论安吉拉·卡特在其新童话中对女性形象颠覆

论安吉拉·卡特在其新童话中对女性形象颠覆 ii iii CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS....................................................................................... iiAbstract in Chinese .................................................................................................. iiiAbstract in English ................................................................................................... ivChapter One Introduction .......................................................................................... 1 1.1 Carter‘s Literary Practice ....................................................................................................1 1.2 Literary Review...................................................................................................................2 1.2.1 Foreign Studies on Carter .........................................................................................2 1.2.2 Domestic Studies on Carter ......................................................................................4 1.3 The Significance and Structure of the Thesis ......................................................................6Chapter Two Deconstruction and Angela Carter ........................................................ 8 2.1 Derrida‘s Deconstruction ....................................................................................................8 2.2 Carter‘s Deconstructive Practice ....................................................................................... 11Chapter Three Female Images in Traditional Fairy Tales ..........................................13 3.1 Traditional Fairy Tales ......................................................................................................13 3.1.1 Features of Fairy Tales ...........................................................................................14 3.1.2 Functions of Fairy Tales .........................................................................................15 3.2 Traditional Female Images ................................................................................................ 17 Chapter Four New Female Images from the Perspective of Deconstruction ..............20 4.1 Deconstructing the Authoritative Narration ......................................................................20 4.2 Deconstructing Weak Female and Powerful Male ............................................................ 25 4.2.1 Clever and Brave Female Characters .....................................................................25 4.2.2 Tender Male Characters..........................................................................................28 4.3 Deconstructing Females Waiting for Help ........................................................................30 4.3.1 Women as Rescuers to Themselves ........................................................................31 4.3.2 Women as Rescuers to Men ...................................................................................32 4.4 Deconstructing Subordinate Females ................................................................................34 4.4.1 Pursuing Equality with Men...................................................................................35 4.4.2 Expressing Ardent Sexuality ..................................................................................37Chapter Five Conclusion ..........................................................................................43Bibliography ............................................................................................................44Paper Published During the Study for M. A. Degree .................................................48 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere thanks andappreciation to all those people who have contributed in different ways to thecompletion of this thesis. My greatest thanks first go to my supervisor, Associate Professor Yao Benbiao,who has spent lots of his precious time guiding me throughout the writing of thisthesis and sent numerous materials from abroad. During the past three years, he hasgiven me constant guidance and encouragement on my study. I am deeply grateful forhis enlightening instruction, stimulating and critical comments, and above all, hiskindness and patience in examining my work in detail, without which, the completionof this thesis would be a mission impossible. I also owe a special debt of gratitude to Professor Chen Guangwei, Professor LiXiao, Associate Professor Yang Yuguo, Professor Huang Dou, Professor Lu Yun,Professor Li Guinan, Professor Liu Jiamei, from whose enlightening lectures I got toknow more about the theories of literature and linguistics, together with researchmethods. My special thanks also go to other teachers in Guangxi Teachers EducationUniversity who have taught and inspired me during my postgraduate study. Special thanks are also due to my classmates and roommates for their generoushelp with many research sources and reference books concerning this thesis. Last but not least, I would like to thank my parents for their love and supportthroughout the years, which has been the greatest motivation to the completion of thisstudy. ii 中文摘要 安吉拉?特被普遍视视是事“解神视事视”的人。新改的集《染卡从她写 血的房视及其故事》手法大、特～可以有多视解视形式。特的新童视故它胆独卡 事吸引了多视视家的视注～他视哥特式、魔幻视视主视、女性主视、后视代众从 主视等角度视其作品视行了～普遍视视特作品的女主人公依然是男视的来卡 受害者或激视的女视视视者。然而本文视视特非想要女性凌视于男性之卡并将上～而是视求男女性的平等～视了男性女性共容的理念～因此所视求的两达与她 女性视力不是激视的而是理性的。本文用解主视理视视述特是如何视将运构来卡覆男尊女卑～视求男女平等的。 法批视家德里用解主视理视批判西方视各斯中心主视～打破一方视国达构来 另运构将卡一方的视治。通视用解主视的理视～本视文重点放在特视视视童视的 视覆性改上～分析特是如何解二元视立～建立男女平等的。特理性视求写卡构卡 男女平等的反映在使用女性述者～展示女性的勇敢～男性的柔弱及女性她叙 视求男性平等的地位～女性性欲的表及视自己救助自己方面。作视特作与达她卡 品的述者～女性有力量的视出自己的音～视能挽救自己以及男性。故事叙声她她 中的女性大地表自己的情欲～勇敢利用自己的身去征服男性把视视胆达体并与她当 做商品的父视社做斗。会争 通视分析特如何解视视作品～本文视一步探索了特视取女性视力的卡构卡争 斗。用新酒的方式～特使用了视大接受的文形式去探索解性争旧瓶装卡众学决两 冲会从属突及女性在父视社的地位的局面。安吉拉?特追求男女平等、和视而卡非一方视视一方。另 视视视,安吉拉?特卡;《染血的房视及其故事》它; 童视; 解主视构 iii Abstract in English Angela Carter is widely regarded as a writer in ―the demothologising business.‖ Angela Carter‘s newly revised The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories is bold and undoubtedly unique which fosters multiple readings. Carter‘s fairy tales have attractedan ever-increasing number of scholars to analyze them from the aspects of gothic,magical realism, feminism, postmodernism, etc respectively, who generally believethat the female characters in her works are either victims under patriarchal society orradical women‘s rights advocators. However, this thesis holds that what Carter seeksis not to place women above men but the equality between them, which expresses heridea of a harmonious co-existence between men and women. Therefore, the seekingof women rights in her stories is not radical but rational. By using deconstructionism,this thesis interprets how Carter subverts man‘s assumed superiority over woman andseeks the equality between them. French critic Derrida put forward deconstructionism to criticize the logocentrismin western and suggested breaking the domination of one over the other. Byemploying the theory of deconstructionism, this thesis focuses on Carter‘s subversivewriting of the traditional fairy tales to analyze how Carter deconstructs binaryoppositions and creates equality between men and women. Her ideas of rationalseeking equality between men and women are reflected in her using of femalenarrators, displaying women‘s powerfulness and men‘s tenderness, women‘s seekingequality with men, expressing of women‘s sexual desire and their conducts of savingthemselves. Being the narrators in Carter ‘s works, females are strong enough to maketheir own voices heard and are capable enough to save themselves as well as men.Some women in her reversed stories are bold enough to express their sexual desiresand are brave enough to take advantage of their body to conquer men and fight againstthe patriarchal society that treats them as commodity. Through analyzing how Carter deconstructs conventional works, the author iv further explores Carter‘s fighting for women‘s rights. By using the old bottle to holdnew wine, Carter uses a commonly accepted literary form to explore the solution tothe conflicting bisexual relationship and women‘s subordinate status in the patriarchalsociety. Angela Carter tries to achieve equality and harmony between man and woman,not one being superior to the other. KEY WORDS,Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, fairy tale, deconstructionism v Chapter One Introduction 1.1 Carter’s Literary Practice Angela Carter (1940-1992) is one of the most important, controversial andprolific British feminist authors of the late twentieth century. Throughout her career,Carter created characteristic motifs of the fantasy genre by successfully using acombination of post-modern literary theories and feminist politics. Carter adds intoher works Gothic themes, violence, postmodernist eclecticism and eroticism. MagicRealism, Surrealism, Fantasy, Gothic, Science Fiction, Feminism and Postmodernism-all of these categories apply to her accomplishments. She was a prolific writer and was called one of the most important writers of herperiod. In 1966, she published her first novel Shadow Dance. In 1967 The Magic Toyshop was published which revealed Carter's fascination with fairy tales andFreudian unconsciousness. In 1970, having divorced from her husband, Carter went tolive in Japan. The life in Japan helped her to find her identity and voice as a womanand social radical. In 1979 Carter published The Sadeian Woman, in which she questioned culturally accepted views of sexuality, and sadistic and masochisticrelations between men and women. Published in 1979, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories received Cheltenham Festival Literary Prize. Angela Carter could becalled short story writer, novelist, journalist, dramatist and critic because of herversatile literary feats. In her relatively short lifetime, she produced nine novels,dozens of short stories, a volume of poetry and many essays on cultural and literarythemes. Shadow Dance(1966), The Magic Toyshop(1967), Several Perceptions(1968), Heroes and Villains(1969), Love(1971), The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman(1972), The Passion of New Eve(1977), Nights at the Circus(1984) and Wise Children(1991) are her nine famous novels. In addition to The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, her collections of short stories also include Fireworks: Nine Profane Pieces (1974), Black Venus (1985) and posthumously, American Ghosts & Old-World 1 Wonders (1993). The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories is the most frequently analyzed short story collection. Carter published two more scholarly collections offairy tales: The Old Wives’ Fairy Tale Book (1990) and Strange Things Sometimes Still Happen (1992) in the last several years of her life. Carter died of cancer in 1992at the age of fifty-one. Jacqueline Pearson (2006:?) says in the foreword of Re-visiting Angela Carter: Texts, Contexts, Intertexts that ―From Shakespeare to Sade, from Baudelaire to the Brothers Grimm, from John Ford the seventeenth- century dramatist to John Ford thefilm-director, all is grist to her (Angela Carter) mill. And she was largely compared‖ with Shakespeare, Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe in the width and depth of her works.What makes her works interesting is its kaleidoscopic quality. In the introduction toBurning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories, Salman Rushdie states that ―she was the most individual, independent and idiosyncratic of writers”(Carter, 1995: xiv). On her death, Salman Rushdie (1992:5) wrote that ―English literature has lost its highsorceress, its benevolent witch queen, a burlesque artist of genius and antic grace.