The Inner Wild Woman Freed: Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber And The Overcoming Of Sexist Traits In Classic Fairy Tales

Abstract

This work intends to analyze how feminist British author Angela Carter used the characters and plot present in French author Charles Perrault’s tale “The Story of Blue Beard” (1895) to create the suspenseful narrative “The Bloody Chamber” (1979), through the establishment of a theoretical framework for the origin and development of the literary genre fairy tale and its use of patriarchal ideology for the western civilization process. By exploring works from authors such as Jack Zipes (2006), Pauline Greenhill and Sidney Matrix (2010), Weston Sue (1992), Elisabeth Ostry (1998), Tzvetan Todorov (2014) and Marina Warner (2018), it was possible to analyze Carter’s text from an informed point of view based on a particular theoretical framework. Specifically, this analysis focuses on Carter’s use of the female perspective and the attribution of qualities such as courage, intelligence and curiosity - typically male qualities in a traditional fairy tale - to female characters in order to subvert the patriarchal ideology embedded in this literary genre. Additionally, the character Blue Beard is explored as a representation of the sexism present in western societies. The unnamed seventeen-year-old protagonist is a well rounded character that represents the internal struggle of the modern woman: to blindly follow patriarchal roles without considering their own desires and necessities, or to free themselves from the mold and trust their own instincts. From that perspective, this analysis - based on the bibliographic research method - was carried out in order to provide a better understanding of Carter’s writing and her intention of criticizing gender inequality to a traditionally sexist literary genre.