Explore the ways in which Carter develops images of female sexuality and power in her stories.

The Count’s sexual desire is for a pubescent virgin, whose sexual curiosity has been aroused. It is this curiosity that leads to a ‘potentiality for corruption’ as in ‘The Bloody Chamber’ when the girl suddenly sees herself as the marquis sees her.

This female figure can be found in all four stories and it is her sexual arousal that the more experienced male has power over. This is how Carter links male sexuality with the ‘possession, the capture, breaking and ownership of woman’1. Hence, the problem of the female figure asserting her power through her own sexuality occurs.

Carter links the idea of power to the roles of the female characters and their identities. It was Patricia Duncker, in a critical essay of The Bloody Chamber, who stated that identity is defined by role. Therefore in ‘The Tiger’s Bride’, when the girl finally understands her role in society:

‘…had I not been allotted only the same kind of imitative life amongst men that the doll-maker had given her?’

She can then define her role for herself and in turn create her own identity, outside of that which patriarchy has carved out for her. She does this by stripping herself of her clothes, which is a symbolic disrobing of social constraints. By becoming comfortable with her nakedness and sexuality she possesses the power to overcome the oppression of imposed gender roles. This is the same in ‘The Company of Wolves’, as both female protagonists are forced into fearful situations, but instead of ‘playing the victim’ they redefine their roles by stripping off what socialises them as women, and so take control of their situation.

Nakedness also has significant symbolic value in ‘The Snow Child’. The Countess’ clothes are a symbol of her power and status, which exists only through association with her marriage to the Count. Thus her identity is not her own as her role is to play her husband’s wife. When the snow child arrives, her sexuality has power over the Count making him disregard his wife’s attempts. In doing so, the Countess’ clothes are transferred onto the child, robbing the Countess of her identity. The sexual desire the Count has for the naked child is contrasted by the pity he feels for his wife.

The significance of nakedness is that it is symbolic of naturalness and our instinctive animal sexuality, while our clothing is symbolic of the constraints that society places upon us.

Carter deals specifically with the nature of man in her stories, which, whether disguised as wolf or tiger, is important in determining the male/female relationship or more specifically the female’s role, as it is outlined for her, which she might exposed overcome.

In the same year as The Bloody Chamber was published, Carter also published a critical analysis of the eighteenth century French pornographer, Marquis de Sade. de Sade’s sadistic and pornographic portrayal of sex is used by Carter in her stories, most evidently in ‘The Bloody Chamber’: ‘there is a striking resemblance between the act of love and the ministrations of a torturer.’ Carter uses de Sade’s ideas about slave/master victim/aggressor and prey/predator relationships, which is woven throughout this collection of stories, to explore the nature of man and the role of women.

In these four stories the female characters can be looked at as prey on which their male counterparts prey on. However, in ‘The Tiger’s Bride’ and ‘The Company of Wolves’ they refuse to fall victim, which Margaret Atwood, 2 in her essay ‘Running with the Tigers’, suggests is due to attaining ‘a certain tigerishness’ in order to avoid ‘the extreme end of passivity – [becoming] meat’. Atwood also ascertains that the nature of man is not fixed by Carter; and that ‘lambhood and tigerishness may be found in either gender and in the same individual at different times.’ However it is also possible to consider that Carter is stating the opposite: ‘the tiger will never lie down with the lamb…the lamb must learn to run with the tigers.’

In ‘The Company of Wolves’, Carter describes man’s nature as truly wolfish and repeatedly as ‘carnivore incarnate’. In turn, there is no questioning of the nature of man and to survive; Carter suggests that women should stop readily placing themselves as victims of patriarchy, in compliance with their stereotypes.

‘The Bloody Chamber’ focuses its narrative on the virginal, innocent female character and how the male figure tries to corrupt her and how she escapes her doom. It is a first person narrative and so is viewed from her perspective, which is quite limited and naïve.

The marquis is able to dominate the adolescent girl as he exposes her to her sexual desires and even her vanity. He then increases her desires to be kissed and to be touched by prolonging their union ‘anticipation is the greater part of pleasure’, causing her to crave him.

In all of these four stories the male/female relationship is ultimately a power struggle. In this particular case, marquis possesses the girl and she in turn wants to possess part of him. This is why she is so interested in his past, his ex-wives and why he chose her to be his new bride. She is yet to feel secure about her own sexuality and his absolute dominance of her is still to be contested. ‘the imponderable weight of his desire was a force I might not withstand.’

Just as much as she yearns for their union, she is also disgusted by it. ‘I felt both a strange, impersonal arousal at the thought of love and at the same time a repugnance.’

In a Freudian study about the fairytale genre, ‘The Uses of Enchantment’, the author, Bruno Bettelheim, suggests that ‘after she has resolved her oedipal ties to her father –does sex, which before was repugnant, become beautiful.’