The fangs beneath the lace

Angela Carter was a pioneer in reinterpreting and progressive retelling of classic fables, which is something of a trend now.

Reinterpreting classic fables and tales in the modern era has become something of a cliché now.

But before this wave of progressive retelling of these stories, there was one writer who kicked off the movement and made a name for herself as someone who could take an innocent-seeming fairy tale and dig underneath the lace and cosy blankets to expose the claws, fangs and bloodstains.

Angela Carter was born in 1940 and studied at the University of Bristol. She worked as a journalist and also wrote a number of novels, short stories, poems and radio plays. Her first novel was published in 1966 but it’s her collection of short stories, The Bloody Chamber, that came out in 1979 which established her reputation as a peerless writer of the gothic tale. Since its publication, The Bloody Chamber has inspired countless debates and won praise for its feminist approach to telling the traditional tale, whether it be the fantastic or picaresque or a hybrid of both.

The title story in the collection is Carter’s own version of Bluebeard, that serial killer with a collection of dead wives he’s murdered. Carter relocates the tale to 19th century France and it's told from the point of view of his next potential victim, a nameless young pianist. Whereas the traditional version of the folktale retold most famously by Charles Perrault doesn’t stint on the gore but could be coy on the sexual front, Carter’s isn’t. The linkages between sex, death, and the patriarchal violence inherent in a heterosexual marriage with a power imbalance — it’s all examined with a relentless intellect supported by sensual prose.

About that prose — even describing it as sensual as I have here and as many have done before seems to be almost underplaying its vitality. Carter has been called a great writer of the surfaces — there’s an almost tactile quality to the sentences she deploys to describe the luxuriousness of bedrooms, castles, and the natural landscape. Feathers, silks, opals, iron implements — she revels in detailing them all and rather than weighing down the stories she’s telling, they add to and elevate them.

Carter was a keen scholar of the Marquis de Sade’s writings and his influence can be seen in these 10 tales which are an examination of power dynamics between men and women and humans and animals (even her version of Puss-in-Boots — though chuckle-out-loud funny and ribald in a way no Disney production will ever be — is laced with intra-species sadism).

The internet’s favourite animal stars in Puss-in-Boots (obviously) and two other tales in this collection. The other two stories are inspired by The Beauty and the Beast and while one of these makes Beast a bit of an internet sad boi (easy to imagine him here playing some indie-folk song on repeat and sobbing into his paws), the other story, The Tiger’s Bride, delves into the more tricky realm of zoophilia and transfiguration. (Were)wolves get three stories as well — Carter exposed the villainy in the girlish Red Riding Hood and brought to light the themes of elder abuse, greed for wealth, and emerging sexuality that were well hidden in the original benign fairy tale.

Not everyone responded well to Carter’s tales — the word depravity was flung about in criticising her and students reading her works in university apparently resented the way their favourite childhood tales were butchered. But in her taking apart of these twee tales and showing the world that the fairy tale ever after is not quite what it seems, Angela Carter inspired a generation of storytellers to discard tradition and find their own voice. And have some fun along the way.

The author is a Bengaluru-based writer and communications professional with many published short stories and essays to her credit.

That One Book is a fortnightly column that does exactly what it says — takes up one great classic and tells you why it is (still) great. Come, raid the bookshelves with us.