‖ Merja Makinnen (1992:14) comments on her death like this ―… we have lost animportant feminist writer who was able to critique phallocentrism with ironic gustoand to develop a sider and more complex representation of femininity. After her‖ death in 1992, more postgraduate students applied for funding to support research onCarter‘s work than on the whole of eighteenth-century (Parker, 2008: 77).1.2 Literary Review 1.2.1 Foreign Studies on Carter Angela Carter‘s newly revised The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories is bold and undoubtedly unique, which fosters multiple readings. A number of disruptive andcounter-patriarchal aspects run through these stories, including the portrayal of femaleawakening sexual desire and their self-saving as a reasonable response to oppressivesocial conditions. With its new female images being demonstrated, the works not onlydisplays the rise of feminine consciousness through the portrait of the altered status of 2 men and women, but also makes what seems reasonable begins to be doubted. It isregarded as a feminine work that counters the tradition dominated by male writerswho hold positive attitudes towards female roles. Western critics mainly analyzed herfairy tales from the following aspects. Pornography is a major critical topic in the study of Carter‘s novels. Carter‘ssexual violence in her works caused great debates. And whenever critics mentionedabout pornography in Carter‘s works, Sade, being called as a moral pornographer, willbe undoubtedly mentioned about comments on Carter. Patricia Duncker(1984),Gregory J. Rubinson(2000), Sarah M. Henstra(1999), Kari E. Lokke(1988) and RobinAnn Sheets (1991) in their previous studies have compared Carter‘s characters withSade and discussed her role in the debates about pornography. Gregory J.Rubinson(2000) in essays ―On the Beach of Elsewhere”: Angela Carter’s Moral Pornography and the Critique of Gender Archetypes holds that Carter criticizes the archetypal constructions of femininity by analyzing the characters in her works andargues that Carter‘s moral pornography is aimed at demonstrating the real problems awoman faces in a male-dominated society and culture. Robin Ann Sheets(1991) inPornography, Fairy Tales, and Feminism: Angela Carter’s “ The Bloody Chamber”reassess Carter‘s stance on pornography by reading The Sadeian Woman in conjunction with The Bloody Chamber. Heta Pyrhonen(2007) Examines how the Marquis in ―The Bloody Chamber imitates Sage‘s erotic code and how her female‖ characters and narrator made the code work for them. A large number of critical essays are about her gothic elements. Among themSarah Sceats (2001) holds that in ―The Bloody Chamber the Marquis‘s lips are‖ described as red and wet, which is like the image of blood-sucking vampire. RebeccaMunford (2007) discussed the purpose and effects of Carter‘s using gothic heroines.She believes that by using gothic elements the feminine sexual initiation foundrespectable, secular expression. Gender identity is another dominant criticism of Carter‘s fiction. Critics havedivergent points of view on whether Angela Carter‘s rewriting of traditional fairytales assumes a feminist perspective or maintains the patriarchal model of 3 relationships. Some critics take a feministic perspective in analyzing her revisionaryfairy tales. They believe that Angela Carter deconstructs foundational ideas of genderor sexual identity to a far greater degree. Catherine Lappas (1996) in her dissertationexamines how writers including Sexton, Carter, and Margaret Atwood attack some ofthe traditional ideas and create tales to suit the genuine feelings and desires of women.Mary Kaiser (1994) in Fairy Tale as Sexual Allegory: Intertextuality in Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber mainly takes ―The Bloody Chamber and ―The Snow‖ Child as examples to prove Carter‘s using fairy tale to present different problems in‖ gender relations and sexuality. The author also sums up other critics‘ opinions onCarter and believes that in these two stories women are being treated as apornographic contrast with men who are always clothed. Patricia Brooke (2004) givesa high praise to Carter‘s retellings by arguing that Carter equipped her femalecharacters with subjectivity defined by activity rather than passivity. He gives adetailed analysis of how they confront and fight against the wolf, tiger and lion thatare representatives of men. However, Carter‘s revisionary fairy tales are alsocriticized by some critics like Patricia Dunker (1984) and Avis Lewallen (1988) asreaffirming rather than upsetting the patriarchal ideology. They argue that she takesher feminist activism too far that her stories fail to serve as a tool to criticize thepatriarchal ideology. 1.2.2 Domestic Studies on Carter Compared with large amounts of systematic and specialized research on Carter inWestern countries, domestic studies on Carter are fewer and subtler. Few of Carter‘sworks are introduced to Chinese readers. Taiwan scholar Yan Yun;2005,translated her Wise Children and then Burning Your Boat which are hardly available in mainland. Recently, The Magic Toyshop and The Passion of New Eve were translated and published in mainland, which offers more opportunity for domestic readers toappreciate Carter. Until now, only one book is found commenting on Carter in China,which is Mu Yang‘s (2009) Breaking the Magic Spell: from Body to Subject in Angela 4 Carter’s Rewriting of the Fairy Tale which is the first book which makes a full explanation of Carter. Besides the above-mentioned books, at home there are also some articles writtenon Carter. These articles mainly focus on her theme, gothic features and intertexuality.Many critics concentrate on her magic realism and fantastic image in her works.However, the most common criticisms are focused on her title story ―The BloodyChamber and the analysis on her rest of the stories in‖ The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories is not detailed. Zhang Zhongzai (1994) is the first scholar who studiedon Carter and wrote a series of articles on her. Tian Xiangbin (2004) in his article On the Charm of Angela Carter’s Modern Fairy Tales argues that Carter‘s The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories is a perfect combination of traditional form and modern meaning by using Gothic elements. He also praises the protagonists in Carter‘s storiesfor their conquering of men. However, to the author of this thesis, he overvalues thepower of women and devalues men. In fact, what Carter seeks is not to tread menunderfoot but to seek an equal position between the two sexes. Wang Baola andHuang Jie (2009) make comments on Carter‘s revisionary fairy tales from the aspectof deconstructing male role, unveiling the myth about goddess mother andreconstructing the dominated role of female. In China, there are less than ten master degree theses commenting on Carter.More than half focus on her novels. Feng Qingmei (2005) talked about her thematicfeature, while Hua Li (2008) made a study on the gothic elements in her short stories,Lei li(2008) interpreted Carter‘s short stories from the aspects of intertextuality. Onlytwo theses talked about her revisionary fairy tales, one is Li Qingjian‘s (2009) On Angela Carter’s Feminist Reconstruction of Classical Fairy Tales and the other is Mo Fan‘s From Deconstruction to Reconstruction: On the Female Characters in AngelaCarter’s Fictions. Li Qingjian analyzes Carter‘s reconstruction of female images fromthe aspect of women‘s inferiority, dependence on men and the original sin. He isagainst the previous literary work‘s treating women as inferior, curious and sinfulcreatures as Eve. However, these are not the features of fairy tale. The author of thisthesis finds that women‘s inferiority and the original sin are not indispensible parts for 5 deconstructing Carter‘s fairy tales. The other postgraduate Mo Fan (2009) tries toprove Carter‘s reconstruction from the aspect of naive angel, poisonous Siren andholy mother. However, this thesis tries to make a study on Carter‘s deconstruction ofthe fairy tale images, not the whole width of traditional female images.1.3 The Significance and Structure of the Thesis For a long time, there exists a stereotype of women in both literature and literarycriticism. Traditionally speaking, men are described as sexual predator (active, maleculprit) and women as prey (passive, female victim). Because of the aesthetic andcritical criteria by which they have been accorded, many women‘s works are eitherlost or ignored in the long run of time. It is in the postmodern feminist rewritings ofmore traditional tales by writers such as Margaret Atwood and Angela Carter thatfemale protagonists take full control of their own fertility and sexual desire. Theliterary production of these women writers has played an important role in reshapingwomen‘s identity. It is well known that 1970s and 1980s are decades that witnessedthe blossoming of women‘s writing and feminist literature. Carter is a woman whouses her literary weapon to deconstruct the established binary opposition betweenwomen and men.With the emerging of emphasis on female writers and their works, itis necessary to discuss the work of Angela Carter, who makes tremendouscontribution to literature. This thesis is written from two considerations: firstly, fewdomestic studies are on Carter‘s unique deconstructing techniques either in depth or inwidth; secondly, the theses written on her deconstructing female characters in fairytales are even fewer. Therefore, the author tries to present Carter ‘s deconstructing ofthe patriarchal society and her promoting the equality between men and women. Theauthor hopes that through this study on Carter from a new perspective, Carter ‘s workscould be well read and the understanding of them could be deepened in China. Thisthesis is composed of five chapters. Chapter one serves as a general introduction to Carter‘s artistic achievements. Atthe same time the research on her works both at home and aboard is summed up. With 6 a survey of general comments and reactions on her works --The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, the subversive features in her fairy tales are given a special focus. Chapter two discusses deconstructive theory in detail. As Angela Carter wasagainst the masculinist representations of women in traditional story-telling, she gavea subversive modeling of female characters as a particularly feminist mode of textualpractice. So it is reasonable to use deconstructive theory to analyze how Carter bringsfemale‘s rights into people‘s sight. Chapter three analyzes the traditional fairy tales in detail from the theme,structure and characters. The features and functions of fairy tales and the traditionalfemale characters in fairy tales are also discussed. Chapter four puts its main attention on the feminist deconstruction andreconstruction. This chapter explores how Carter deconstructs the male dominatedsociety and reconstructs a new world. Carter uses fairy tale as a unique literary formto express her attitude towards female identity. Her feminist ideas are reflected in herusing of female narrators, complicated characters, seeking equality with men, theheroine‘s sexual desire and their conducts of saving themselves. In this part theoriginal fairy tales such as ―Beauty and the Beast, ―Little Red Riding Hood and‖‖ Bluebeard are compared with their reversionary ones. Chapter five is the conclusion. By using a new perspective to revise the fairy tale,Carter pushes female rights to a new height. The rewriting of the fairy tales givesvoices to characters and situations previously unheard. And it is by listening to thosevoices that we may find ways in which women break the paradigm of patriarchy andhead for a new gender identity. This study presents itself as an exhaustive analysis ofCarter‘s fairy tales collection -- The Blood Chamber and Other Stories by using one kind of criticism rather than as an expansive introduction to many literary critics. 7 Chapter Two Deconstruction and Angela Carter Deconstruction has been widely used in the areas of philosophy, art, literatureand architecture and exerted a great influence to world literature. It has caused greatchanges in human thoughts by surveying the object from a new perspective. Feminism,post-colonialism owe a lot to deconstructionism. Based on deconstructive theory,literary works are often analyzed through its striking characteristics such asfragmentation, montage, decanonization, indeterminacy. The most innovative featureof the theory is its refusing the logos through a discussion of whether speech issuperior to writing as assumed by structuralism. 