Angela Carter's Book Of Fairy Tales

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While I am not sure if I would use the word feminist to describe the collection, the tales are mostly woman centered, with women as heroines or as a major role. The collection is divided into chapters based on the plot or point of the tales. Sections include "Mothers and Daughters", "Witches", "Married Women" and "Useful Stories". A good portion of the stories are strongly sexual in nature. A fair amount of the stories are also funny.

The Bloody Chamber - Wikipedia

In general, as entertainment, the stories have that same issue that fairytales always have. A lot of them are a bit nursery rhyme-ish (especially true of the humorous ones, which often seem to get left out of other such collections), in so far as they tend to reach fairly neat endings that are often pretty close to "happily ever after," and their general logic is pretty . . . convenient? Not to mention that so many of them are so familiar. The most interesting ones are those that make some bold, baffling, and just weird aesthetic turn, like having Cinderella conceal her beauty under a head of mangy skins, or when a cursed wife gives birth to a hideous baby riding a goat and waving a wooden spoon. It is definitely a "that's so random" quality that I like about them, the sense that the palette of things that can happen is so much wider relative to the familiar tropes of the form than in other genres. The trade-off for that of course is that few of the stories can amount to more than that weirdness, but given their length that's probably fine. La edición es preciosa, con esas ilustraciones tan originales que tiene, además de los extras (apéndices donde se cuenta el origen de cada cuento, un prólogo maravilloso que nos habla de los cuentos de hadas en general y el papel de la mujer en ellos...). Pero tengo que decir algo negativo, muy negativo: he encontrado faltas de ortografía en casi todas las páginas. Y estamos hablando de un libro de casi 30 euros. Hay para todos los gustos: tildes que faltan, cambio de género de personajes de un párrafo a otro, palabras omitidas (ejemplo: "cogió la y se la dio a su hermano"). En fin, que no esperaba algo así por parte de esta editorial, que suele cuidar tanto sus ediciones, y me encuentro sorprendida para mal y algo decepcionada en este sentido. Tenía que decirlo. Based on an obscure variant of "Little Red Riding Hood" [3] :xviii and with reference to Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, this tale explores the journey towards subjectivity and self-awareness from the perspective of a feral child.) The stories deal with themes of women's roles in relationships and marriage, their sexuality, coming of age and corruption. Stories such as "The Bloody Chamber" and "The Company of Wolves" explicitly deal with the horrific or corrupting aspects of marriage and/or sex and the balance of power within such relationships. Themes of female identity are explored in the "Beauty and the Beast" stories such as "The Tiger's Bride". In one instance, Beauty, the story's heroine, is described as removing the petals from a white rose as her father gambles her away; this is a seeming representation of the stripping away of the false layers of her personality to find her true identity, an image that finds a mirror in the story's fantastical conclusion.Anonymous, "LS 819: Transformations: Freedom and Magic in Nineteenth Century "Fairy Stories"", (n.d.).

Bad-good girls, beasts, rogues and other creatures: Angela

A virginal English soldier, travelling through Romania by bicycle, finds himself in a deserted village. He comes across a mansion inhabited by a vampire who survives by enticing young men into her bedroom and feeding on them. She intends to feed on the young soldier but his purity and virginity have a curious effect on her. When they enter her bedroom she accidentally cuts herself and the soldier kisses it better. He wakes up to find her dead. He leaves to return to his battalion due to the outbreak of World War I. Story-wise, it is not the typical fairy tales. They are gruesome, dark, and sometimes disturbing. Children are roasted in oven and fed into their own unsuspecting fathers by, normally, their stepmothers. Mothers get jealous of their own daughters and send the girls to their doom. There are even a few incestuous stories. The stories, collected from all over the world, happen in times where monsters, ghouls, and fairies rule the world; animals talk; and every beautiful girl marries a prince.The collection has been taught and studied in University literature courses. [20] It has been used as part of the AQA English Literature, the OCR English Literature and Edexcel English Language & Literature syllabus for A-Levels in schools and colleges across the United Kingdom.