Particularly, the policing of the sexuality of young women, who almost entirely compose Carter’s cast of protagonists. Fairy tales are cautionary tales (as you can see in my collection, Cautionary Tales!), and policing sexual behavior is one of humanity’s favorite things to do. I have a poor grasp on that decade.) I am sure Carter has been accused of sexualizing children’s stories for shock value and titalliation, but, of course, the dark, sexual undercurrent of all of these stories were there in the first place. The Bloody Chamber’s subtitle, at least on my 1976 copy from the library (I adore checking out old books), is “and other adult tales”, underscored by the almost whimsical but still dark eroticism of the cover. These female heroines find the forces of darkness at work both within and without them-when the wolves (or the evil husband or the evil father) come nipping at their heels, can they escape? Or is escape really what they want? Some are set in the modern age others are decidedly in the medieval past. These decidedly adult extractions include riffs on “Bluebeard”, “Beauty and the Beast”, “Puss in Boots”, “The Snow Child”, and “The Little Red Riding Hood”. The Bloody Chamber is a collection of fairy tale retellings… well, in Carter’s eyes, they’re not retellings, but, rather, attempts “ to extract the latent content from the traditional stories”. Luckily, it was a library book, or I never would have gotten around to it. But given that my keen interest in the art of adaptation was fired up by my recent viewing of Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby, it was time to finally pick up The Bloody Chamber.
But I haven’t gotten around to it, because of my habit of holding onto books I own as a sort of stockpile against finding myself without access to a library at any point in my life. I’ve been getting recommended Carter’s books for years now-during my trip to Ireland with my college, I actually bought a copy of The Night Circus because it was gorgeous and on sale.
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