2.1 Derrida’s Deconstruction Deconstruction was first introduced by French critic Jacque Derrida in 1960s. Itis a strategy developed on the basis of structuralism, which dominated the academicfield up to the 1960s. In a conference at Johns Hopkins University on structuralism in1966, Derrida pointed out the contradiction of structure and its centre in his paper –Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences. In his three books Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference, and Speech and Phenomena, Derrida systematically illuminated his idea about deconstruction and thus proclaimed theestablishment of it. He is devoted to ―the task of dismantling a concept of ?structure‘that serves to immobilize the play of meaning in a text and reduce it to a manageablecompass (Norris, 2002: 2). Therefore basically deconstruction is against‖ structuralism ―in its refusal to accept the idea of structure as in any sense given orobjectively ? there‘ in a text(Norris,2002: 3). The theory later gains development in‖ America with the efforts of scholars at Yale University called ―Gang of Four and‖ soon spreads all over the world within just a few years and is now used in manyfields. Deconstructiontheoryiscomposedofdifference,anti-logocentrism, supplementarity and so on. In fact Derrida did not give an explicit definition on 8 deconstruction. When asked about the definition of deconstruction, he said ―I have nosimple and formalizable response to this question. All my essays are attempts to haveit out with this formidable question (Derrida,1988:4). Derrida believes that the term‖ itself is complicated and difficult because it criticizes the very language needed toexplain it. So any language that tries to explain it will be deconstructed. Deconstruction is regarded as a reaction against the dominating westernmetaphysics of presence and logocentrism. According to Derrida, the history ofwestern philosophy is one seeking the ultimate truth, which he calls ―metaphysics ofpresence. Logocentrism is ―the belief that there is an ultimate reality or centre of‖ truth that can serve as the basis for all our thoughts and actions (Bressler,1999‖,124). As to Derrida, Logocentrism refers to ―the philosophical tendency to find truth in thepresentation of Being, Spirit, Consciousness, History across a philosophical system or system‖anyidea,mode of experience,emphasizedin aphilosophical (Stocker,2006:52). Logocentrism, a theory that demands one center in two terms, isnot acceptable to Derrida. Binary opposition existing in logocentrism is like this: manand woman, reason and unreason, subjectivity and objectivity, aggressor and victim,mind and body. Under this dreadful dichotomy, the former is superior and dominatesthe latter, while the latter serves and supplements the former. The superior term isbelieved to belong to the logos. In Derrida‘s opinion, western culture relies heavily onthe pairs of hierarchical oppositions. Derrida holds that ―In a traditional philosophicalopposition we have not a peaceful coexistence of facing terms but a violent hierarchy.One of the terms dominates the other ( axilogically, logically, etc.), occupies thecommanding position. To deconstruct the opposition is above all, at a particularmoment, to reverse the hierarchy(1981:85). Derrida agrees that these opposed‖ elements are different from each other but their relationship is parallel, equal andsupplementary. These elements embrace and support each other. Derrida‘santi-logocentrism challenges the established logos with its new interpretation ofbinary opposition. Structrualists like Saussure used to believe that speech enjoys a relative priorityover writing. They regard writing merely as a derivative or secondary form of 9 linguistic notation that depends on the primary reality of speech. Derrida pointed out awhole metaphysics behind the privilege granted to speech by Saussure. As Derrida puts it: The system of language associated with phonetic-alphabetic writing is that within which logocentric metaphysics, determining the sense of being as presence, has been produced. This logocentrism, this epoch of the full speech, has always placed in parenthesis, suspended, and suppressed for essential reasons, all free reflection on the origin and status of writing.(1997:43) Derrida criticizes speech‘s priority over writing and insists that writing has itsown value and is not a simple supplement to speech. Valuing spoken language overwritten language is the most important example of what Derrida claims as Westernphilosophy‘s logocentrism. By taking speech and writing as an example to challengespeech‘s center or core position, Derrida inverted the traditional imbalances and putthe logocentrism in question. The traditional literary works are often deconstructed byusing deconstructive devices such as parody, collage, intertextuality, pastiche, allusion,etc. Instead of being regarded as having limitation or some closeness, the text gainssome new meanings by being interpreted from a different perspective. Deconstructionalso changes the original relation between readers and authors, which assumes that themeaning of a text should be relied on the author. This new kind of reading strategyemphasizes more on readers‘ active participation in the process of reading a text. Itsuggests a great difference between the author‘s original intention and the meaningappeared in the text or perceived by the readers. Therefore, it ―looks for places in thetext where the author misspeaks or loses control of language and says what wassupposedly not meant to be said(Bressler,2003:113). Then, it can be said in this way‖ deconstruction proves the uncertainty of a text‘s meaning. Used correctly,deconstruction theory can be some impetus for a revaluation of interpretative practice;otherwise it will be a theoretical vogue. 10 2.2 Carter’s Deconstructive Practice Margaret Atwood (1994:120) once observed that Carter ―was born subversive.‖ ―Her writing/retelling is always subversive: not following a party line or program, butupsetting any such program(Eaglestone,2003:196). Man and woman in classical fairy‖ tales constitute binary opposition and the former is marked with a primary status. Byidentifying and reversing the established binary oppositions and accepted ideologies,the old form of fairy tales can maintain a new meaning. Carter is really the very writerwho always thinks beyond binary opposition and reads the world in ways irrelevantwith a logic which would repress one to advocate the other in hegemony oflogocentrism. Carter‘s attempt to subvert the image of oppressed women and toreconstruct a positive one for them is quite in accordance with the deconstructiontheory. It comes as no surprise to find that the heroines in the story gain their ownvoice with their fighting against the patriarchal society. Therefore, Derrida‘ssubverting the binary oppositions is useful in literature analyzing. Through analyzingCarter‘s techniques of subverting binary oppositions, a new interpretation of thecollected stories can be achieved. Unlike the previous literary works, Carter tries to portray feminine consciousnesswithin social and historical frames in her works. Angela Carter is widely regarded as awriter in ―the demothologising businesses (Carter, 1998:38). She is obsessed with‖ literary predecessors‘ forms and uses it as a key part of her demythologizing project.Demythologizing is to get rid of the disguise around the myth and fairy tales assumedby the dominated men. Carter‘s engaging in deconstructing the binary oppositions andaccepted ideologies can be well-presented in her revised stories. In ―The BloodyChamber, ―The Tiger‘s Bride, ―The Courtship of Mr. Lyon and ―The Company of‖‖‖ Wolves, she uses female characters as narrators to deconstruct the authorial narration.‖ The clever and brave females and tender males, females‘ self-saving, seeking equalitywith men and expressing sexual desire all are Carter‘s deconstructive techniques.Carter deconstructs the original story by exposing the contrived gender differencesand reconstructs it by permitting the feminine subject to go beyond the projected 11 desire oppressed by the patriarchal forces that insist on restricting female sexuality.By her continuous effort, she successfully turned literature into a sharp instrument bysubverting conventional representations and preconceptions and deconstructingrestrictive female images. 12 Chapter Three Female Images in Traditional Fairy Tales 3.1 Traditional Fairy Tales In Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (2002:494), fairy tale isinterpreted as ―a children‘s story in which magical things happen. Bette Bosma‖ (1987:5) points out that fairy tales is ―an unbelievable tale that includes anenchantment of supernatural elements that are clearly imaginary. To Stith Thompson‖ (1977:8), fairy tale is ―a tale of some length involving a succession of motifs orepisodes. It moves in an unreal world … and is filled with the marvellous. In thisnever-never land humble heroes kill adversaries, succeed to kingdoms, and marryprincesses. There are always magic, enchantments, fairies, talking animals and‖ miraculous articles in fairy tales which portrays a wonderful realm. Fairy tales play animportant role in western society which is regarded as next to the Bible in importance.They are necessary and essential to continue the cultural customs and values passeddown from one generation to another generation. As to the original creators of thefairy tales, many critics tend to believe that they were from the common people inway of collective unconsciousness and shared experience. Through fairy tales people are likely to find their way out of life‘s existentialdilemmas which serves as an entertainment and comfort for people. At the same time,fairy tale is always regarded as an important socializing power in children‘sdevelopment. It is like mother‘s milk for the children—providing nourishment for thespirit and the imagination. Europe has a history of taking elements from the oraltradition and making them into literary. Charles Perrault, the Grimms and HansChristian Andresen are famous fairy tale writers who left behind numerous classicsfor people to appreciate. Carter once said ―stories in The Blood Chamber are very firmly grounded in the Indo-European popular tradition (Anna Katasvos, 1994:14).‖ She uses the framework of the old fairy tales but breaks from it and creates a wholenew world. Obviously, she intends to use an old bottle to hold new wine. As this thesis 13 attempts to interpret how Carter portrays new female images in her revisionarycollection of stories, it is necessary to discuss the features, functions and femalecharacters in traditional fairy tales. 3.1.1 Features of Fairy Tales Traditional fairy tales have three distinctive features. Firstly, nearly in all the fairy tales, men are active and dominant; in contrast,women are passive and submissive. Fairy tales are male-dominated, while female isoften placed secondary to male, which corresponds to the expectations about the twosexes in patriarchal society. It is often about the hero‘s strength and courage in hisadventure. Man is usually depicted as one ―leaves home, meets helpers and opponents,goes through trials, performs a task, and returns home having gained some form ofwealth (Haase, 2008: 332). Therefore, male-dominated plot and gender stereotypes‖ are perpetuated within the whole stories. Although sometimes the beautiful princessesare protagonists, their final happy ending is the marriage with a handsome andwealthy prince. Their existence, to some extent, is for the man who loves them at thefirst sight. Secondly, the complexity of human nature is often simplified in fairy tales. Thecharacters are flat and can be divided into two sorts: the simple, humble, naive anduntainted hero or heroine who believes in happiness and the villain who seeks toabuse magic for personal gain and tries to destroy the good people intentionally forsake of personal benefit with no respect for nature or other human. Characters aredepicted as representations of good or evil, power or weakness, wisdom or foolishness.According to Andrea Dworkin, in the black and white ethical world created by fairytale, there are two kinds of woman: ―There is the good woman. She is a victim. Thereis the bad woman. She must be destroyed. The good woman must be possessed. Thebad woman must be killed, or punished. Both must be nullified (1974:48). There are‖ evil stepmothers or arrogant sisters, who are often typical in fairy tales. At the end ofthe story, they must be punished or destroyed or nullified. 14 Thirdly, in fairy tales, the story is generally told by an impartial third person. Theomnipresent and omniscient narration is so common in conventional tales that peopleeven take it as granted. Traditional fairy tales are usually narrated as timeless truths ina linear process according to time and the narrators and their listeners can rationallyand exactly predict the development of the story.Referring the features of fairy tale,Thompson said: (1)The structure is episodic and constructed primarily on motifs; (2) the genre is unabashedly fictional, the setting indefinite, and the mode of reality in which the characters move is supernatural or fantastic; and (3) protagonists overcome obstacles to advance to rewards and a new level of existence(achieving wealth, power, marriage, and/ or social status).