Angela Carter suggested that her work could be read as Literary Criticism.
We might regard the fairy tale ‘Beauty and the Beast’ as a gift from tradition – is it possible to say how Carter regards such a gift? (I.E. is her reading subversive or destructive or does it reinforce the original?)
Angela Carter has taken the stable basic story of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ (‘Beauty’ leaves family and is transformed through her encouter with ‘Beast’) and, in ‘The Tiger’s Bride’, has subverted the plot. To be subversive is to ‘... Undermine the established system’. So although we can pick out some common events and characters in both stories, Carter has undermined the original plot, central characters and message. Early in the story the message ‘If you are so careless of your treasures, you should expect them to be taken from you’ is evident. This assumes that Beauty is a commodity that can be readily used and lost. Later in the story this idea changes. Through being '...at liberty for the first time in (her) life', Beauty does indeed learn to '...run with the tigers'. Ideas that subvert or undermine traditional stories are apparent in many of the stories in 'The Bloody Chamber'. Carter snatched:
Out of the jaws of misogyny itself ‘useful stories’ for women.
‘The Tiger’s Bride’ is a ‘useful story’ as it charts the maturity of a young girl. It plays with gender stereotypes and confronts misogyny.
‘The Tiger’s Bride’ takes place in a gothic setting that suitably matches the melancholy, bestial atmosphere. Descriptions like 'Through archways and open doors, I glimpsed suites of vaulted chambers opening one out of another like systems of Chinese boxes' remind us of Piranesi with the descriptive intricacy and precision. The landscape is ‘melancholy, introspective...sunless, featureless...cruel’. This could almost describe Beauty’s sisters in the original story. With no mention of these negative, identical sisters in ‘The Tiger’s Bride’, Beauty is isolated and her story becomes a stronger focus for the reader. Fairy tales were originally moral tales for the young, but Carter uses 'The Tiger's Bride' to explore ‘the labyrinth of female desire’. It is important to see the fairy tale story as part of a grand tradition, but in Carter’s hands the message is feminised and redirected to a more modern and politicised audience.
She believed that the goal of fairy tales was not a conservative one, but a utopian one, indeed a form of heroic optimism – as if to say: One day, we might be happy, even if it won’t last.
Through Carter’s eyes the ‘gift’ of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ becomes a modern morality tale; a moral exercise in growth and sexuality. Neil Jordan’s film ‘A Company of Wolves’, written by Angela Carter, plays with similar themes. The lycanthropy integral to this story, becomes the transformation into a tiger in ‘The Tiger’s Bride’. Both original stories are modern versions of old fairy tales. The links between the two are striking.
Aristotle in ‘Poetics’ stated that character must be revealed through action or events. ‘The Tiger’s Bride’ is told from Beauty’s point of view (homodiegetic narrative). Carter’s use of language – the semic code – allows us immediate insight into the character and distinctly shows us how different this Beauty is. She is, at times, ‘raucous’, ‘heartless’, ‘haggard’, ‘clumsy’, ‘pale’, ‘hollow-eyed’. Although ‘che bella’, this is clearly not the same Beauty as the original Beauty. She is indignant, petty and irritable. Our image of what beauty is, of what beauty should be is challenged. Both Beauty’s are virginal, but Carter does not draw on any notion of naivity. Carter’s Beauty watches her father with ‘furious cynicism’ as ‘hot, acrid gouts of wax’ drip onto her skin. She pities her father as he ‘magnificently concluded the career he had made of catastrophe’. The alliteration of the harsh ‘C’ prods us in the chest – we feel some of her pain. This sense of pity is extended when later the father is ‘tear-beslobbered’. With a hint of Ovid, the father’s rose is ‘smeared’ with his daughter’s blood when her finger is pricked. In this story the father is an embarrassment. How can Beauty be a dutiful daughter with a father such as this? Beauty feels ‘locked in ice’. She is stuck and before her transformation sends a mechanical version of herself back to her father to keep him happy. This copy will be sufficient. Her father has his money and his empty happiness has returned. The repeated image of a mirror highlights the unreality of the reflection. Only the real person has significance. Beauty has got rid of her past. She is now in charge of her own destiny.
The ending of the original story showed how love has the power to transform. When Beauty truly loved, the ‘Beast’ showed its true character. What is ugly becomes handsome. Both Beauty and the Beast are reborn, both male and female mature. In Carter’s story it is beauty who transforms. She literally becomes a beast. The original story relies on the binary opposite of light (innocence) and dark (evil). Carter’s story relies on the opposite of white and red. These colours are repeatedly used throughout the story. The red is sexuality, the white virginity. At the end Beauty is fully grown, a true beauty. Her ‘beautiful fur’ reinforces her true nature, her power, her strength.
Carter has taken the language of traditional fairy tales and reinterpreted it with the focus on a young woman reaching sexual maturity. Although it is her ‘father’s soul that was in peril’, it is really her that is ‘teetering on the brink’ - the fine line between youth and adulthood. Carter challenges gender constructs of the term ‘beauty’ and subverts the stereotype of a ‘happy’ ending. ‘Beauty’ does not equate with ‘good’ as it does in the original. Carter challenges our assumptions. Throughout the ‘horror’ of the beast is undermined by Beauty. ‘There is a crude clumsiness about his outlines...He is a carnival figure made of papier mache’. This makes the father’s failure even more profound. The image of men is deflated. Throughout, the reader’s understanding of the story is challenged with the use of description: ‘delighted terror’, ‘heartless mirth’, ‘decapitated willows’, ‘clawed magus’, ‘annihilating vehemence’. The reader gets the sense that the story is a process of destruction – destruction then rebirth. The ending shows us that the old Beauty has been destroyed. The sexual ‘throbbing’ of the tiger’s purr leads even the walls ‘to dance’. This is a long way from the traditional ‘happily ever after’. Carter’s Beauty is the story. She is Beauty and Beast. The traditional story is a springboard for a modern, personal retelling. Carter was never led to any ‘conventional form of feminism’, but we do get the feeling that ‘The Tiger’s Bride’ shows a woman confounding society's expectations. Carter’s reading of the story is subversive as she radically alters the plot, viewpoint and character.
Bibliography
Allen, Robert (Consultant Editor), The Penguin English Dictionary (Penguin Books, 2002). P892.
Ovid, ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’, Metamorphoses (Penguin Classics, 2004). PP133 – 139.
Warner, Marina, Angela Carter’s Book of Fairy Tales (Virago, 2006). PP447 – 454.
Booker, Christopher, The Seven Basic Plots (Continuum, 2004). PP195 – 196.
Barry, Peter, Beginning Theory (Manchester University Press, 2002). PP 49–59, 121–136, 222–246.
David Parkes
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