This tells us that the narrator is looking back on the incident and thinking about how she felt at the time and what she went through. She walks us through the story by not only telling us what happened but also telling us how she had felt about the marquee at the time and how certain incidents made her feel and how they have changed how she is now. Angela Carter has chosen this narrator and this retrospective to make us imagine things more clearly and to highlight the incidents by using the narrator’s emotions as a key into the narrator’s mind.
When we meet the narrator, she is very naïve and childish. “All I wanted to do was curl up by the fire with a cheap novel and munch sticky liquor chocolates.” She wishes for very simple childish things such as this.
At the start of the book she marries the Marquee simply for material items such as all his money, all the jewels, the castle and all the maids that wait on hand and foot for her. “If I rang for them, a maid would bring me chocolates.” The narrator is a seventeen year old girl so in some perspectives her attitude is quite normal. However as the book progresses she realises that she doesn’t love the Marquee but she loves the Piano tuner. “It was his tender look that made me faint.” We also see that she has grown up a tremendous amount at the end because when she inherits all the Marquees money she gave “it away to various charities and the castle is now a school for the blind.” This shows that she doesn’t just want money anymore because she has grown up and fallen in love with the piano tuner.
Angela Carter does not make clear any set time period that the story took place. She does this by mixing different aspects of different time periods such as mixing very 12th century settings such as the castle and the surroundings with 18th-19th century items such as the telephones. The characters don’t really speak in the traditional languages such as Latin. The three books that the narrator finds “The initiation, Pandora’s box and the key of mysteries.” These are all from different time zones. Pandora’s Box was from the 7th-8th century whereas The Initiation is quite a modern story.
We learn a lot about the other characters through the narrator in the rest of this story
from the view of the narrator. The narrator tells us about how courageous her mother is and foreshadows her mum saving her by saying that she wishes she could phone her mum so that her mum could come and rescue her. Her mum does come and rescue her at the end of the story. At the start of the story we have our suspicions about the Marquee because of his perversions and how he treats the young girl. We also learn that the narrator has some suspicions about the Marquee herself but ignores them until she finds out that her suspicions were true.
Angela Carter foreshadows a lot in the story to prepare us for the shock that is in store and also to keep us in suspense. This is to intensify the shock when we find out that the Marquee kills his wives. When she is walking down the corridor to the secret room she says “The naked swords and immolated horses suggested some grisly mythological subject.” This is foreshadowing what she is going to see in the chamber. Previous things that she says also foreshadow what happens in the chamber and what will seal her fate. “A dozen husbands impaled a dozen wives.” This use of imagery is about the Marquee’s ancestors and himself and about how they all kill their wives.
KIERAN CORBITT
