“The Bloody Chamber” (1979)

I’m not always sure exactly what Angela Carter stories are about beyond their overt connections to various fairy tales and folk legends, but I can always feel the depths of the currents they spring from and her voice worrying the surfaces with dense, terse language that is practically dazzling in its totality. The fairy tale thing is too reductive, of course, as this quote from her suggests: “My intention was not to do ‘versions’ or, as the American edition of [The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories] said, horribly, ‘adult’ fairy tales, but to extract the latent content from the traditional stories.” That’s important to keep in mind, but it’s equally important to know the source material, which a Wikipedia article helpfully provides in summaries of the stories (I had to do some brushing up). “The Bloody Chamber,” one of her longer stories, is based on the centuries-old French folk tale about a man named Bluebeard, who is among the worst husbands of all time. I’d seen the name around but had the idea he was a Jolly Roger type of pirate, but that’s Blackbeard. Bluebeard is a rich guy who tortures his wives to death. As a folk tale it has many variations, making Carter’s fever dream as close to authoritative as any. The story is told by the latest and fourth wife of a certain Marquis. She is 17. A lot is made by the Marquis of her virginity. In general, there is a lot of sexual tension with violent undertones here and an interesting, shocking appearance of the c-word. The tale often feels ripe to bursting. The Marquis gives her a choker made of rubies, for example: “His wedding gift, clasped round my throat. A choker of rubies, two inches wide, like an extraordinarily precious slit throat.” She goes on: “After the Terror, in the early days of the Directory, the aristos who’d escaped the guillotine had an ironic fad of tying a red ribbon round their necks at just the point where the blade would have sliced it through, a red ribbon like the memory of a wound.” It’s not a “modern” retelling—written in the 1970s, it is set explicitly in the 19th century. In that way it is like what Ray Russell did with his “gothic” stories. “The Bloody Chamber” goes to dark if improbable places after the Marquis is called away on business during the honeymoon. He hands over all the keys to his mansion to his child bride, including the key for one room she is admonished not to enter. You can guess what happens. But maybe you can’t guess what she finds. Or maybe you can.

Angela Carter, Burning Your Boats
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