The first story we read of Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber", was a re-imagining of "Beauty and the Beast".
We started the lesson building on the general introduction to the Gothic with Mr Sadgrove began the previous class.
Looking at various images, we began to discuss not only conventional gothic themes but the functionality of them. The main themes that we touched on were: oppositions, corruption of innocence, supernatural and gender relations.
Reading through "The Courtship of Mr Lyon" we stopped periodically to discuss the relevance of certain motifs. This built on the earlier discussion we'd had about gothic themes.
After completing the story, we looked at oppositions within it:
Beauty Beast
Male Female
City Country
Caring Spoilt
Healthy Ill
Reality Magical
Punter called this blurring of oppositions the "borderland that fear resides". We went onto discuss what oppositions meant specifically for the male Beast and female Beauty (or the other way round offered Aleks).
Homework was to comment on the subtext of gender roles in this tale.