( Haasse, 2008:823) In traditional fairy tales, the narrator‘s authority is undeniable. The characters inthe fairy tales have no chance to tell their own feelings. The story is often constructedprimarily on motifs advocated by the author. Unfortunately, the writers of classicalfairy tales are often male, so the women‘s voice is always oppressed and they are onlyportrayed as what the men expect them to be. 3.1.2 Functions of Fairy Tales As a literary genre, fairy tale has functions to inspire great imagination and toteach that the good will be rewarded and the evil will be punished. Fairy tale inspires great imagination. Magical and fanciful elements, unreal orincredible events are peculiar ingredients of a fairy tale, which inspires imagination ofchildren. According to Jack Zipes, traditional folklores and fairy tales ―awaken ourregard for the miraculous condition of life and to evoke profound feelings of awe andrespect for life as a miraculous process, which can be altered and changed tocompensate for the lack of power, wealth, and pleasure that most people experience‖ (Bannerman,2002). In fairy tales, honest men will be rewarded; the brave ones willgain fortune; the poor but kind ones will have a happy ending, while the evil and badones will be punished. It comforts the poor that magical things will happen and leaves 15 people great room of imagination. Developed as a literature to attract the children‘sattention, a fairy tale has ―(1) a power to appeal to the emotions; (2) a power to appealto the imagination (Kready, 1916:40).‖ Fairy tale also means to teach readers, especially children, the good will berewarded and the evil will be punished so that they should behave well. It means toteach the reader about right and wrong, virtue and immorality. Fairy tales greatlyaffect people, especially children‘s character, personality development and sex-roleidentification in society. Fairy tales are working tools given to children in order toimprint and provoke them to think. Fairy tales as one of the important means tomoralize the children has long been noticed.The parents always use fairy tales togenerate a moral example for children. The morals and social values are graduallyimplanted into the children‘s mind while reading and listening to the fairy tales whenthey are still young. Professor Nie Zhenzhao (2005:11.My translation) says: ―It is wellknown that the children whose cognitive competence is not fully developed to areasonable stage tend to equip themselves with an initial moral judge, i.e. the goodman or the bad man. When they are still listening the story, they are eager to knowwho the good is and who the bad is, so the moral influence of the good and the bad onthem is obvious after they finish listening to the story. ‖ However, children were not the natural audiences of fairy tales until the earlynineteenth century. Because some of the fairy tales in the sixteenth and seventeenthcentury have many features like dark images, violent scenes and sexual allusions,which were not suitable for children to read. ―… fairy tales became an acceptableliterary genre first among adults, it was then disseminated in print in the eighteenthcentury to children(Zipes, 2006:3). The usage of fairy tale as a pedagogical tool‖ began in the time when the notion of childhood and education forgotten during theMiddle Ages came to life again. The folk tales collected and written withincommunities during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by aristocracy becameeducational propaganda. During this process, they were modified according to thecurrent ideology to satisfy the dominant class.By the eighteenth century, writers offairy tales began to use them to teach the children and those writers ―acted 16 ideologically by presenting their notions regarding social conditions and conflicts‖ (Zipes, 2006:3). Carter‘s revisionary fairy tales are not aimed at the children but theadults. She uses the familiar material one read or listened in his or her growth tochallenge the established standard of judging a woman. 3.2 Traditional Female Images Traditional female images are reflected in three aspects. Firstly, ideal women are either beautiful or kind, which is valued and preferredby men. It seems that in men‘s eyes ideal women either need a benevolent and kindheart or must have a beautiful appearance to initiate the man want to protect her andthen marry her. Just as Simone de Beauvoir says (1989:15), ―the supreme necessityfor woman is to charm a masculine heart … be they princesses or shepherdesses, theymust always be pretty in order to obtain love and happiness… .‖In ―The Little Mermaid, when the girl asks what she is still left if she is deprived of voice, the‖ witch says ―Your beautiful form, your graceful walk, and your expressive eyes; surelywith these you can enchain a man‘s heart(Andersen,1992:28). To the witch, a‖ woman‘s beautiful appearance is enough to conquer a man and her being deprived ofvoice in the patriarchal society does not matter so much. In ―Snow White, the girl is‖ described as the most beautiful woman in the world. As her mother wishes, she wasborn with skin as white as snow, lips red as blood and hair black as ebony. It is herappearance that stirs her stepmother‘s envy, so the queen orders to kill the girl. It isher apparent innocence that moves the hunter to set her free without obeying thequeen‘s order by telling a lie to the queen. It is also her pretty appearance andsubordination that the seven dwarfs treat her kindly. ―If you‘ll keep house for us, cook,make the beds, wash, sew, and knit, and if you‘ll keep everything neat and orderly,you can stay with us, and we‘ll provide you with everything you need(Grimm,‖ 1987:216). The seven dwarfs‘ requirement reflects what the society expects a womanto do. Women‘s job is to do the domestic service while at the same time meet herhusband and children‘s needs. At last her appearance attracts the prince who saves her 17 from the poisoned apple and marries her. In Charles Perrault‘s ―Cinderella, the girl is‖ not only as beautiful as other fairy tale heroines but also humble, submissive and kind.Living with her brutal, wicked stepmother and jealous sisters, she has to be busy withthe domestic drudgery one after another. Although being ill-treated and enduringhumiliation at home, when the stepmother and stepsisters throw themselves at the feetof her and ask for forgiveness, Cinderella not only pardons them but invites her twostepsisters to join her in the palace and even help them to marry with twohigh-ranking court officials. She is ill-treated by them, but she is kind enough toforgive them. In fairy tales, these women are beautiful, kind, and submissive whoeventually marry their handsome princes and live a happy life forever. For women infairy tales, it seems to be rational for them to end up their stories with good marriageand desire fulfilled. These stories seem to tell the reader a beautiful girl is easy to beaccepted and loved by men, and if they are submissive and kind they will be betterloved. Secondly, women are portrayed as weak creatures that only wait for men to savethem. In the realm of fairy tales, no matter how excellent the heroin is, she has to relyon male to achieve her happiness and wishes. Snow White, for example, beautiful asshe is, she is easily to be trapped by the queen‘s tricks. It is the seven dwarfs and theprince who saved her from her narrow death likely caused by tight laces, a sharpcomb and a poisoned apple. Snow White is unable to change her fate but waitpassively for others to save her. In fairy tales, women are often portrayed as helplessand unable to make their own rescue. They are characterized by ―waiting, suffering,helplessness, and sweetness(Zipes, 1988:24). In ―Little Red Riding Hood, ―Snow‖‖ White, ―Cinderella, ―Sleeping Beauty, all the female characters are unable to‖‖‖ escape from their dangerous situation but wait for the man to come to their rescue.They are either locked in a high castle or being ill-treated by their stepmother or beingspelled on by a bad witch or threatened by the beast. Women play a weak role, whichreflects their dependence on men. Thirdly, women do not show their sexual desire. There is only pure love desiredby women that they are even willing to sacrifice themselves for it. In ―The Little 18 Mermaid, from the first time mermaid saw the handsome prince, she was not able to‖ take her eyes from him. In order to live with her beloved young princes, the littlemermaid even agrees to suffer the pain brought by turning her tails into legs. As to thepain like treading upon sharp knives brought at each step she takes, she has noobjection. To become her wife, she would rather leave her sisters and palace and evenbecome foam of the sea if she fails to get his love. For her pure love, she dancesbefore the prince with great pain to her feet. Although she is deeply in love with theprince, her sexual desire is not released from the story at all. Her love for the manseems to be so pure, simple and holy. And in ―Cinderella, the poor girl is not able to‖ claim the prince‘s love until he comes to seek the lady who fits the crystal shoe.Women‘s love has to be firstly admitted by men, thus can it become true. Facing love,women can do nothing but either passively wait for men or sacrifice themselves for it.Their desire for sexual satisfaction is never mentioned in fairy tales. 19 Chapter Four New Female Images from the Perspective of Deconstruction When referring to the fairy tale ―Beauty and the Beast created by Madame de‖ Beaumont, Anny Crunelle-Vanrigh (2001:136) says ―The text is informed by thebinary logic of patriarchal thinking---ambition/submissiveness, father/daughter,wife/husband, good/evil, rich/poor, active/passive – all subsumed under themasculine/feminine opposition and the hierarchy implicit in it. And she argues that‖ carter ―pulled down the binary system structuring Beaumont‘s tale (Crunelle-Vanrigh,‖ 2001:136). The Bluebeard also contains the binary logic of wife/husband,masculine/feminine. In the story ―The Bloody Chamber, ―The Tiger ‘s Bride, ―The‖‖ Courtship of Mr. Lyon, ―The Company of Wolves, Carter tries to convert the‖‖ original story. Jessica Tiffin (2009:65) comments about Carter like this ―…shecharacteristically deconstructs and assaults, innovatively and often explosively, thesystem of assumptions about gender and sexuality which marks our cultural narratives,and the traditional, complacently heterosexual utopia of the fairy-tale ending. Thischapter tries to interpret how Carter deconstructs the traditional fairy tales from thefollowing aspects. 4.1 Deconstructing the Authoritative Narration It is true that in the traditional literary works, women seldom have their ownvoice expressed. They are always subordinated to men and live for men. The femalecharacters in fairy tales are not able to tell stories themselves. Patricia Brooke(2004:67) consents that the voices of the females often ―have been repressed by theofficial tellings of Perrault, Grimm or Disney. However, Carter feels free to concoct‖ her worlds of fairy tales in which the authoritative narration is deconstructed. PatriciaBrooke (2004:67) once said in her essays that ―In deconstructing the tales, Carterreveals the false universalizing inherent in many so-called master narratives of the 20 western literary tradition. By giving female a voice in a male-dominated society,‖ Carter portrays woman images who are no longer silenced victims of patriarchalsociety. She dismantles those crude antitheses in fairy tales and depicts anothersplendid world where females are enabled to express their voices and becomedominant and, in so doing, produces alternative discourses and knowledge. ―TheBloody Chamber is one of the best examples.‖ A narrator is the person who tells the story to the audience. The narrator and theauthor are responsible for story-telling. In an article, who is writing, who is narrating,even who is the subject of the plot are key parts of the story. Speech in fairy tales isoften associated with authority which is represented by an overwhelming majority ofmales. Narrative technique is a product of ideology, so choosing who to be thenarrator reflects the author‘s will to some extent. The silenced communities such asthe black people, peoples struggling against colonial rule even gays or lesbians allwant to make their own voice heard in order to demand their rights. Female narratorconstitutes a challenge to the conventional genre which assumes male‘s control oflanguage. Female point of view and narrative voice is an evidence of a shift in power.Gerard Genette (1980:213) believes voice is ―the mode of action. According to‖ Roland Barthes;1981:89), ― the master is he who speaks, who disposes of the entiretyof language; the object is he who is silent, who remains separate, by a mutilation moreabsolute than any erotic torture, from any access to discourse, because he does noteven have any right to receive the master‘s word.