Aim: To be able to plan and start writing about ‘The Snow Child’ in preparation for the coursework.

Below are some themes which will pervade all the texts we study for the coursework. Pick 2 and explain how they are evident in ‘The Snow Child’.Challenge: Can you apply any critical theory to these themes in ‘The Snow Child’ as well for example feminism, or psychoanalysis?

Desire

Femininity

Masculinity

Seduction

Setting

Sexuality

Subjugation.

AO3: Consider the viewpoints of others, alternative viewpoints/ compare and contrast.

The Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) is best known for his erotic works, which combined philosophical discourse with pornography and depicting sexual fantasies with an emphasis on violence, criminality, and blasphemy against the Catholic Church.

In modern culture his works are simultaneously viewed as masterful analyses of how power and economics work, and as erotica. Sade's sexually explicit works were a medium for the articulation of the corrupt and hypocritical values of the elite in his society, which caused him to become imprisoned. Sade's use of pornographic devices to create provocative works that subvert the prevailing moral values of his time gave rise to the concept of sadism.

Andrea Dworkin- a radical feminist despised the work of de Sade. She sees him as the ultimate degenerate pornographic author and as a demonic archetypal patriarchal oppressor as noted by Karen Green in her essay, "De Sade, de Beauvoir and Dworkin" (69).

However Angela Carter in her essay ‘The Sadeian Woman’ which was published in 1979, the same year as ‘The Bloody Chamber’, she considers his pornography to be unique in that he used it to reveal rather than conceal the actuality of sexual relations ‘in the context of an unfree society as the expression of pure tyranny’. The source of Carter's interest in Sade is the exposure of the important role that sexuality plays in maintaining the social status quo: ‘since he is not a religious man but a political man, he treats the facts of female sexuality not as a moral dilemma but as a political reality’.

A feminist appropriation of misogynist and patriarchal texts: Angela Carter's The Sadeian Woman and The Bloody Chamber.

It is indeed not coincidental that The Bloody Chamber was published in the same year as The Sadeian Woman, as Carter's revisionary fairy tales mark a similar attempt to demonstrate how inherited patriarchal discursive structures are not innately monolithic or resistant to appropriation. Carter connects the two texts herself by arguing that Sade's ‘straitjacket psychology relates his fiction directly to the black and white ethical world of fairy-tale and fable’. If her discussion of Sade's work stresses its fairy tale abstractions, then her own revision of the classical fairy tale attempts to emphasise the pornographic nature of the representations of women that it circulated. Both texts highlight the connection that binds sexual and socio-economic relations within a patriarchal society. In her fairy-tale revisions, Carter attempts, just as Sade did in his black fairy-tales, to expose a reality that those tales sought to disguise: that female virginity operates as a token and guarantor of the ruling classes' property rights.

Deconstructed Masculine Evil in Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber Stories Aytül Özüm

In some of the stories of The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter is concerned not only with the shortcomings of conventional representations of gender, but also with different models of deconstructed masculine evil which take various shapes in evil and wicked female format. In the stories, the image of the female which is mostly associated with the good, the decent, the innocent and naive in most of the traditional fairy-tales is rendered either to have inclinations towards pervert sexual practices or to be violently harmful for the opposite sex.Angela Carter reappropriates the consolatory mechanisms of the traditional fairy tales in The Bloody Chamber stories and reconstructs the conventions governing certain social behaviour for women. Carter’s tales fabricate new cultural and literary realities in which sexuality and free will in women replace the patriarchal traits of innocence and morality in traditional fairy tales.

In this story Carter creates a female aristocratic voyeur. In the end, she refuses the rose her husband offers her, saying that “it bites.” In this story the evil Countess acknowledges the Count’s authority. However, she participates in the evil action and evil will. The child who is created to be consumed is a means through which the potential evil in the Countess becomes overt. Furthermore, Elaine Jordan suggests that the death of the virgin girl is the symbol of “killing of masculine representations” not “a killing of women.”26 The presence of the female evil in the story is not offered as a challenge against the male evil, they are not involved in a power struggle. They are hand in hand to destroy the innocence through the pervert practice of necrophilia.

