Final essay question for feminism

'Angela Carter presents and emphasises the intense desire of women to become liberated through sexual acts in her collection of short stories The Bloody Chamber'


Using the critical anthology to support your argument, how far do these texts support or undermine this view?




-The Tiger's Bride

• female gaze
• male gaze
• liberated together
• innocence vs experience
• she takes control and almost liberates herself

1. Faraway castles
2. happy endings
3. dutiful daughter
4. sexually promiscuous
5. Beast like male

-'white rose'- symbol of virginity

-'one profile of his mask is the mirror image of the other, too perfect, uncanny.'- attracted & repulsed at the same time- female gaze

-'I prick my finger and so he gets his all smeared with blood'- impure and tainted

-'scare me into good behaviour'- the story from her nurse of the 'tiger man' was used to frighten her- in her childhood he was used to scare her, now he becomes her liberation

-'the day my childhood ended'- innocence vs experience

-'my frail rose, already faded'- 'faded' like her purity

-'you should give me only the same amount of money that you would give to any other woman'- offers prostitution- allows herself to be used as a sex object

-'The sight of a young lady's skin that no man has seen before'- the beast longs for visual sexual pleasure

-'prepare yourself for the sight of my master, naked'- allowing the female gaze

-'I felt my breasts ripped apart as if I suffered a marvellous wound'- she gains sexual pleasure and liberation through the sight of the beast undressed

-'unfastened my jacket'- allowing the beast his sexual pleasure as she's had hers

-'pride it was, not shame'- she isn't embarrassed, she wants to impress him

-'I felt I was at liberty for the first time in my life'- liberated herself through allowing herself to subside to her own sexual desire

-'fear of devourment'- metaphor for sex

-'I, white, shaking, raw, approaching him as if offering, in myself, the key to a peaceable kingdom in which his appetite need not be my extinction'- lamb to the slaughter- but she wants to

-'He snuffed the air, as if to smell my fear; he could not'- she isn't scared- she's embracing desire

-The Erl King

• has sex with the erl king
• innocence vs experience
• liberates herself through killing him when she is experienced
• saves herself from getting trapped by him- liberation

1. Beast like male
2. sexually promiscuous
3. isolated setting

-'He lays upon me his irrevocable hand'- first contact

-'I lie at the mercy of his huge hands'- she is almost his sex slave- he can do with her as he pleases

-'I lie down on the Erl-King's creaking paillasse of straw'- again lay down for him

-'I go back and back to him'- she can't help but going back to him

-'consumed by you'- metaphor for sex- similar to the Tiger's Bride

-'I shall strangle him'- kills the person she gained sex from

-'let the birds free'- liberated through setting the other birds free and killing him 

-The Snow Child

• subjugated
• objectified
• not liberated
• raped
• subjected to male domination
• taken advantage of

1. damsel in distress
2. the evil matriarch

-'I wish I had a girl as white as snow' 'as red as blood' 'as black as that bird's feather'- his idyllic view of a woman

-'stark naked; she was a child of his desire'- his desire not hers

-'unfastened his breaches and thrust his virile member into the dead girl'- rape, she didn't want it, she isn't liberated

message- underlying material of fairy tales is that the women are sexually objectified

Carter said 'I was taking... the latent content of those traditional stories and using that; and the latent content is violently sexual.'

The Snow Child questions

In what ways does the tale allude to (link to) other stories or fairy tales?
The Snow Child links to other short stories from the prose 'The Bloody Chamber' by Angela Carter, as it contains a dominant male figure who is wealthy and who obtains a powerful stance in society, alongside a young, vulnerable female character as in the other short stories like 'The Bloody Chamber' and 'The Courtship of Mr Lyon'. In this story, the count longs for a young girl with 'white skin, red mouth, black hair' which also relates to the fairy tale of 'Snow White', in which the appearance of the young princess in the tale, mirrors that of the pure, young girl in 'The Snow Child'. There is also a malevolent, devilish female character in most fairy tales, which wish to do harm to the young, innocent female character. 'The Snow Child' directly mirrors this, as the Countess seeks to find any way possible to get rid of the young girl and finally succeeds in her desire when the snow child 'pricks her finger on a thorn' and dies.