‖ ―The Bloody Chamber is based on its pretext --‖ Bluebeard. In Perrault‘s Bluebeard, the most narrative energy is left exclusively for exposing the bride tohorrors caused by her curiosity and the dialogue between her and Bluebeard beforeher being beheaded. Perrault stresses on the dare consequences of curiosity of whatlies beyond the door and disobedience to her husband‘s warning. The heroine inPerrault‘s story is a flat character and has no her own voice. In fact, readers do notunderstand the terrors she experiences and how she views her behavior. However, inCarter‘s ―The Bloody Chamber the narrator‘s complex inner world is exposed to‖ readers by her own narration. The whole story is presented from the first person 21 narrator‘s perspective, which is actually a criticism of the established patriarchalstructures. As a narrator, the young woman walks out of the silence at the same timebegins to express her desire. In stead of using the omnipotent third-person narrator,Carter chooses the heroine to tell the story. The heroine recalls how her own desirecompels her to a horrible marriage trap. By regretting her marriage primarily formoney and position, she has become wise through her experience. It is also because ofbeing a narrator that the heroine in ―The Bloody Chamber can survive the trauma‖ through her retrospect. From the beginning, the protagonist tells that she lies sleepless on her weddingnight, traveling by train from Paris to her new home. She recalls her speedy courtshipwith the Marquis. Recalling on her experiences, the narrator feels ashamed of thematerialism that compelled her to pursue the wealth and marry the Marquis.Throughthe narration of the protagonist, it is known that the narrator loses her father when shewas just a child and she is a girl growing up in an entirely female household, one thatconsists of herself, her mother, and her nurse. Her father‘s death results in ―leaving hiswife and child a legacy of tears that never quite dried.(―The Bloody Chamber,‖‖ 1993:8) A humble girl as she is, she is longing for attentions of the others and wantsto enjoy an extravagant life. Although she is only 17, still a girl with ―pointed breastsand shoulders (P8), she is willing to marry her husband who had been married three‖ times before with an opera diva, an artist‘s model, and a countess respectively, a manwith streaks of pure silver in his dark in contrast. The three wives before her are eitherelegant or beautiful. His husband‘s previous wives are persons in which she seems tobe interested and wonders why a man so rich will marry her but she accepts theproposal after all. When her widowed mother asks ―are you sure you love him?(P7).‖ She replies ―I‘m sure I want to marry him (P7). She does not answer her mother‘s‖ question directly but only tells her mother she wants to marry him. In fact, she calls the marriage a bridal triumph which is too speedy andunexpected. She clearly understands what her purpose is and what she wants to gainfrom the marriage. She even wants to use her young life to make a bet, from which itcan be seen that she is not so innocent. And she recalls a scene in which she enjoys 22 much and judges her love for her husband. ―On his arm, all eyes were upon me. Thewhispering crowd in the foyer parted like the Red Sea to let us through (P10). Carter‖ draws the reader‘s attention to self-conscious articulation of woman who is obsessedwith wealth. The first person narrator seems to confess her acceptance of marriage fora well-off future and a comfortable life. In the following narration, she repeatedlymentions her destination---- a castle, a marvelous castle and her duty to bear an heirfor the Marquis. As mentioned her necklace the Marquis gives her as gift, she releasesthat ―for the first time in my innocent and confined life, I sensed in myself apotentiality for corruption that took my breath away (P11). She is no longer an‖ innocent girl but a woman who has the potentiality for corruption. She is easilyseduced by wealth. Being the narrator, the protagonist can tell her story from her ownexperience and expose her own feeling without being ignored by male writer. ―This ring, the bloody bandage of rubies, the wardrobe of clothes from Poiret and Worth, his scent of Russian leather--all had conspired to seduce me so utterly that I could not say I felt one single twinge of regret for the world of tar-tines and maman that now receded from me …(P12)‖ A moment of melancholy on thinking about her loneliness from her mother is soonreplaced by her anticipation of a happy life. From these sentences of the story, readerswill wonder whether the young maiden bride is really as naïve and innocent as atypical female. However, like others, as a woman she wants to enjoy the sole love of herhusband. Other woman‘s existence will threaten her status to her husband. Sheconfesses that ―I did not want to remember how he had loved other women before me,but the knowledge often teased me in the threadbare self-confidence of the smallhours (P9). The first person narrator exposes herself in full aspects. Readers‖ gradually recognize her envy of other woman who has the possibility to take his loveaway from her as well as her yearning for wealth and enjoying of being focused on.She is also a woman waiting for love, wanting to enjoy man‘s sole love to her. As a sensitive female, she also observes that she is treated as a commodity, asmeat under male‘s gaze. She notices that when watching her, the Marquis uses ―the 23 assessing eye of a connoisseur inspecting horseflesh (P11) to take a look on her. ―…‖ the old, monocled lecher who examined her, limb by limb. He in his London tailoring;she, bare as a lamb chop and ―And so my purchaser unwrapped his bargain (P10),‖‖ all these description are evidences that women are being treated as commodity andprojection of men‘s desire. They are humble and subordinate to man‘s will. As the story develops, the Marquis turns out to be the man who murders hisprevious wives and locks them in his secret chamber. The heroine narrowly escapesfrom death when being asked to prepare for death as the Marquis returns to find outthe truth. Through using the first person narrator, Carter gives a clear exposition of theheroine‘s inner world. She is no longer a flat figure but a woman with her own innerfeelings, emotions and desires. Her obsessing with wealth, her longing for love andher self-conscious objectification are new materials implanted in the story, whichmakes a sharp comparison with the original one and thus assert her autonomy anddependence. From her experience, she grows up and will learn from it. In Perrault‘sBluebeard, there is a happy ending: the heroine marries ―a good man, who helped herforget the terrible time she had spent with Bluebeard (P43). It is a typical fairy tale‖ ending with the heroine marrying a handsome and wealthy young man. However, inCarter‘s story, the girl marries a blind piano tuner but the shameful red mark leavesforever on her forehead, ―no paint nor powder, no matter how thick or white, canmask that red mark … (P41) means the miserable, horrible memory will accompany‖ the heroine even all her life. No person is perfect so that the heroine is not an idealone but have her own flaw. The heroine‘s obsession with money is being punished.The red mark is what her fault costs. Founded on her more complicated sense of―shame, the morality will be learned. In Carter‘s ―The Bloody Chamber, the heroine‖‖ is not punished for her curiosity as the original one in Perrault‘s story but for herpotential corruption. By endowing the heroine with voice, the Bluebeard gains a new meaning. Through the heroine‘s self-narration, the story is quite different from theoriginal one. It advocates women‘s right for exploring the unknown but at the sametime criticizes their obsession with money to sacrifice their true love. Different from the original fairy tale, Carter changes her stories into narratives of 24 characters themselves, especially of the women who have long been passive andoppressed. The third person narrator in the original version disappears, while inCarter's versions a modern commentator who tries to parody replaces him. Thetraditional authoritative narration by men is thus subverted by a female reflecting heremotions, sensations and feelings. In this way Carter contests the authoritativeauthorial by ―rejecting the romantic and modern authoritative voice in favour of themultiplicity of voices, often female, that have been repressed by the ?official‘ tellingsof Perrault, Grimm, or Disney (Brooke, 2004:67). The safeguarding of male‖ subjectivity ends in failure because of Carter‘s refusing of the master narrativeprevailed in western culture. 4.2 Deconstructing Weak Female and Powerful Male Females are often weak while males are strong in traditional fairy tales. However,Carter‘s revisionary fairy tales reveals the impossibility of such simple construction.She uses fairy tale as a springboard for a more complex discussion of female and malecharacteristics. Here in her works not only exist brave and clever females but alsotender males. Female and male are not fixed with supposed characteristics intraditional fairy tales. Woman can be strong, at the same time man can behave like ashy child and begs for woman‘s sympathy and love. In ―The Bloody Chamber and‖ ―The Tiger‘s Bride Carter deconstructs the image of weak female and powerful male,‖ instead she portrays clever and brave female characters and tender male characters.4.2.1 Clever and Brave Female Characters In traditional fairy tales, women are always portrayed flat and simple, whoseldom have their own features. Carter gives up the culturally-produced female natureand becomes interested in examining and revealing women‘s courage, and cleverness.―The Bloody Chamber and ―The Tiger‘s Bride give detailed explanation.‖‖ For Bruno Betteheim (1977:301), ―The Bloody Chamber is ―a cautionary tale‖ which warns: Women, don‘t give in to your sexual curiosity; men, don‘t permit 25 yourself to be carried away by your anger at being sexually betrayed. However,‖ Carter denies that didactic quality supposed by Betteheim but depicts a girl not onlyclever but brave. As Mary Kaiser (1994:31) sees it, ―The Bloody Chamber is ―a tale‖ of feminine courage triumphant. In fact, young as the girl is, she is clever. During her‖ date with the Marquis, she has the situation well in hand. As a clever woman, sheknows how to please the man by pretending to be less intellectual than her suitor.When the Marquis soundlessly opens the door and softly creeps up behind her, inorder not to spoil the funny game, after several times of surprise, the heroine tells thetruth: ―I was forced always to mimic surprise, so that he would not be disappointed.‖ (―The Bloody Chamber, 1993:8) During her courtship with the Marquis, she knows‖ how to cater for man to satisfy his complacency. She is not only intellectual onsatisfying the Marquis, but also brave to explore the unknown. The girl acknowledges her personal courage while exploring and engaging inwhat is dangerous and exhilarating. While exploring the secret chamber, she cries out:―Lights! More lights,‖(P24) She has no fear, no dread but walks firmly in the corridor to find out her husband‘s true nature. Even when she is about to open thedoor, she still feels ―no raising of the hairs on the back of the neck, no prickling of thethumbs (P27). Having a strong-willed mother, the daughter is no less brave than her‖ mother. ―Until that moment, this spoiled child did not know she had inherited nervesand a will from the mother who had defied the yellow outlaws of Indo-China;(P28),‖ she confesses. While exploring the room, she retains her consciousness to observe thesurrounding by saying ―yet the skull was still so beautiful(P29) and has great pity for‖ his previous wife by commenting ―one false step and into the abyss of the dark youstumbled (P29). It is unbelievable of a girl facing skull and her assumed death has‖ the courage to enjoy the beauty of a previous star. Not as the scared heroine inPerrault‘s story, she still calmly faces the horrible bloody room. Judging from theirdeath, she thinks of her own, but she has nothing more than a dreadful anguish. Shebehaves like a saint who at that moment sees everything clearly and learns from theterrible experience. Before leaving the bloody chamber, she takes care to ―snuff outthe candles round the bier with my fingers, to gather up my taper, to look around, 26 although shuddering, to ensure I had left behind me no traces of my visit (P29). A‖ brave girl‘s image appears before the readers. In Carter‘s story, this revaluation offemale curiosity and female power thus forms a sharp comparison with theconventional interpretations of women‘s guilt and disobedience. Women‘s curiosity isno longer criticized as referring to the sin of Eve, but is reassessed appropriately. Herethe curiosity becomes the symbol of brave to explore the unknown. It is not a―cautionary fairy tale about the hazards of curiosity (Sheets, 1991: 634), but one‖ depicts ―the triumph of a clever young woman over a bloodthirsty villain‖ (Sheets,1991: 644). ―The Tiger‘s Bride is a story revised according to the pretext of ―Beauty and the‖ Beast. The heroine in ―The Tiger‘s Bride is not as simply portrayed as that in the‖‖ traditional fairy tale. She can boldly speak her status as a commodity out to criticizethe society. By telling ―My father lost me to The Beast at cards.