The Bloody Chamber
Jan. 4th, 2007 08:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sawylIn line with the seasonal trend towards excess and indulgence, I chose to spend at least part of my Christmas reveling in the decadent literary splendour of Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber. Here are a few adoring thoughts:
The title story opens with a train journey: a poor piano student is being whisked away by her new, rich husband — a marquis, no less — to his great estate in Brittany. The pianist is not Milord's first wife: he had been married to an opera singer, famous for her Isolde, and later to a fashionable Romanian countess who disappeared under mysteries circumstances. After installing his wife as chatelaine, the Marquis grants her access to all rooms in the house bar one and promptly departs for New York, leaving his wife alone with curiosity.
The second story tells of a man in reduced circumstances who is forced to call upon the help of a reclusive leonine man, who eventually becomes entangled with the man's daughter. In the third story, a Russian aristocrat loses his daughter in cards to a masked Italian lord known simply as The Beast. The Beast offers to return the woman to her father on the condition that she undresses for him, something that the woman cannot contemplate. The fourth story follows the exploits of a shady cavalry office who, aided by his booted feline companion, sets out to seduce the beautiful young wife of a local miser.
The cat stories are followed by two fairy stories. One tells the story of a woman trapped by the Erl-King in his house in the woods, while the other is a particularly sinister version of Snow White, almost guaranteed not to appeal to a family audience.
The next story tells of the last great vampire, the Countess Nosferatu, a woman whose temperament is almost perfectly unsuited to her position. Living in her faded glory, she exists in a dream world of endless tarot readings, waiting for something to come and shake her out of her ennui. Eventually, a young British Army officer, on a cycling tour of Romania, is selected as a victim and through his naive behaviour, helps to break the spell.
The last three stories all focus on wolves. The first is a grim tale of a child who defeats a werewolf in the forest, only to discover that it is someone she knows. The second is The Company of Wolves, which tells of a most independent Little Red Riding Hood — the sort of girl who, "knows she's nobody's meat" and would far rather tame the wolf than kill him. The last story is about a feral girl, raised by wolves, who is sent to act as servant to a lycanthropic duke.
So, to conclude, The Blood Chamber is a real treat from start to finish, with a tone that shifts from gothic, to fairytale, to opera buffa and back again without the merest hint of effort. The descriptions of people and places are note perfect, from the sinister menace underlying the details of the Marquis' chateau to the decaying gothica of the vampire's boudoir to the Rossinian comic opera of Puss in Boots, the right colour always used in just the right place. The characters are frequently feisty, clever, independent, determined to escape the hand that fate has dealt them, and their flaws often more of a help than a hindrance.
Each story in the collection works on its own, whilst at the same time making up part of a coherent whole. Motifs are passed from one story to another — the bloody chamber in one story becomes the sealed vessel, the Countess's blood-watered roses contrast with the single winter rose outside Mr Lyon's door, both Wolf-Alice and the vampire, Havisham like, wear old wedding dresses — as with a series of variations, familiar ideas turned on their head, themes are introduced in inverted forms and nothing is every quite as it seems.
The title story opens with a train journey: a poor piano student is being whisked away by her new, rich husband — a marquis, no less — to his great estate in Brittany. The pianist is not Milord's first wife: he had been married to an opera singer, famous for her Isolde, and later to a fashionable Romanian countess who disappeared under mysteries circumstances. After installing his wife as chatelaine, the Marquis grants her access to all rooms in the house bar one and promptly departs for New York, leaving his wife alone with curiosity.
The second story tells of a man in reduced circumstances who is forced to call upon the help of a reclusive leonine man, who eventually becomes entangled with the man's daughter. In the third story, a Russian aristocrat loses his daughter in cards to a masked Italian lord known simply as The Beast. The Beast offers to return the woman to her father on the condition that she undresses for him, something that the woman cannot contemplate. The fourth story follows the exploits of a shady cavalry office who, aided by his booted feline companion, sets out to seduce the beautiful young wife of a local miser.
The cat stories are followed by two fairy stories. One tells the story of a woman trapped by the Erl-King in his house in the woods, while the other is a particularly sinister version of Snow White, almost guaranteed not to appeal to a family audience.
The next story tells of the last great vampire, the Countess Nosferatu, a woman whose temperament is almost perfectly unsuited to her position. Living in her faded glory, she exists in a dream world of endless tarot readings, waiting for something to come and shake her out of her ennui. Eventually, a young British Army officer, on a cycling tour of Romania, is selected as a victim and through his naive behaviour, helps to break the spell.
The last three stories all focus on wolves. The first is a grim tale of a child who defeats a werewolf in the forest, only to discover that it is someone she knows. The second is The Company of Wolves, which tells of a most independent Little Red Riding Hood — the sort of girl who, "knows she's nobody's meat" and would far rather tame the wolf than kill him. The last story is about a feral girl, raised by wolves, who is sent to act as servant to a lycanthropic duke.
So, to conclude, The Blood Chamber is a real treat from start to finish, with a tone that shifts from gothic, to fairytale, to opera buffa and back again without the merest hint of effort. The descriptions of people and places are note perfect, from the sinister menace underlying the details of the Marquis' chateau to the decaying gothica of the vampire's boudoir to the Rossinian comic opera of Puss in Boots, the right colour always used in just the right place. The characters are frequently feisty, clever, independent, determined to escape the hand that fate has dealt them, and their flaws often more of a help than a hindrance.
Each story in the collection works on its own, whilst at the same time making up part of a coherent whole. Motifs are passed from one story to another — the bloody chamber in one story becomes the sealed vessel, the Countess's blood-watered roses contrast with the single winter rose outside Mr Lyon's door, both Wolf-Alice and the vampire, Havisham like, wear old wedding dresses — as with a series of variations, familiar ideas turned on their head, themes are introduced in inverted forms and nothing is every quite as it seems.