How does this story link to the other stories in The Bloody Chamber collection?
The short story of 'The Snow Child' links to many other stories in Angela Carter's book of short stories, 'The Bloody Chamber'. It links to 'The Tiger's Bride' as the male character in both of the stories, look upon the young girl's based on their own sexual desire. In the Tiger's Bride, 'the beast' wants to 'see the pretty young lady unclothed nude without her dress' to satisfy his own desire of visual pleasure, similarly in The Snow Child, the Count views the young girl as his sole desire, the female he has longed for and lusts for, yet, unlike in The Tiger's Bride, the Count gains desire from 'thrusting his virile member into the dead girl' (raping the girl) instead of looking at her. The Snow Child also links to 'The Erl King' because again, both male characters sexualise the young females; The Erl King uses the girl as almost a sex slave when the Erl King 'lays her down on his bed of rustling straw where she lies at the mercy of his huge hands', likewise the Count in The Snow Child has sex with the naïve, innocent female.


The girl melts at the end.  Why do you think this is the case?  What do you think Carter could be trying to communicate?
In 'The Snow Child', Carter presents the young girl as a symbol of purity due to her skin that is 'white as snow'. At the end the child 'began to melt', this could be to represent the washing away of her purity, innocence and virginity and as she's a symbol of purity 'there was nothing left of her' by the end of the prose, once she had been violated by the Count when he 'unfastened his breeches and thrust his virile member into the dead girl' all innocence that she ever possessed is crushed. Alternatively, she could be melting back into the snow, the place in which she was created based upon the dream of the Count to have a girl 'as white as snow', therefore she would not have been real, either a figure of imagination, illusion or sorcery.


What do you think it means when the Countess says "It bites!" at the end?  What is "it"?
 Despite getting her wish of regaining the Count's attention, the Countess is 'bitten' by the rose when it pricks her finger. The rose is a symbolises femininity or the vaginal area, so when the Countess thinks 'it bites' it represents the suffering of every woman in every social class, as the elite cannot escape natural happenings.

The Erl-King by Angela Carter

The Erl-King

How is the Erl-King presented?

Carter presents the Erl-King as a threat and a predator through the description of his appearance. He is presented as a monster like figure with 'pointed teeth' which portrays him to be a threat to the 'young girl' that he has lured to him in the forest. The female protagonist  breaks down the binary roles of the woman being the carer and the male being the one who provides the money. By showing the Erl-King to be 'an excellent housewife', she contradicts the idea of him being a threat to her and others and presents him as obtaining the passive role in their relationship, showing herself to be dominant over him.


How is the narrator presented?
Carter presents the narrator to be trapped by the Erl-King yet also by herself, as she comes across as a character of self-conflict in which her actions do not mirror her thoughts. The protagonist presents herself to be trapped by the Erl-King's 'green eye', the feature upon which her love for him exists. The narrator is already mentally caged by her false love for him and realises that she is to be kept in an 'osier cage' as she sees him 'weaving a cage' for her. When the narrator tells us that the Erl-king is 'an excellent housewife', she is presented as a strong individual, breaking down the binary roles of the male being dominant over the female as the male seems to be conducting the role of the female. She contradicts her thoughts by not going through with them, when the female narrator 'lies at the mercy of his huge hands', in this

Feminist theory- Stephen Martin critical essay questions and summary

What does 'derided' mean?
'Derided' means to express contempt for something or someone.


What is 'gynocriticism'?
Gynocriticism is the historical study of women writers as a distinct literary tradition. Gynocriticism as a result of the interrogative critiques utilised in post-structuralism and psychoanalysis.


Feminist theory reduced to 5 sentences

• Feminist theory is the belief that society is patriarchal and controlled only by men.
• Women are conditioned to accept the view of women in which they are and should be submissive to male dominance.
• The association between gender and other features- all things that go to make up our concept of what is 'feminine' and what is 'masculine'- is a cultural construct.
• Gynocriticism is criticism that deals with literature written by women in all its aspects.
• Female critics have also sought to redefine the accepted list of great works, rescuing large numbers of female writers from obscurity, and establishing quite large numbers of female writers as worthy of the attention hitherto denied them.

Reduced to 5 words


-Patriarchal
-Conditioned
-Construct
-Criticism
-Obscurity


Reduced to 1 word


-Patriarchal


119 word summary
Feminist theory by Stephen Martin outlines the idea that women are controlled and ruled by the male sex, that they are subordinated to men in all aspects of life, work and culture. It states that women are conditioned to accept and promulgate the view of women that allows them to be dominated therefore they become a factor of their own enslavement. Women are made in society’s gaze of how they perceive the perfect woman to be; passive, emotional and supportive. Throughout literature the odds have been stacked against women as it has been dominated by men writing for men. Feminist critics have sought to redefine the accepted list of ‘Great works’ and to rescue many female writers from obscurity.

Possible essay questions for 'The tiger's bride' and 'The Bloody Chamber'

'Angela Carter presents and emphasises the intense desire of women to become liberated through sexual acts in her collection of short stories The Bloody Chamber'


Using the critical anthology to support your argument, how far do these texts support or undermine this view?