October Book List Theme- Horror Books by Female Authors: The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter10/6/2018 This month, in honor of Halloween, my book list is featuring notable horror novels by women. The horror genre is so closely associated with the likes of Stephen King and Edgar Allan Poe, that it's common for people to forget that for every H. P. Lovecraft there is a Mary Shelley. That's why this month I'm celebrating the ladies of horror.
The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter Anyone looking at the source material for the sanitized Disney versions of fairy tales we're familiar with will quickly realize that fairy tales are dark. Some of them pitch black, in fact. Getting to the happily ever after often involves truly horrible things. And murder. A lot of murder. It's difficult to find a Grimm's that doesn't involve someone getting murdered at some point. And if witches aren't being pushed into ovens in a particular tale, there will be a dead mother looming over the story. Fairy tales are not for the weak. That is where Angela Carter comes in with her slim collection of short stories that retell fairy tales in a voluptuous, feminist light. The women in these stories face down horror with a healthy dose of their own agency. Sleeping Beauty is transformed into a vampire tale. There are two different versions of Beauty and the Beast, one in which no one ends up human in the end. There are werewolves and murderers and a raunchy take on Puss n' Boots, all of it related in luxurious prose. You might recall some of the stories that were adapted into A Company of Wolves, a movie that managed to retain some of Carter's Gothic, opulent magnificence. The stand out story is "The Bloody Chamber", an ominous retelling of "Bluebeard" that creeps toward its ending with the audience well aware of the doom looming over the heroine as she is entrusted with the keys to the castle. This book might not be horror in the most obvious sense, but there is horror there. Horror of what women are and have been subjected to all through history. Horror of men transformed into monsters, or maybe the fact that we're all monsters one way or another looking for others to accept that and set us free.
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AuthorA librarian who likes to travel and experience life. CategoriesArchives
June 2022
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