(―The Tiger‘s Bride‖‖ 1981:51) and ―I certainly meditated on the nature of my own state, how I had beenbought and sold, passed from hand to hand (P53), she appears to be a highly‖ self-aware female, cynical and philosophical, observing her surroundings and herfather from a matter-of-fact way. She also tells that his father ‘s gaming and whoringcaused her mother‘s death. In her eyes, her father is a failure in career and as a parent.As a woman, she is brave enough to criticize her father‘s idleness. Her braveness revealed even when she is young. She is a girl growing up bylistening to bed-time stories, so she is familiar with the wolf-man or the tiger-man.Not as innocent as other girls who are afraid of the tiger-man, she clearly knows thather nurse only meant to scare her into good behavior and tame her into submission bytelling her the horrible animal stories. Although she may be a rebellious child whorefuses to be tamed, she is obedient at home. Not as other girls to play with the boysand have sex with them, she still holds her virginity. It is this virginity that makes herregretful when asked to be naked in front of the tiger. She says that ―I wished I'drolled in the hay with every lad on my father's farm, to disqualify myself from thishumiliating bargain(P61). Facing the irresistible force, she regrets why she keeps her‖ virginity to give a chance for the Beast to take advantage of her. Clever as she is, she 27 knows that the best way is to deprive man of his privilege. She is a woman of honorand self-respect. Even lost as a commodity to the Beast, she does not appreciate theluxury of the tiger‘s house, only comments like this: I saw The Beast bought solitude,‖ not luxury, with his money (P57). She is well aware of the fact that money can not‖ buy warmness and happiness but loneliness deep at heart. In order not to show herhumility in front of the animal, she keeps her head high. She even fully understandsher superiority over the Beast by saying: ―I will not smile. He cannot smile‖ (P58).The word ―will and ―can plainly tells the heroine herself subjectively does not‖‖ want to smile, while the Beast has not the ability to. She is a woman who has clearlyself-consciousness. Having no choice but to be lost at cards to the lion, she realizesher position quickly and soon plans to make use of her body. ―For now my own skinwas my sole capital in the world and today I'd make my first investment (P56).‖ Although being in a passive status, she tries to take advantage of her body and braveenough to fight against the male power. It is precious for a woman to realize theirbeing treated as inferior to the man and be determined to resist against it. In spite ofher weakness in front of the powerful men, the heroine shows strength, courage andcleverness when it comes to overcoming obstacles. 4.2.2 Tender Male Characters Man is often portrayed as one with strong build, great strength, competitive andambitious aim. They are supposed to be rational when facing with catastrophic eventor failure in their life. In the courtship with woman, they always gain the upper handand take the initiative. Boys don‘t cry has long been accepted. However, in Carter‘sstories tenderness is proved to be a masculine trait. Here Carter presents an ironicperformance of gender and characteristic stereotypes to her readers. Even theferocious beasts are about to shed their sorrowful tears in front of woman. It is clear that ―The Courtship of Mr. Lyon imitates Madame de Beaumont's tale‖ by using the structure of Beauty and Beast. But it is obvious that Carter‘s revision isemphatically different from it. In ―The Courtship of Mr. Lyon, Beauty‘s father runs‖ 28 out of petrol and he comes to a deserted place with a huge house owned by amysterious owner. The owner does not appear even after the father feeds himself anddecides to go back home. However, when the father takes a white rose from the yard,the hospitable host becomes angry and at that moment he is likely to pierce Beauty‘sfather into pieces. To reader‘s great surprise, the giant animal becomes tender themoment he sees the photograph of Beauty. From ―rudely snatched the photograph(―The Courtship of Mr. Lyon, 1981:44) to ―took good care not to scratch‖‖ the surface with his claws(P44), the lion seems not so horrible. The threatening‖ characteristic is divested from the Beast who only momentarily fulfills fairy talestereotype by releasing a mighty, furious roaring. The angry passion demonstrated hassoon been completely erased, replaced by the tame behavior when the daughter isinvolved. Triggered by the contemplation of beauty's photograph and not by the meremention of her existence, as that in de Beaumont's narrative, the Beast asks the fatherto bring her daughter. When Beauty meets the lion, her fear seems to be replaced by amoving heart for the lion‘s sadness. The lion is an animal with a hint of shyness, offear to be refused when asking Beauty to stay while her father returns to London totake up his business. After a midnight chatting with the lion, Beauty finds it is like ashy child and his behavior is far from wild. What he does is to fling him at her feetand buries his head in her lap and kisses her hands tenderly. When beauty leaves tovisit her father in the town, the Beast simply asks ―You will come back to me? It willbe lonely here, without you (P48).From what the lion says, it can be seen the‖ threatening lion becomes to rely on Beauty. The lion becomes attracted by his belovedwhims and removed from reader‘s conditioned assumptions about his dominatedposition while facing a weak woman. What‘s more, the lion nearly dies without seeing Beauty in time. The magnificentpalace turns out to be a desperate and deserted place with everywhere covered withdust. As Beauty comes near to the lion‘s bed, the lion says dolefully ―Since you leftme, I have been sick. I could not go hunting, I found I had not the stomach to kill thegentle beasts, I could not eat. I am sick and I must die; but I shall die happy becauseyou have come to say good-bye to me (P50). Only Beauty‘s love saves the lion, who‖ 29 becomes better on seeing her and even can prepare breakfast for her. In this story, themale is being portrayed as weak and tender. They live on the woman‘s love anddependent on woman emotionally. In deconstructing the binary opposition in ―The Courtship of Mr. Lyon, Carter‖ depicts a timid animal waiting for help. She clearly presents the binary opposition infront of readers and then explodes it. ―Following her source more closely than shedoes in ?The Bloody Chamber,‘ she retains its system of binary opposition up to acertain point … Yet Beaumont‘s system of binary oppositions is anchored not only innarratology, but also in the gender policy of her age, something Carter cannot endorse.Carter explodes it with infectious glee. She follows Beaumont the better to entrap her.The more rigid the stronghold, the greater the pleasure to blow it up(Anny‖ Crunelle-Vanrigh,2001:132). By allowing what has been repressed and oppressed inthe original version to return in the rewriting, by showing male‘s tenderness andhelplessness, by upsetting our expectations and assumptions, Carter turns the familiarworld upside down. 4.3 Deconstructing Females Waiting for Help Passivity is a valued and honored attribute a woman should possess in thetraditional fairy tales. It is believed that it is not the female who should save herselffrom harm or an undesirable situation; it is the male that must save her. In AngelaCarter‘s pieces, the female characters take on the roles of the men and engage in actsof saving themselves. Carter‘s tales demonstrate women as being powerfu l andcapable figures that can not only take charge of a situation without the assistance ofmen but also have the power to save men from unpleasant situation. Angela Carterdeconstructs the female images waiting passively for men‘s help. She depicts womenwho can not only save themselves from danger but also have the ability to save men.In this way women‘s dependence on men is dissolved. It is a sharp contrast to theoriginal female image. 30 4.3.1 Women as Rescuers to Themselves Different from the traditional females who have no power to save them fromdanger, women this time become rescuers themselves. They are not to wait for ahandsome man riding on a white horse to arrive and save them out of the trouble oftheir lives. The competent mother and daughters are able to escape from the dangersingle-handedly. In ―The Bloody Chamber, the mother image is really a‖ breakthrough compared with the original one. In Angela Carter‘s ―The Bloody Chamber, the bride‘s mother is a new female‖ image who is powerful enough to save her daughter from the danger. In the story sheis portrayed as a considerate and responsible mother to give her daughter thenecessary guide and consolation. The bride‘s mother has a history of adventure whenshe was young. As the daughter of a wealthy tea planter, she spent her girlhood inIndo-China before married a soldier and after her husband dies, she is left withnothing. She has sold all her jewelry, even her wedding ring, so that her daughtercould attend a music conservatory. From the description the woman‘s strong-will,love and sacrifice for child can be seen. The girl‘s mother is also a woman who daresto pursue her true love no matter how difficult the further will be. Therefore, justbefore her marriage, her mother had asked whether she loved the man or not, althoughnot getting a direct answer and failed to prevent the marriage, her mother seems toteach her to pursue true love and has done her duty. After her husband leaves heralone, she calls her mother wishing to articulate her misery and breaks into tears. Shemust wonder why gold bath taps make her girl cry. Even though the daughter herselfcannot even explain what is wrong, the mother‘s instinct tells her something wrongmust have happened when her daughter calls from the castle on her honeymoon. Atthe crucial moment that the blind tuner can not even save the girl her mother appearsin time. Her appearance with one hand on the reins and the other revolver is soimpressive and cool. ―You never saw such a wild thing as my mother, her hat seized by the winds and blown out to sea so that her hair was her white mane, her black lisle legs exposed to the thigh, 31 her skirts tucked round her waist, one hand on the reins of the rearing horse while the other clasped my father's service revolver and, behind her, the breakers of the savage, indifferent sea, like the witnesses of a furious justice.(―The Bloody Chamber,‖‖ 1981:39-40) The sinister Marquis is like a helpless puppet when the woman appears. The motherof the protagonist in ―The Bloody Chamber who was hardly mentioned in the‖ original fairy tale is empowered to save her daughter. In contrast to the original one, itis the mother instead of her brother who comes to her rescue and kills the Marquis justas he is preparing to kill her daughter. In traditional fairy tales, it is seldom to find women depicted as rescuers ratherthey are usually depicted as either kind or evil so that are not able to or not willing tobe rescuers. It is common that the handsome man who comes to rescue the female atthe most important moment. However, Carter portrays a different female characterwho defies gender norms and expectations. The image of mother then becomes aparody of the maternal archetype. Therefore women have the power to savethemselves. 