Femininity in Angela Carter

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Femininity in Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber"

"The Bloody Chamber" is a first-person narration by the late British author Angela Carter;

it was first published in 1979. The protagonist is a girl of seventeen who gets married to a

considerably older nobleman only to discover that his three former wives have all been

murdered by him. She then learns that she is about to share their fate. At no time does

she oppose her husband; on the contrary, she acts passively and unresistingly accepts his

decisions. In the end, it is her mother who comes to the rescue and singlehandedly kills

her daughter's oppressor. "The Bloody Chamber" presents a microcosm of two contrasting

stereotypes regarding women and portrays the two female protagonists in unrealistic and

satirical extremes. On the one hand, there is the passive, submissive wife, afraid to

contradict the will of her husband, even if it means her demise. On the other is the

independent, strong, Amazonian-like mother who comes to the rescue of her helpless

offspring.

As far as the main protagonist is concerned, Carter depicts her as a mere

marionette. She acts as a woman who is entirely controlled by the male world around her.

Throughout the entire short story, she is but a puppet in the hands of a puppeteer – her

husband. One scene where this becomes very evident is when he orders her to perform a

submissive action: "Kneel!'" (Carter 36). She cringingly obeys: "I knelt before him" (Carter

36). Furthermore, the cruel husband's decision to sentence her to death by decapitation

(para. Carter 36) does not relieve her of her passivity. Awaiting her husband's call from a

place distant to his, it would have been easy for her to hide in one of the castle's many

rooms, but subserviently she follows her husband's summons when he calls her on the

phone: "The courtyard. Immediately." (Carter 38). Throughout the entire short story, the

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main protagonist maintains her passive, submissive role; she routinely obeys her

husband's orders and acts entirely subordinately.

There is one instance where the protagonist seems to be freed from the sexist

clutches of her husband, but the repercussions of her actions clearly prove that her

independence is not acceptable. The only time that the main protagonist disobeys her

husband is when she sneaks into the Bloody Chamber. She does so when the influential

grip of her husband is loosened due to his absence, and for a moment her mother's

strength is manifested in her: "[m]y mother's spirit drove me" (Carter 28). For this time,

perhaps, she is trying to manifest a modern view of feminism, demonstrating more

independence and strength. However, the fact that her husband punishes her to death for

her disobedience proves to the extreme extent that she is trapped in a male-dominated

reality.

The protagonist's dependency becomes all the more evident when compared to

the courageous, autonomous, and independent role her mother plays in the short story.

Her mother is described as having "outfaced a junkful of Chinese pirates, nursed a village

through a visitation of the plague, [and] shot a man-eating tiger with her own hand."

(Carter 7). Additionally, the fact that the protagonist is only a teenager does not play a

role in the contrasting behavior of the two female characters, since the protagonist

explains that her mother had done all this "before she was as old as I" (Carter 7). The

mother also shows great strength of character through the fact that she "beggared

herself for love" and later on had to raise her daughter alone in poverty (para. Carter 8).

At the end of the short story, the mother is portrayed as an Amazonian-like warrior when

she arrives on horseback at the scene of the execution and shoots the vicious husband

(para. Carter 40). She is described by her daughter as "a wild thing, her hat seized by the

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winds and blown out to sea so that her hair was her white mane, her black lisle legs

exposed to the thigh, her skirts tucked round her waist" (Carter 40). The murderous

husband is stopped in his tracks, the sword suspended over his head, by the mother's

appearance, which is likened to Medusa in her fierce glory (para. Carter 40). She makes

the kill in a single shot and "without a moment's hesitation" (Carter 40), ironically with

the gun of a man, her late husband (para Carter 40). With her actions, she lives up to her

role as a courageous, self-determined, and independent woman, even being able to

defeat a man who is depicted as a cruel and ruthless murderer, and she presents a sharp

contrast to the weak victim role her daughter personifies.

In "The Bloody Chamber", the contrasting depictions of its female characters reflect

two extreme approaches to the roles of women. It is left to the reader's interpretation to

determine whether Carter intended to make a point regarding feminism or whether she

was merely retelling an old fairy tale in a sensationalistic and contemporary way. What

Carter definitely achieves with "The Bloody Chamber", though, is to show the two opposite

poles of the whole range of femininity. This might enable readers to examine the roles of 

women in our society and to provide a new understanding of femininity and feminism.

Works Cited

Carter, Angela. The Bloody Chamber: And Other Stories. London: Penguin Books, 1995.

Print.