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"Bluebeard" and "The Bloody Chamber": the Grotesque of Self-Parody and Self-Assertion Author(S): Kari E

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Frontiers, Inc. "Bluebeard" and "The Bloody Chamber": The Grotesque of Self-Parody and Self-Assertion Author(s): Kari E. Lokke Reviewed work(s): Source: Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1 (1988), pp. 7-12 Published by: University of Nebraska Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3345932 . Accessed: 08/05/2012 20:24 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of Nebraska Press and Frontiers, Inc. are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. http://www.jstor.org Bluebeardand The Bloody Chamber: The Grotesqueof Self-Parodyand Self-Assertion Kari E. Lokke Like many fairy tale motifs, the Bluebeardlegend is gro- defenderof the modemsagainst the ancientsin the seventeenth- tesquein essence. This taleof the wealthy,seemingly chivalrous centuryQuerelle des Ancienset des Modernes,trying to com- aristocratwho murdersseven young brides and inters them fort himself and his readerwith this ironic moral to his own in his cellar bringstogether violence and love, perversionand renderingof the Bluebeardtale: "Itis easy to see thatthe events innocence, death and marriagein an unsettlingcombination. describedin this story took place manyyears ago. No modern The interminglingof seeminglyincongruous elements and the husbandwould dare be half so terrible,nor to demandof his juxtapositionof oppositeschallenge audience expectation and wife such an impossiblething as to stifle her curiosity.Be he habits of thinking in a manner typical of the grotesque as ever so quarrelsomeor jealous, he'll toe the line as soon as definedby theoristsas variedas WolfgangKayser and Mikhail she tells him to. And whatevercolour his beardmight be, it's Bakhtin.1 easy to see which of the two is the master."4 In two Carterand Max As readerswe the in fact, contemporaryauthors, Angela expect grotesque fairy tales, perhaps seem to with Perrault's and becausethese storiesare to a never-neverland Frisch, disagree urbane,sensible, displaced beyond attitudetoward the Bluebeardtale. Carter the demandsof and verisimilitude.And if Bakhtinis cor- "enlightened" grisly logic in The Chamberand Frisch in Bluebeardhave rect in that the aesthetic in literatureand Bloody placed asserting grotesque this ancient tale motif at the heartof recentnovellas with art is an of medieval folk and fairy outgrowth carnivals, festivals, the obvious intentof statementsabout then the reasonsfor the of the makingstrong violence, popularculture,2 predominance and lonelinessin male- folktalesbecome self-evident.In the Middle exploitation,alienation, contemporary grotesquein Ages female Neither Carternor Frisch makes Per- and the Bakhtin the had an relationships. Renaissance, suggests, grotesque rault'scavalier that a wife is her husband's for the of broke assumption always emancipatoryfunction, juxtaposition opposites "master."As Carterstates in the forewordto her translation down false societaland barriersto the truth ideological expose of Perrault's tends to createor re-create of life's and and to celebratethe tales, "Eachcentury unpredictability spontaneity tales after its own And in its own one and of thatlife in all its most manifesta- fairy taste."5 image, unity power corporeal add for tions. Bakhtinsees "timeless of the might emphasis. Kayser's conception gro- These two recreationsof the Bluebeardtale reflect as an to the modem certainly tesque"3 attempt project grotesque differentauthorial stances and Max backwardsinto In this modem as defined strikingly backgrounds. history. grotesque with Friedrich one of the most both the of elements Frisch, along Diirrenmatt, by theorists, juxtaposition incongruous andbest knownof Swiss uses to a fundamental a and prominent contemporary authors, points absurdity, terrifyingemptiness, his diaries and even a demonic disorder in the universe. published diary-likenovels, including Stiller, Homo Faberand Montauk,to underminethe rational,empir- Perhapswe tend, as moderns,to tell ourselvesthat the world ical conceptionof self as a logical, coherent,definable entity. of the fairytale is not our own, but a more naiveand primitive Frisch'swork represents the position,both privileged and unen- one of long ago and far away. Witness Charles Perrault, viable, of the male heir to the Westernpatriarchal tradition Kari E. Lokkewill join thefaculty of the Universityof California,Davis in September1988 as assistantprofessor of English and comparativeliterature. Her recentlypublished book