The Bloody Chamber: And Other Stories Paperback – January 1, 1990

I'll admit that I was a somewhat reluctant reader of The Bloody Chamber. I'd purchased it for a class and then ended up not needing to read it. I have a strange personal tradition, though, of reading one piece of horror fiction at Christmas time (a tradition that began in junior high when I happened to read J. Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla--a vampire tale that Carter references in The Bloody Chamber), and when this was what I had on the shelf come Christmas-time, I gave it a go.I'll admit, too, that I was a little ambivalent about it when I began the first couple of stories. The stories tend to follow a pattern of opening with a long flood of elaborate, creepy descriptions before finally moving on to the story, and the language throughout the collection is not difficult, but is allusive, sometimes tortuous, and always ornate. It all, to be honest, felt overwritten.But at the same time, after slogging through the opening of the first couple stories, I would reach the ending to find that the story opened up and culminated in something that was just startling. I won't give away any endings, but many of them, such as "The Werewolf" and "The Tiger's Bride," leave you with images that shock your intellect, and linger. And some of them, such as "The Bloody Chamber" and "The Courtship of Mr Lyon," end just beautifully. "The Bloody Chamber," especially, ends thrillingly, with the women of the story rejecting the passive roles typically assigned to them in fairy tales (this one based on Blue Beard) and washing the story in a beautiful bath of blood, in the process reshaping and reconstituting their community.By the end of the book, Carter had totally won me over, and The Bloody Chamber's aspects that had seemed overwritten, instead, felt right. It felt like Carter had word-by-word constructed a concrete aesthetic world, an enormous gothic mansion complete with more than a few torture chambers and plenty of hidden passages still there to be explored. The Bloody Chamber was a fantastic book that I expect to enjoy even more on future readings.

I first heard of Angela Carter when I was maybe 12 and saw the movie The Company of Wolves, I loved that movie so much and wanted to read the book but never found it, and as I grew up, I forgot about it... until I got Kindle and could basically read anything I wanted from around the world. Recently I remembered the book and it was best to have read it now as a grown up for I would have missed so much of the hidden references and the erotic atmosphere that surrounds these tales. Genius reinvention of folk tales and fairy tales, my favorite one is the Erl King. Carter shows us theses secret places of a woman psyche, the horror mixed with pleasure, the voices in the dark, and presents us with nonconformist heroines who take their destiny in their own hands, whether they fall from grace or walk out safe, it was entirely a choice of each one of them, a triumphant choice in every case. These folk tales we heard all of our lives, the pg rated version anyway, were always telling women to rely on beauty and virtue, to expect an impossible prince charming, to be rescued, be passive and submissive. Carter changes all those ideas which are imprinted in our minds even as grown up women, and changes the roles entirely; those who chose to become beasts and love savagely do on their own terms and in their own sweet time; those who choose darkness are redeemed and those who chose light do it to please no other than themselves. Besides all of that it was very entertaining to read, the exuberance of her words in some tales was very sensual and inviting.

I like reading new takes on traditional fairy tales and this collection by Angela Carter was hair-raising and irreverently funny. Carter gives a modern twist to ten old tales like those of Bluebeard, Little Red Riding Hood and Beauty and the Beast. The stories are written in strong, vivid prose that brings them to life and makes them read like cliff-hangers. Carter’s writing has a bold, sexually suggestive edge that makes more explicit the sexual subtext of the originals. “The Bloody Chamber” is a pulse-racing revision of the Bluebeard legend, and “Puss in Boots” had me laughing out loud at the bravado of the randy old cat.Some of my favorite women writers (Emma Donoghue and Sarah Waters, for instance) cite the English writer Angela Carter as a big influence on their writing. Ms. Carter passed away at age 51 in 1992. I’ve wanted to explore her writing and this short story collection was a great place to start. I look forward to reading some of her other stories and novels. Emma Donoghue, by the way, wrote her own feminist version of fairy tales called  Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins . It has a very different tone from this book by Carter but anyone who likes this would probably enjoy reading Donoghue's book as well.

This book is beautiful and creepy, a fantastic blend of poetic language, humor, and bone-chilling horror. These retellings of classic fairy tales and other supernatural stories have a surprising and welcome female-friendly twist to them. The women here are set up like typical damsels in distress, but their solutions to their predicaments are by no means weak. It was fascinating to me that I would begin to feel a sense of dread for the characters, "knowing" (based on having read plenty of books and fairy tales in my day) that they were in for a sad ending, but Carter surprised me again and again by turning the typical patriarchal narrative on its head, and instead equipping her heroines with power, force of will, and strength that we rarely get to see in old-fashioned fairy stories. This is the kind of book you can read again and again, and always get something different out of it. Highly recommended.

Short stories are as unlimited in their capacity to contain human fantasy and imagination as longer forms, and I think demand less forebearence with our own limitations: while I can get impatient with the straining seams of stitched-together universes in novels, the short story is roomy enough for very stretchy mental worlds without demanding that I overlook the patches that show up so glaringly in longer forms. Carter shows how it's done.

her writing style is just immaculate! the descriptive language, masterful representation of women empowerment and sexual identity topics!!! top notch

Esta subrayado

"The Bloody Chamber and other Stories" is my first Angela Carter .It is an anthology of ten mesmerising feminist themed stories based on popular characters from fairy tales ,fables and myth.So ,we have Blue Beard ,the Erl King,Snow White,Puss in Boots ,Werewolves and Vampires all jostling with each other in the pages of this slim and fascinating volume.✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨I was left with the realization that Carter is probably one of the best feminist writers of this century , next to Virginia Wolfe.Carter does not hold anything back in these stories.Her stories are raw ,sensual and explore the themes of female sexuality and it's awakening ,how our menstruation plays a great deal in our lives ,the desire men blatantly have for women ("Some eyes can eat you up" ,as she writes in the Erl King),the objectification of women ,the idealization men have for the perfect woman (does she even exist?),and the roles of women as victimizers and victims in a continuous cycle of persecution from others and also from themselves .✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨I have often felt that the hand that delivers the most cruel cut to a woman is generally from the hands of another woman (even our mothers ,though no one wants to discuss this possibility.After all,motherhood is supposed to be sacrosanct !!!)and this idea is explored in "Child of Snow " and "The Werewolf".The most disturbing story was "The Tigers Bride ",where she establishes the fact that in order to be really happy ,women need to shed their inhibitions and live away from the rules and norms of traditional society.We are after all dolls in the hands of men because very often we are capable of taking decisions wholly knowing the implications just because we are forced to and there is no other escape route ."The Lady in the House of Love" "was most frightening and "Puss in Boots "was humorous enough to show us that you can never underestimate a woman however quiet and demure she may be.😂✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨Carter's writing has rich vocabulary ,lush ,dense and exquisite prose and powerful imagery that you will find difficult to erase from your mind .A wonderful collection that protrays the enigma a woman really is in all her glorious shades .

Absolutely hypnotic writing, and fabulous imagination!