4.3.2 Women as Rescuers to Men Women are not only able to save themselves but proved to be secures of men.They are powerful enough to bring the man from the edge of death to life only by akiss. Most notably, she uses the fairy tales to show the strength of women and theweakness of men. The story ―The Courtship of Mr. Lyon places female as the‖ protagonist, while men are portrayed as evildoers or play very small roles in theoutcome of the story. ―The Courtship of Mr. Lyon imitates Beauty and the Beast purposely. It intends‖ to remind readers of the innocent and obedient daughter through quotation andallusion. The trace of intertextuality is so obvious. At the beginning of the story ―TheCourtship of Mr. Lyon, we know that ―Beauty is a lovely girl, whose skin possesses‖ that same, inner light so you would have thought she, too, was made all of snow, 32 pauses in her chores in the mean kitchen to look out at the country road (―The‖ Courtship of Mr. Lyon, 1981:41). From the description, it can be seen that Beauty‖ has a snow-white skin and is kind. This image reminds the readers of Snow-white andBeauty simultaneously. She is looking forward to seeing her father ‘s coming homeand is greatly worried about him. She is completely loyal and owned by her father,who calls her ―pet, and she does not put up much of a fight against her father ‘s deal‖ with the beast when she was taken to the house of the Beast. With fear of the lion, shecomes to his house after all and does what her father asks. ―Yet she stayed, and smiled,because her father wanted her to do so … she smiled with both her mouth and hereyes … she forced a smile (P45). All her smile is not deep from her heart but for‖ politeness and her father ‘s willing. Although later she stays with the lion in peace andthey even talk to each other late in night, she still shivers at his strangeness andretreats nervously into her skin, flinching at his touch. Although living in a luxuryhouse, she is not obsessed with it and still longs for the shabby home of their poverty.Only her father ‘s renewed hope makes her glad and then is willing to sacrifice for herfather. Initially, Beauty, like the lion, fulfills readerly expectations for a fairy tale. Thiskind of typical female characters is common and has the function of influencingwomen‘s fantasies and the subconscious scenarios for their real lives. But Carter does not mean to cater to readers‘ expectation. She intends to convertthe traditional female and male character. Unlike the traditional telling of fairy tales,characters in Carter‘s stories are not portrayed as purely kind or extremely evil. Carterrejects the static definition of goodness and reward owing to kindness. De Beaumont'sbashful, selfless and demure girl, paying no attention to her own beauty, now spendsquite a lot of her time in Carter's tale looking at her reflection in the mirror. With thelion‘s permission to leave, Beauty forgets the lion immediately and throws herself intothe enjoyment of the comfortable life, which is unexpected by the readers familiarwith the original one. ―She flings herself into a mad whirl of pleasure with her father:a resplendent hotel; the opera, theatres; a whole new wardrobe for his darling so shecould step out on his arm to parties, to receptions, to restaurants, and life was as shehad never known it. (―The Courtship of Mr. Lyon, 1981:48). As Anny‖‖ 33 Crunelle-Vanrigh (2001:139) says, ―Carter‘s deconstruction of fairy tales is part of alarger feminist statement. The girl overturns her original image and then becomes the‖ rescuer of man. The girl almost completely overturns the original female image. Sheis not only endowed with a secular pursuing of material but also has the ability to savethe male at a crucial moment. After Beauty‘s leaving, the lion becomes seriously sick. He becomes the weakside who needs for help and rescue. It is not the man who saves the woman but thewoman who takes the duty. On hearing his illness, Beauty is eager to see how the lionis getting. ―Beauty scribbled a note for her father, threw a coat round hershoulders(―The Courtship of Mr. Lyon, 1981:49) then leaves home quickly. Without‖‖ accompany of Beauty, everywhere in the house seems to have no vitality. The lion ison the bed with ―bulk scarcely disturbing the faded patchwork quilt, his mane agreyish rat‘s nest and his eyes closed(P50). Just because of Beauty's returning and‖ initiative in flinging upon the Beast, the sick and dying lion gets well from his illnessas soon as he gains Beauty‘s love. In this story, Beauty‘s kiss saves the lion‘s life.―And then it was no longer a lion in her arms but a man, a man with an unkempt maneof hair and, how strange, a broken nose, such as the noses of retired boxers, that gavehim a distant, heroic resemblance to the handsomest of all the beasts (P51). Tamed‖ and remade from a fierce predator who threatened Beauty‘s purity to a handsome andgood husband, the Beast has lost his wild nature and been courted, captured anddomesticated. Quite contrary to the traditional fairy tale, Beauty now changes herselfinto the rescuer of the dying Prince Charming, breaking the spell on him. Thus,woman is no longer an inferior individual waiting for man to save her.4.4 Deconstructing Subordinate Females In past the whole society defined the functions and possibilities of women asobliged to submit to the wishes of their parents or husband. Since the period in Roman,the wife has been considered the purchased private property of her husband. Manbeing dominant and active while woman perceived being weak and passive are the 34 traditional gender roles that society had arranged for women. Women were seenproper to sit down in the parlour to sew or in the room to practise their music or takecare of their husband and children. The man is always portrayed as being thebread-winner, powerful, intelligent, whereas the woman is mostly connected withdomestic tasks. Angela Carter refuses women‘s status of subordination to men.4.4.1 Pursuing Equality with Men The important status of men in the patriarchal ideology can even be seen in thetitles of some stories. In ―Beauty and the Beast, the heroine is not given a name.‖ ―Beauty is used as a code which means both her good looking and moral excellence.‖ Although Bluebeard‘s leading character is the wife, its title misleads one intoregarding it as a story about the husband. However, women have been seeking equalopportunity and treatment. Now a woman can live without depending on a man toinfluence her personal life. Men are never treated as the single providers andprotectors of the family they once were. The traditional roles are reversed withwomen gaining their financial and spiritual independence. Carter‘s revisions of thesepopular fairy tales contain many feminist ideals. Carter means to encourage women tochange the degrading representation of humility, industry, and patience by rising upand fighting against the oppression and to seek for equality with men. In ―The Bloody Chamber, the blind piano-tuner finally lives together with the‖ heroine. He is helpless, timid and blind. His blindness is a symbol, in this way he doesnot fix and objectify his partner through the masculine gaze. As he is a piano-tunerand she is a pianist they would have a very balanced relationship, unlike her and themarquis. She not simply seeks for a happy ending but the realization of true self andequality between the two sides. Sarah Gamble (2001:134) says ―Carter‘s interest infairy tale had nothing to do with the false consolations of ?living happily ever after‘ .‖ ―The Courtship of Mr. Lyon continues the old story frame but makes bold change.‖ Beauty‘s father plays an inconsequential role after Beauty arrives at the Beast‘s house.And the greedy and jealous sisters in previous story are absent altogether. Not 35 describing the two sisters as evil women in contrast to Beauty‘s virtuous perfection,Carter removes the female scheming and backbiting that has long been remembered ina society of patriarchal dominance and women‘s subordination in their control. Thefew introduction of the father and the omission of the two sisters serve to ensureBeauty‘s centrality in the story. In the story, woman is equal or even more powerfulthan man. In ―The Tiger ‘s Bride, neither the tiger nor Beauty can be read as predator or‖ victim. When arriving at the Beast‘s house, Beauty finds out that the Beast has onlyone desire, which is to see her unclothed nude and only for one time after which shewill be returned to her father unconditionally. At first she rebels against the Beast‘sapparently insulting demand to be treated as a visual object of desire. Being not ableto escape from the exchange, she finds the means to control the terms of her body‘sexchange. By demanding to keep her face covered, the protagonist tends not to placeherself automatically in the victim‘s position. The girl‘s requirement to be coveredwith a sheet and the same amount of money any other woman will receive in thiscircumstance struck the beast to the heart. The heroine shows her strength andself-respect when facing the irresistible force. Her graceful image even makes the lionfeel shame. The tiger even shed a tear. ―one single tear swelled, glittering, at thecorner of the masked eye(―The Tiger ‘s Bride 1981:59). In contrast to the original‖‖ one, Beauty takes off her clothes and appears naked before the tiger. However, it is thetiger who first undresses, revealing his true nature behind his human mask, allowingher to do the same from her own will. Moved by his restrained manner, non-differentiating eyes, self-restrained ferocity and his solar eyes, she exposesherself absolutely to him and in doing so finds her perception of the ?fleshly nature ofwomen‘ transformed. The Beast as well as the other animals is curious about Beauty‘svirgin body, ―I showed his grave silence my white skin, my red nipples, and the horsesturned their heads to watch me, also, as if they, too, were courteously curious as to thefleshly nature of women(P64). It is a great breakthrough for woman to expose herself‖ absolutely under the gaze of the male and even make the male feel ashamed of hisrequirement. Female body itself here becomes women's most powerful weapon, with 36 which Beauty wins her victory over the seemingly mighty Beast. By showing the tigershe will do him no harm and her feeling of at liberty for the first time in her life, thegirl not only liberates herself from her embarrassed status to be traded as a treasure,but gains her position in bisexual relations. Her last union with the Beast is areciprocal pact, because it neither betrays Beauty‘s desire nor belittles the Beast. AsMarja Makinen (1992:10) says that ―the beasts signify a sensuality that the womenhave been taught might devour them, but which, when embraced, gives them power,strength and a new awareness of both self and other. Beauty at last rejects the‖ patriarchal society and chooses to turn into a tiger without hesitation to join the Beastand living peacefully with him to escape her oppressed life as a woman. To get rid ofher objectification, the heroine embraces her animalistic qualities. In the story's finalmoments, she therefore transforms from an object of exchange into an independentfemale. The tiger and Beauty‘s union is based on the concept of reciprocal love in The Sadeian Woman which ―will not admit of conqueror and conquered (Carter,1978:15).‖ As Merja Makinen (1992:306) says that in Carter‘s story ―successful sexualtransactions are founded on an equality and the transforming powers of recognizingthe reciprocal claims of the other. Carter‘s excellent parodic revision implies an‖ obvious continuity with and disruption of earlier traditional models. Although may notavoid patriarchy altogether, the protagonists cease to be a victim for the good of theirfather by making their own choice and therefore prevail over the stereotype and sexistideologies that have made their subjectivity depressed for a long time.4.4.2 Expressing Ardent Sexuality Another common theme in Carter‘s revisionary fairy tales is the assertion offemale sexual desires and cravings that the female protagonists actively assert.Sexuality is for a long time a sensitive, restricted or even forbidden topic in fairy tales.Women‘s sexual desire is often ignored, not to mention their expectations offulfilment of the sexuality. As a taboo subject, women‘s sexuality is never discussed infairy tales. Sex! A word connotes pleasant thoughts in people‘s mind such as love 37 making, intimacy, fun and warmth is regarded as a disgraceful topic. Kathryn Kelley(1987:142) tells us plainly that ―Among middle-class Victorians, almost all sexualactivity was regarded as disgusting and even dangerous to one‘s health. … men wereseen as having strong sexual needs and as being quick to respond sexually. Mostwomen (the good ones) were viewed as uninterested in sex and lacking in any realcapacity to respond sexually. It was thought that the minority of women (the bad ones)who were interested in sex and responded sexually were moral and biologicalanomalies. It can be seen from all of these materials that women‘s sexuality has long‖ been repressed. As a writer boldly asking for women‘s liberation of sexuality, Carterwrites in way of foregrounding what habitually repressed female emotion. In The Sadeian Woman, Carter (1978:118) holds that ―the frigidity that aristocratic girls have been taught to equate with virtue which prevents them fromachieving sexual autonomy that would transform their passive humiliations into aform of action. In fact, sexuality is quite an important component of human identity.