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REWRITING GENDERS, bilduNgsromaN) ก REVISING GENRES: ก READING ANGELA / (sadism/ masochism) ก CARTER’S “THE BLOODY - CHAMBER” AS A FEMALE BILDUNGSROMAN1 ก กกก 2 Phacharawan Boonpromkul กก ก กกกก กก กกก ก กก ก กกก ก ก กก กก กกก ก (Female ก 1979 boNdiNg) ก ก กกก ก ก Abstract ก ก Built on the storyline of the traditional กก (gothic) fairy tale “Bluebeard,” Angela Carter’s short story “The Bloody Chamber” (1979) กก (Female contains striking alterations in the use of the first-person narrator, ambivalent and complex characterization, explicit sexual 1 description and a revised ending; all of กกก which have given rise to heated arguments among feminist scholars and กก literary critics. This paper relies on a 2 ( ก) Lecturer, Department of close reading analysis and engages in English Language and Literature, Faculty of the ongoing discussions by considering Liberal Arts, the problematic categorization of the Thammasat University, Phathum Thani, story—as a fairy tale, a pornographic Thailand Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 01:03:14PM via free access Rewriting Genders, Revising Genres fiction, a gothic horror, and especially as a tale, is more than 16,000 words long. It is bildungsroman novel—in relation to several true that the framework of her story gender aspects such as power relations remains indisputably “Bluebeard” but the between the sexes, the concept of gaze, added material and modification give a sadomasochism and the representation significant new life, as well as new focuses of men and women and their of interest and complexity, to the old story. relationship. By focusing on gender “The Bloody Chamber” has been issues in the short story and using the approached by scholars using several narrative structures of these genres as a disciplines; it has been read particularly framework, Carter’s ingenious revision of against the original tale, feminist criticism the norms becomes a sharper critique of and together with Carter’s own essay The the restrictions of the traditional genres, Sadeian Woman, which was also published as well as the oppressive social and in 1979 and received highly controversial patriarchal ideologies hidden in them. responses. This essay, in turn, pays Also, the study reveals how the short story particular attention to the issue of gender can be a totally different read with the within the multiple genres into which this education of the female narrator at the short story seems to fit. The discussion of center because the lesson learnt is not a genre involves that of a fairy tale, a reproof of female curiosity as the traditional pornographic fiction, a gothic horror and a “Bluebeard” endeavors to deliver but is her bildungsroman novel, with a particular own sexual awareness, readjustment of focus on the last genre as it seems to have certain values and the realization of female escaped critics’ attention so far. Within the bonding and realizable autonomy outside issue of gender, the essay includes the conventional realm of matrimony. arguments concerning power relations and the representation of men and women and First published in 1979, Angela Carter’s their relationship in the story. It will short story collection The Bloody explore how the representation of genders Chamber is “often—wrongly—described differs from stereotypical ones to which as a group of traditional fairy tales given a we have been accustomed in the genres subversive feminist twist” (Simpson discussed; and how using the 2006:vii). Carter explained in an bildungsroman structure as a framework to interview, however, that such was not the approach gender issues allows case—“my intention was not to do interpretations that would not otherwise “versions” or, as the American edition of surface. the book said, horribly, “adult” fairy tales, but to extract the latent content from the “The Bloody Chamber” centers on a traditional stories and to use it as the young pianist, the nameless narrator, who beginnings of new stories” (Haffenden at the opening of the story is travelling 1985:84). Her assertion is reasonable away from home after getting married to a enough because while the traditional fairy rich Marquis. Her arrival at his grand and tale of Charles Perrault’s “Bluebeard” or mysterious castle is followed by the “La Barbe Bleue”, which is actually “a consummation and her husband’s urgent widespread European folktale with many departure on business to New York. variants” (Lokke 1988:8), contains around Before he leaves, the Marquis hands all the 1,800 words, Carter’s new story “The keys over to his wife giving her Bloody Chamber”, which draws upon this permission to explore every room except 51 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 01:03:14PM via free access MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities Regular 17.2, 2014 for the little one which he claims to be his although early tale archivists, Charles private study. Unable to overcome her Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, and Hans curiosity to