Angela Carter

Narrative and Experience

Puss-in-boots move towards a southern European setting - Moves away from Germanic, gothic Northern European setting Similar to Tigers Bride - Desire to see her naked drives his passion - Flesh gives way to fur - Yet at the beginning does not give in straight away Would have solved her fathers problems - However he is an awful parent - She turns the terms of the bargain and subverts him to her control He gets naked for her so she returns the favour (Description of him naked-reminiscent of Blake?) Association between violence and pleasure Utterly inhuman Has her control taken away by his nakedness and her charged emotions Restrained-she is excited by the danger he presents and her fragility in the face of it She is turning into something of his nature Cat stories dominate early sections; - Tigers Bride, Courtship of Mr Lyon, Puss-In-Boots etc Germanic tradition very much present in stories with Gothic tropes Snow Child and Erl-King very much northern, weird stories - Basis in myth rather than fairy-tale Wolf stories for last section of the collection - Company Of Wolves, The Were-Wolf and, Wolf-Alice Puss-In-Boots - Picaresque novel? A novel with a picaroon as hero (scoundrel) Episodic plot depicting low-life First person narrative - Is it gothic? - Romantic, stylish voice - More light-hearted and a break from the set of stories? - Story of entertainment? - Intentionally comic Example of intentional comedy in Gothic rather than unintentional - Cats loose attachment to humans - Survival instinct - Unsentimental approach to sex - Narration by a male cat

- to antler give cuckolds horns to - Female lover is not unwilling - Anthropomorphic narrator - Domestic animal=more comic and low story - Metamorphosis of both characters Erl-King - Exists outside the normal realm of the world - Myth comes from European story of Goblin king - Involved in temptation - Green man-esque Very Northern European Doesnt have a similar obvious story tradition Pre-Christian Unites with pagan past Sinister element and danger of nature Parody of warning tales in fairy tale? - Freudian and Gender readings abound - Not based on fairy tale - But Germanic myth - Painterly precision in style - Emblematic colour - Perversion of time No distinct narrative time - Psycho-analytical criticism, e.g. Freud (Or Karl Jung) - Dream-like quality - No dominating plot - Complex language makes it impenetrable and unsettling - Long sentences - Visual - Disquieting, and a tad threatening - Wood is an archetype of threat and desire in Freudian criticism - Narrative is close to Free Indirect Discourse - Slips out of first person on occasion - Follows Puss-In-Boots: Less elevated territory Bawdy model tale followed by model tale of symbols and Germanic tradition Erl-King himself - Domestic as well as wild - Birds are tempted girls - Broken fiddle as symbol - He is in fact destroyed at the end - Lupine Pointed teeth What big hands - He is weakened by the move from summer to cold-symbology

Subversion and sex in the symbols P.103-transformation Transformation comes at moment of sexual engagement Become caged Total subordination to the point of annihilation - Bed of straw: Like an animal - Her release comes during sex Metaphor for the liberating power of sex in 70s feminism? The Snow Child - Colour Very much red black white More monochromatic than Erl-King - Very short - Not so much repulsive as disturbing - Readers inured by this stage of the anthology? - 'Romantic setting - Episodic narrative - Predictable linear structure to plot followed by unpredictable narrative twist/turn - Guilty attraction of undisclosed desires - Power from its brevity - Emblematic symbols Rose Juxtaposed beauty and bite Snow Cryogenic stasis Purity Potential for corruption Raven Bird of death Perverts the traditional symbology of fairy-tale Or does she simply take their true sexual connotations and represent them matter-of-factly? - As the sum of the symbols the child is herself representative of all the facets of the symbology - Male, heterosexual desire - Sexual desire and his weeping - Sex and Death Death itself is under violent circumstances But quite tame actual moment - Uncomfortable arena for men - Boots etc bring in fetishism - Overarching reach of male sexual desire - Mutuality to it Countess merely stands and watches

Insinuation of some sort of sex game? - Sexuality to stroking furs Euphemistic - Both female characters are naked at some point - Incongruity with rest of the story as he bows-courtly gesture - Rose reverts to traditional symbolism Potentially threatening Female transgression, but also female desire for knowledge leading to/or part of the transgression Deconstructing ideas of traditional gender roles within the parameters of a story used to construct traditional gender roles Sex and death are related