Angela Carter's collection of short stories, "The Bloody Chamber"

I thought that the image on the left captured the moment in Carter's story, "The Bloody Chamber", when the Count hands over the keys to his new wife, so well, I wanted to include it. In the story, the protagonist often describes herself like a flower, something dainty and new, over which her husband looms like the guillotine. Her innocence clashes with his beastliness in the picture, and so they do in the story, as well. Carter writes that he is a big man, with a large, "leonine" head, etc, whose sphere of influence has so affected him that it adds to his physical presence. 

On the whole, though, the tale of Bluebeard is clearly recognizable under the woven story Carter created. Less so in the case of "The House of Love", where Sl

eeping Beauty is a the last of the Nosferatu vampires. Instead of embodying the traditional fairy-tale feminine ideal, this heroine is animalistic, reluctant to assume the role she was born to, and horrible. The only thing she and the traditional Sleeping Beauty have in common is that they never age - one never finds out what happens after "happily ever after" has been achieved, in any fairy-tale. Well, both also

 wake up to life with a kiss - but Aurora from Disney's movie at least 

survives the transition, while Carter's Sleeping Beauty dies from it. The addition of an authentic time period, right before WWI really gets going, provides a kind of texture to the story that the Grimm version completely lacks.

Carter's version of "Snow White", though, left me confused. In the Grimm version, it is the dying mother who wishes to have a daughter with skin as white as snow, hair as black as night, and lips as red as blood. In Carter's story, the father wishes for such a girl, but as an erotic substitute for his wife. His wish comes true, and just as the girl is slowly replacing his wife bit by bit (first by taking her fur coat, then her boots), she falls off the horse and dies. But wait! While she's dying, the man engages in necrophilia with her! Bottom line: what the hell? 

Finally, the story I always enjoy most reading this collection is Carter's take on

 "Puss-in-Boots". It's a rambunctious, bawdy, and often lewd telling that allows all the characters involved a heavy dose of personality. The ogre or monster Puss-in-Boots triumphs over at the end becomes the husband of the woman his owner lusts after, and Puss-in-Boots

 operates through his owner - making this as realistic a story as any with a cat of equal intelligence to its master can be. I get a kick out of the "princess" in the story, who starts out a cookie-cutter version of every fairy-tale princess - until she happily jumps into bed with the soldier, showing a sexual appetite, deviousness, and sense of self that almost no female fai

ry-tale character wakes up to in the course of her story. This is most noticeable after the death of her husband, when she immediately takes control of the household. With the exception of a lot of dead rats, it's a fun story to read, and a very creative spin on an already-fun story.