discover the secrets of his real Christian Andersen were male, “most of self there, however, she decides to enter the material they collected was provided the forbidden room. Within that bloody by women” (98). The fairy tale as a genre, chamber, the discovery of an embalmed however, is not typically seen by feminist body, a skull, and a corpse pierced scholars as healthy to women. It is throughout inside a coffin—all the considered to be oppressive tool informing remains of his three ex-wives—fills her female readers, especially children, of their with so much horror that she drops the key subordinate role in relation to men. Due to in the pool of blood, leaving it with a red its close similarity to “Bluebeard,” Carter, stain that cannot be removed. Realizing as the author of “The Bloody Chamber”, her own fate from what she has seen there, has thus been heavily criticized. According the young bride seeks refuge in the music to Merja Makinen in “Angela Carter’s The room where she meets and confides Bloody Chamber and the Decolonization everything to Jean-Yves, the blind piano- of Feminine Sexuality,” some critics argue tuner, who sympathizes with her. Her that the old fairy tale was a reactionary chance of escape is thwarted by the form that inscribed a misogynistic Marquis’s sudden return and his ideology and in using the form, Carter has immediate discovery of her intrusion to voluntarily accepted conservative sexism. the secret chamber. After pressing the key Therefore, she “is rewriting the tales on her forehead leaving a permanent mark within the strait-jacket of their original of red blood, the death sentence by structure,” and by failing to revise the decapitation is issued, only to be averted conservative form for feminist politics at the last minute by the girl’s mother. She creates only “a reproduction of male rides to her daughter’s rescue on a swift pornography,” to quote Patricia Duncker horse and shoots the Marquis to death. and Avis Lewallen respectively (1992:4). The story ends with the young narrator, These assumptions have been sharply now a widow, busily setting up a new countered by Makinen who points out house with her lover, Jean-Yves and her these critics’ inability to see beyond the mother. Generally speaking, “The Bloody sexist binary opposition and perceiving Chamber” closely follows the storyline of Carter’s work as a rewriting of the tales the traditional fairy tale of “Bluebeard,” centering on the female protagonist with which also deals with a young bride an active sexuality that subverts the earlier finding the dead bodies of her husband’s misogynistic version. Whichever stance previous wives in a forbidden room and one takes in this argument, it is difficult to who is about to be beheaded when her deny that Carter, as a fairy tale enthusiast, brothers come and save her. To consider draws attention to the flaws of the genre how this genre bears on the issue of and the long-standing inequality between gender it is important to know that the the two sexes by means of juxtaposition; fairy tale is by no means a gender-neutral and she does it so effectively via the fairy genre. Joyce Carol Oates in “In Olden tale which is one of the most accessible Times, When Wishing Was Having” genres to the general public. It is arguable, (1997) contends that “the fairy tale, as a too, that no other kind of prose deals with literary/cultural genre, has traditionally or encounters a traditional tale better than been associated with women” and that a modernized one. A recurring female 52 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 01:03:14PM via free access Rewriting Genders, Revising Genres figure in fairy tales, i.e. the damsel in often explicit sexual activities renders her distress, still persists and is very much vulnerable to several anti-pornography abused in Carter’s story, but her point of critics. She is blamed, for example, for view, for one thing, helps us to better supporting pornography which is a sexual understand the female character’s practice based on domination and which is psychology and the nature of her always violent. Pornography is violent in suffering. The ending of the new tale, its content since it “involves scenes of moreover, offers more possibilities for its bondage, rape, mutilation, and torture— heroine other than that of the limited role and in its structures of representation, as a wife in the original text. This will be which silence, objectify, and fragment the discussed in detail later in this essay. female” (636-7). In opposition, a number of advocates of pornography defend it by Nevertheless, in terms of genre, “The stating that “the genre serves women’s Bloody Chamber” cannot simply be interests by offering them an escape from treated as a modern, subversive translation the repressions of bourgeois ideology: it or an extension of the traditional fairy tale, counteracts romantic love, undermines since it also borders on pornographic heterosexual monogamy, and subverts literature and gothic fiction.

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