, Symbolism was in large part a reaction against naturalism and realism.
• Where realists and naturalists sought to capture optical reality in all its objective grittiness, and thus focused on the ordinary rather than the ideal.
• Symbolists sought a deeper reality from within their imagination, their dreams and their unconscious.

The Bloody Chamber-Angela Carter

The title of the text:

• The title is deliberately uncomfortable- woman's womb.
• References history- producing children is all women are reduced to.
• Wants women to regain control by defining themselves and their roles.

TBC is a post modernist feminist gothic text

• Description of men- predatory/powerful.

Rewriting of classic Gothic tales

• Gothic readings of traditional folk and fairy tales.
• Ration vs. irrational- gender is irrational and Carter is challenging this.

Feminist Gothic

• Patriarchy: a social system that is organised to award prestige and power to men
• Carter: 'social fiction of femininity'- fairy tales told when we are children

'Demythologising business'

• Carter wants to be shocking to shake people out of their complacency.
• Post modernism- uncertainty, plurality and multiplicity
• 'One is not a woman but becomes one'

Marxism and Feminism

Marxism is a set of economic, social and political ideas based of the teachings of Karl Marx and Friedrech Engels. His ideas are cited as an inspiration for the revolutions in Russia, China and Cuba.

The key ideas are:

1. All history is the history of class struggle.
2. History is the actions of men in pursuit of their own ends, but not in circumstances of their own choosing.
3. Capitalism is not only a economic system, but also a political system.

A Marxist analysis called the 'Polarisation of the Classes' states that the class structure is becoming increasingly polarised, and soon the two opposites will disappeared into either the bourgeoisie (upper classes) or the proletariat (working classes).

The Marxists believe that deviance is anything that differs from the societal norm. Certain behaviour is seen as deviant because it differs from the societal norm, not because it is particularly harmful.

Marxist critics will identify some of these ideas within literature. They will look at:

• the way the way the relationships between characters are treated favourably or unfavourably
• the way the author encourages the reader to hold certain assumptions or values
• how the actions of the characters are shown not to be due to the actions of humans, but are a result of fate or other hidden forces
• the narrative voice of a text, and what that tells us about the society we live in
• how the text highlight conflicts between the different class systems.

Feminism is the movement that advocates women's rights on the grounds of social, economic and political equality to men.

Feminist literary criticism looks at:

• the representation of women within literature (what drives the character? how is the woman described? is it fair?)
• narrative voice (is it a woman? do the perspective of men in a text fairly describe women?)
• the politics of woman authorship (i.e. Bronte sisters, why did they have to take pseudonyms?)
• the exclusion of women from the literary canon (GCSE texts- mostly male writers/poets)

The Mother in 'The Bloody Chamber'

Within this story, Carter uses the mother of the narrator to present a character that is seemingly free from the oppression of men. She is described as "indomitable" and "eagle-featured", which differs to the narrator whose husband looks at her like 'horseflesh'. The mother also "nursed a village through a visitation of the plague" and "shot a man-eating tiger'. Carter uses these descriptions to show how women can be both feminine and maternal, but also strong and masculine. This clashes with the concept of gender roles. The story raises questions about the idea that women are only truly women if they are feminine.

The mother breaks free from social conventions, marrying a soldier for love instead of marrying for money or status, and even keeps his revolver in her purse at all times. The mother marries for desire, and is not ashamed of it, and worries that her daughter is marrying the Marquis for the wrong reasons by asking her "Are you sure you love him?" When her daughter replies "I am sure that I want to marry him", the mother is disappointed. Her reaction foreshadows the danger the narrator is in.

The phone call to the mother is described by the woman as something to "look forward to". Carter is showing the importance of the relationship between mother and daughter. The mother is a symbol of strength in the story. The narrator tries to ring her mother after finding the previous wives but the line is dead. This emphasises the point of how men can isolate women from their families, and therefore have the ability to make them powerless.

In contrast to the original fairy tale 'Bluebeard', the heroine waits for her brothers to save her. In 'The Bloody Chamber' it is the mother. The description of her mother on the back of the horse is undoubtedly masculine. She is described as a "wild thing", holding a revolver, and through this description Carter is subverting masculinity as the mother saves her daughter instead of a man. The mother explains to the narrator that she knew she was in trouble as a result of 'maternal telepathy'. This gives women strength in something that would usually be used to oppress them.

Throughout this story the mother is used as a buffer between the extreme masculinity of the Marquis, and the naïve behaviour of her daughter. She displays masculine traits, but ultimately, it is the more feminine aspects of her personality that enable her to save her daughter.