How do we combine our language and structural analysis with the criticism?

How does Angela Carter present the theme of desire in The Snow Child?

In Carter’s shortest story in her collection ‘The Bloody Chamber’, it can be argued that the Countess is represented as a figure of desire despite the fact that the male figure of the Count is the character who ‘conjures the child of his desires’. In the text the Countess wishes the child dead in a fit of jealousy. On her third attempt to kill the child ‘the girl picks a rose; pricks her finger on the thorn; bleeds; screams; falls. According to Elaine Jordan, the death of the child is the symbol of “killing of masculine representations” not “a killing of women.” Indeed, it is not the Count who kills the child, but the Countess, fulfilling her desire to be the most prominent figure in the Count’s affections. The use of the emotive verbs such as ‘bleeds’, ‘screams, ‘falls’ gives the impression the virgin girl suffers greatly due to the Countess’ desires yet there is a distinct lack of emotion in the structure of the sentence. With each word being separated by a semi-colon, the exact nature and detail of her death is omitted by Carter as if to suggest that the killing of the girl was easy and simple- she dies in four short words. The Countess has achieved her desire and this is why she does not react when the Count ‘thrusts his virile member into the dead girl’ but instead ‘watched him narrowly’.

With a partner, identify the different assessment objectives in the model paragraph.

How do we combine our language and structural analysis with the criticism?

How does Angela Carter present the theme of desire in The Snow Child?

In Carter’s shortest story in her collection ‘The Bloody Chamber’, it can be argued that the Countess is represented as a figure of desire despite the fact that the male figure of the Count is the character who ‘conjures the child of his desires’. In the text the Countess wishes the girl dead in a fit of jealousy. On her third attempt to kill the child ‘the girl picks a rose; pricks her finger on the thorn; bleeds; screams; falls. According to Elaine Jordan, the death of the child is the symbol of “killing of masculine representations” not “a killing of women.” Indeed, it is not the Count who kills the child, but the Countess, fulfilling her desire to be the most prominent figure in the Count’s affections. The use of the emotive verbs such as ‘bleeds’, ‘screams, ‘falls’ gives the impression the virgin girl suffers greatly due to the Countess’ desires yet there is a distinct lack of emotion in the structure of the sentence. With each word being separated by a semi-colon, the exact nature and detail of her death is omitted by Carter as if to suggest that the killing of the girl was easy and simple- she dies in four short words. The Countess has achieved her desire and this is why she does not react when the Count ‘thrusts his virile member into the dead girl’ but instead ‘watched him narrowly’.Red: AO1Purple: AO2Blue: AO3

How do we combine our language and structural analysis with the criticism?

How does Angela Carter present the theme of desire in The Snow Child?

In Carter’s shortest story in her collection ‘The Bloody Chamber’, it can be argued that the Countess is represented as a figure of desire despite the fact that the male figure of the Count is the character who ‘conjures the child of his desires’. In the text the Countess wishes the child dead in a fit of jealousy. On her third attempt to kill the child ‘the girl picks a rose; pricks her finger on the thorn; bleeds; screams; falls. According to Elaine Jordan, the death of the child is the symbol of “killing of masculine representations” not “a killing of women.” Indeed, it is not the Count who kills the child, but the Countess, fulfilling her desire to be the most prominent figure in the Count’s affections. The use of the emotive verbs such as ‘bleeds’, ‘screams, ‘falls’ gives the impression the virgin girl suffers greatly due to the Countess’ desires yet there is a distinct lack of emotion in the structure of the sentence. With each word being separated by a semi-colon, the exact nature and detail of her death is omitted by Carter as if to suggest that the killing of the girl was easy and simple- she dies in four short words. The Countess has achieved her desire and this is why she does not react when the Count ‘thrusts his virile member into the dead girl’ but instead ‘watched him narrowly’.

Your turn:

You can argue that the Count’s desire for the ‘child of his desires’ justifies the Countess’ actions towards the girl.

You can write about the Countess’ desires.

You can write about both the Count and Countess’ desires.