“The Tiger’s Bride” (1979)

So this story by Angela Carter from the Bloody Chamber collection is also based on (inspired by, infected with) the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast like the story before it, “The Courtship of Mr. Lyon.” This time the big cat Beast is a tiger. Tiger! Tiger! Known in the story as “Milord,” he wears a mask to disguise himself as human, or more likely to hide his self-perceived ugliness. There’s a subtly implied suggestion that, for all his beastliness, The Beast is also burdened somehow by shame and infinite sadness. He’s most himself seen in the wilds, all raiment removed, running beside the horse. Beauty is the first-person narrator and not ever referred to as Beauty, whereas The Beast in this story gets even “the” capitalized. Brilliant first line, which sets the story in motion suitably: “My father lost me to The Beast at cards.” A lot of stories in The Bloody Chamber were new with publication of the collection in 1979, including this Lyon and tiger pair. I’d like to know more about the sequence of writing them. Did she write them one after another, as they appear in the collection? They are somewhat like mirror reflected images. In “Mr. Lyon,” the Beast becomes more human. In the second, this story, Beauty more enters into The Beast’s remote, isolated, wild realm. I like the way sexuality is treated here, a delicate thing. The Beast has won her (from her father, gambling at cards) but all he wants from her is to see her naked once, which she refuses. It’s not so much modesty as willfulness, an assertion of independence. Already her own fierce animalistic side is incited and it is powerful. Another detail that seems to crop up frequently in Carter’s stories makes its dutiful appearance here, viz., a white rose. Purity, loyalty, etc., I guess? In the end it looks like this could be a couple and relationship that lasts, as Dr. Phil might say. There is little overt humor to Carter, except of the sardonic “man plans; God laughs” strain, a rich vein indeed. That is plentiful and another point of her fascinating, multifaceted voice. She’s just applying it to fairy tales and folk horror—so simple, so effective. Her father had a gambling problem and now here we are, hunting together for game in the wilderness.

Angela Carter, Burning Your Boats
Read story online.