G6rardde Nerval: The Poet as Social Visionary (FrenchForum, 1987) discusses the political implicationsof Nerval's mysticism.The article published here is related to her currentresearch interests in the aesthetics of the grotesqueand the sublime. Kari Lokkeis gratefulto the EditorialBoard of FRONTIERSfor insightful commentaryon The Bloody Chamberthat allowed her to makesignificant improvements in her analysisof this remarkablenovella. FRONTIERSVol. X, No. 1 o 1988FRONTIERS Editorial Collective 8 FRONTIERS who examines and describes the dissolution of that intellec- Both novellas are told in the first person, a point of view tual and political tradition. foreign to the traditionalfolktale. But these two first-person The English iconoclastand feminist, Angela Carter,on the narrativeperspectives seem to have almost nothing in com- other nand, consistentlyrepresents the outsiderin her novels, mon. TheBloody Chamberis the intenseand breathless retell- short stories, and essays. "Black Venus,"for example, is an ing of a young girl's seductioninto and escape from a deadly eerie portraitof JeanneDuval, Baudelaire'sCreole mistress. marriage.The readeris pulledinto the flow of the lush, erotic, "The Cabinet of Edgar Allan Poe" gives us Elizabeth and rhythmicprose from this first remarkablesentence: VirginiaPoe, the motherand wife of the celebratedand haunted writer. TheSadeian Womanexamines the culturalsignificance I rememberhow, that night, I lay awakein the wagon-litin of the life and writingsof the Marquisde Sade. A twentieth- a tender,delicious ecstasy of excitement,my burningcheek centuryMadame dAulnoy, Carter takes myth and folklore,the pressedagainst the impeccablelinen of the pillowand the world of collective subjectivity,as her inspiration.From her poundingof my heartmimicking that of the greatpistons fantasticFireworks tales to her carnivalesquenovel Nights at ceaselesslythrusting the train that bore me throughthe night, from from fromthe the Circus,Carter's writings bring the vitalityof whatBakhtin away Paris,away girlhood,away white, enclosed of mother's intothe calls "popularculture" into contemporaryBritish literature by quietude my apartment, unguess- able countryof marriage.9 translatingthe motifs of myth and folklore into the language of the aesthete. Thus the collection TheBloody sophisticated Eachdetail-from the whitenessof her husband's Chambercontains of severalwell-known tales, pallid, fleshy renderings fairy to his leather-bound to the "cruel including "Puss-in-Boots"and "LittleRed Riding Hood," as face, pornographiclibrary, well as the title that retells the tale of Bluebeard. necklace,"the priceless "bloody bandageof rubies" that he story forcesher to weararound her frailneck-increases the reader's In the folktale,Bluebeard is a wealthymerchant or who king horror at the of the victim's death marriesand then murdersa series of wives, usually three or seeming inevitability by The but not unbearable- seven. After each wife is the key to a forbid- decapitation. tension-almost, quite marriage, given common to both the best erotic fiction and the best horror den chamberof horrorswhere the formerwives are interred, storiesis the trademarkof this tale. At the same the nar- and, of course, each wife breaksthe taboo and entersthe for- time, biddenroom when the husbandis absent.The "disobedience" rativehas an ironicquality of genreparody because the reader knows from the first word that the heroine survives to of each wife is, in turn, when the key becomes in- very betrayed tell her tale. Thus Carter's has the to do the im- delibly bloody. Finally,the is brokenwhen the last wife prose power cycle to create even when the con- is saved and Bluebeardhimself murdered,by the bride, her possible, overwhelmingsuspense ditions for that are in fact nonexistent.The reader brothers, or a page, dependingupon the specific version of suspense the tale. simultaneouslyexperiences intense emotionalinvolvement in the and a more detachedand intellectualadmiration for Bluebeard is a widespread folktale with many story European Carter's skills. The of both readerinvolve- variants-German,French, Basque, and Estonian,to namebut storytelling height ment and in the tale comes at the moment when the a few. In Norwaythe husbandis a troll, in Italy, a devil, and irony bride is rescued her motherand in an ancient Greek version, death itself. to Funk young by strong,courageous According Carter turns the tables on an and and Dictionaryof Folklore,Mythology and Legend, explicitly age-old literary Wagnall's the traditionof Love in the WesternWorld: the centralmotif of the
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