Fairy Tales

The main purpose of our last lesson of the year was to re-imagine a fairy tale in a carter fashion.

The lesson kicked off with the class discussing intertextual motifs in "The Bloody Chamber" and their meanings.

We came up with:

Mirror = society’s opinions. How we see ourselves through society’s eyes.

Moon = reason / truth / Aufklarung.

Blood = maturity / sexuality

Virginity = innocence.

Roses = Sexual feelings / danger

Snow = Purity

Chinese Boxes = different layers / ambiguity

Transformations = people not immutable characters.

Animals = men’s sexual Grrr. Or lovely soft feminine softiness (Lamby).

Houses = Patriarchal status quo.

We then discussed our homework from last lesson which was centered around the question:

Could Carter's use of the present tense, then, be related to the distinction between the human and the animal?

This question was answered by most of the class on the last blog post. The answers seemed to be in line with what Christopher Williams commented: "In the case of Wolf-Alice herself, this question can relate to her quite significantly. As the past tense is occuring, she is mostly classified as an animal; due to her being brought up by the wolves. However, as the present tense takes place, she learns the ways of human living and begans to understand what is the norm throughout society in order to gain attraction towards herself"

After this the class considered what Fred Botting Said about carter: "In her late twentieth-century fiction, Carter powerfully and often critically demonstrates the reversal of values and identifications that occur via the Gothic genre. Otherness takes centre stage: sexual transgression, dark desire, and fantastic deviance wonderfully subvert the restrictive orders of reason, utility and paternal morality… In Gothic times margins may become the norm and occupy a more central cultural place."

The final task of the lesson was to reproduce a fairy tale using Carter's style. We done this in groups of 3/4 and had a chance to either write the story out or to perform as a play. The group was thoroughly entertained by all performances as they all involved a degree of creativity. This task also consolidated what we had learnt throughout the last few months about the Gothic genre and Angela Carter.

Homework for the summer holidays can be found in the previous blog by Chris C

Thanks for reading, enjoy your holidays & take care.

'Sonny.