‖ According to Bettelheim (1997:306), ―While sex may at first seem beastlike, in realitylove between woman and man is the most satisfying of all emotions, and the only onewhich makes for permanent happiness. So she criticizes the inscribed restrictive‖ ideology that ignores and denies woman‘s impulse. In her fairy tales, femalevictimization, sadistic practices no longer exist and at the same time forbidden sexualfantasies come into the reader‘s view. The bold expression, sexual content andviolence reflected in the collection of reversionary stories are not at all commonplacein traditional fairy tales. As sexuality enables an individual to gain a perennial hold onbodies, pleasures, and energies, Carter uses female‘s direct need of sexuality to callfor the rights of women. Carter boldly portrays her heroines as activists in sexuality.To some extent, women are liberated from the taboo of sexuality. ―The Company of Wolves is transformed from Charles Perrault‘s ―Little Red‖ Riding Hood‖. In Jack Zipes‘ book The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood, there are 38 revisionary stories translated into English from England, America,France, Italy, Germany and China, etc. All of these stories continue or disrupt thetraditional story-telling. Carter is also a woman who makes bold change to the 38 original one. In Perrault‘s version, Little Red Riding Hood is a pure village girl adoredby all her family who has no idea of sexual desire. But in Carter‘s work, she is not alittle girl without any idea of sexuality. The little girl has women‘s physiologicalfeatures, like the swelled breasts, emblematic scarlet and white cheeks and monthlybleeding. ―Her breasts have just begun to swell … her cheeks are an emblematic scarlet and white and she has just started her woman's bleeding, the clock inside her that will strike, henceforward, once a month(―The Company of Wolves1981:113 ).‖‖ Carter even mentions her woman bleeding which is a taboo of the classical fairytales. In traditional fairy tales, there is not any mention of women‘s pregnancy andmonthly bleeding. In telling her a virgin, Carter even spares no effort to use a wholeparagraph to state it. ―She stands and moves within the invisible pentacle of her own virginity. She is an unbroken egg; she is a sealed vessel; she has inside her a magic space the entrance to which is shut tight with a plug of membrane; she is a closed system; she does not know how to shiver (P113-114).‖ These descriptions are so different from that of Perrault‘s story. Carter is boldenough to use ―unbroken egg, sealed vessel, shut tight entrance, a plug of membrane,closed system to express a girl who is a virgin. The little girl is still a virgin but‖ sexually mature, and her state lends her courage and strength to deal with whathappens later. In this way, Carter shatters the gender image about women the readermay have in mind before reading this story. Her female character is somewhat a girlwith awakening ideas about sex. The little girl in ―The Company of Wolves wears her sexual desire literally on‖ her sleeve when coming across a handsome young man. The moment a wolf in man‘sclothes appears, the girl becomes absolutely attracted by him. He is so handsome ayoung man with a mouthful of white teeth. And her polite behavior wins the girl‘sfavor immediately that she forgets not to speak with the stranger at once. ―She‘d neverseen such a fine fellow before, not among the rustic clowns of her native village‖ (P114). Just from one sentence, the reader sees the point that the girl lives in a place 39 where there is seldom opportunity to meet handsome young man. The girl is given into her awakening sexuality. Then, her fascination and sexual desire is somewhatreasonable. Soon the girl and the wolf are laughing and joking like old friends. Easilylured by the wolf, she even gives her basket with knife in it to him, just because ofbelieving in him. What an imprudent girl she is when she has a crush on a man. MarjaMakinen holds that the wolf story deals with ―women‘s relationship to the unrulylibido (1992:11).‖ When the wolf asks to make a bet with the girl, she asks disingenuously what hewould like. She lowered her eyes and blushed as knowing the wolf wants a kiss fromher. She is eager to kiss the handsome young man that ―although now the moon wasrising, for she wanted to dawdle on her way to make sure the handsome gentlemanwould win his wager (P115). Because if she loses the bet on purpose, she is bound to‖ be kissed by the wolf, that is what she desires eagerly. Fascinating and frustrating atthe same time, she goes to her grandmother‘s house alone and hopes to meet thestranger again. For the heroine, this is a story of sexual self-discovery. There is also bold language used to describe woman‘s bare sexual desire. Whenthe wolf arrives at the cottage, striped naked, the language is used like this: ―He strips off his shirt. … He strips off his trousers and she can see how hairy his legs are. His genitals, huge. Ah! huge(P116).‖ In grandmother‘s house the naked male body is exposed entirely in the woman‘sgaze. Even the old grandmother finds it delighted to stare at the genitals of the man.At that moment there is no woman‘s shyness but primitive obsession with the hugegenitals. These descriptions seem in some way erotic but really expose the man underwomen‘s gaze. The male body is exposed to reflect the sensual desires that womenneed to acknowledge within themselves. Not only men have the desire to enjoywomen‘s body, the reverse could also be justified. The little girl finally arrives at her grandmother ‘s house only to see hergrandmother sitting beside the fire. She is a little disappointed, because there is nohandsome young man in her sight. Although realizing that grandmother having beenkilled and she is in danger, the brave girl ceases to be afraid by figuring out that fear 40 will do her no good. She is fully aware of what her weakness will bring her; it willmean the same consequence as her grandmother. Thus, she is using her body activelyto save her life. Instead of crying or waiting for death, she takes an upper hand in theevent. Being not afraid of the true color of the ―man, the heroine uses her immense‖ sexual power to protect her from being harmed. She takes the initiative to control thewhole situation as a self-owning sexual being. With some bold dialogue with the wolf―The girl burst out laughing; she knew she was nobody's meat(P118). At this‖ moment, she becomes more confident about her female attractiveness and the wolf‘ssubordination in having sex with her. The laughter not only saves her from death butalso a cultural insistence on her vulnerability, passivity, and her sexual submissiveness.―She laughed at him full in the face and ripped off his shirt for him and flung it intothe fire (P118). Her desire for sexuality and her activeness is enough to make the‖ ordinary reader stunned. According to Luce Irigaray, there are three central female archetypes that defineand limit women‘s social behavior: Mother, virgin, prostitute: these are the social roles imposed on women. The characteristics of (so-called) feminine sexuality derive from them: the valorization of reproduction and nursing; faithfulness; modesty, ignorance of and even lack of interest in sexual pleasure; a passive acceptance of man‘s ―activity; seductiveness‖ (1985:186-187). However, this little girl under Carter‘s pen is quite the opposite of the cowardand weak female but acts beyond people‘s expectation. She is not the traditionalfemale archetype described by Luce Irigaray as lacking of interest in sexual pleasurebut a girl who boldly takes advantage of it and fully enjoys it. She is aware that infreely meeting the wolf‘s sensuality, ―the libido will transform ?meat‘ into?flesh‘.(Makinen, 1992:11)Being transformed from a commodity, a meat under the‖ man‘s gaze, she is a person who is able to take advantage of her body to change herfate and subordination to man. She losses noting but at the same time satisfies hersexual desire as well as creating an independent female image by submitting herself tothe wolf. Because of the power of her sexuality, she survives before a wolf who 41 intended to devour her. She rejects virginal state in favor of sexual enjoyment. Thebrave girl really disturbs and titillates her audience. The last scene of the story is the girl sleeping sound and sweet between the pawsof the tender wolf after the fulfillment of their mutual desire. ―She will lay his fearfulhead on her lap and she will pick out the lice from his pelt and perhaps she will putthe lice into her mouth and eat them, as he will bid her, as she would do in a savagemarriage ceremony. (―The Company of Wolves, 1981:118) Here sexual power is‖‖ manipulated to satisfy women‘s own appetites and those of men. This appetite playsan important part in the process of rejecting the victimization and obtainingsubjectification. Both of these stories end with sexual union with the beasts which isinitiated by the girls. By this way women evade marginalization and begin to occupyan equal position with men. At the end of the story, we can conclude that women havethe ability to gain independence and a free will to determine their own destiny. Fromthese descriptions, it is easier to notice that the woman under Carter‘s pen enjoys herown sexuality and uses this as a weapon to tenderize the wolf. It is she who wants tohave sexual relation with the stranger. According to Marja Makinen (1992:12) the lionand the wolf in Carter‘s story are― the projections of a feminine libido, and theybecome exactly that autonomous desire which the female characters need to recognizeand reappropriate as a part of themselves( denied by the phallocentric culture). The‖ feral domineering male is not so powerful when compared with the thin butstrong-willed female. The wolf‘s desire culminates in the success of the female. 42 Chapter Five Conclusion Deconstruction is an effective strategy in working against masculinistrepresentation of women. By using deconstructionism, this thesis interprets Carter‘sexcellent technique in subverting man‘s assumed superiority over woman and herseeking equality between the two sexes. Her deconstruction of binary oppositions isreflected in her using of female narrators, displaying women‘s powerfulness andmen‘s tenderness, women‘s seeking equality with men, expressing of women‘s sexualdesire and their conducts of saving themselves. Carter‘s revisionary fairy tale heroinesrefuse to be intimidated by and survive by enduring mental abuse, physical violence,and humiliation. How people are perceived determines to some extent the way they are treated.The rewriting of the fairy tales gives voices to characters and situations previouslyunheard. And it is by listening to those voices that we may find ways in which womenbreak the paradigm of patriarchy and head for a new gender identity. In Carter‘sworks, women are no longer being merely subversive and victims of male authority.She empowers women to acknowledge female curiosity, escape from male dominationand reclaim their sexual identity. By revising and supplying the original fairy taleswith new elements through parodic reversals and amplifications, retelling the talefrom an alternate perspective, Carter successfully created a new kingdom of fairytales. By using the old bottle to hold new wine, Carter uses a commonly acceptedliterary form to explore the solution to the conflicting bisexual relationship andwomen‘s subordinate status in the patriarchal society. Although some critics maycome to question the extent to which Carter‘s new female image is possible in the faceof male-dominated society, this thesis argues that the portrayal of new female imagesin contrast to the old ones is truly unique and bold in that it acts to dissolve unequalpower between male and female. 43 Bibliography [1]Andersen, H. C. (1992).The Little Mermaid Coloring Book[M]. New York: Dover Publicaitons.[2]Atwood, M. (1994). Running with Tigers [A]. In L. Sage (Ed.). Flesh and the Mirror: Essayson the Art of Angela Carter (PP.117-135)[M]. London: Virago.[3]Bannerman, K. ( 2002). A Short Interview with Jack Zipes [EB/OL]. [4]Barthes, R. (1981). Sade, Fourier, Loyola. (R. Miller Trans.). [M]. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. [5]Beauvoir, Simone de. (1989). The Second Sex[M].New York: Vintage Books.[6]Bettelheim, B. (1997). The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales[M]. New York: Knopf. [7]Bosma, B. (1987). Fairy Tales, Fables, Legends, and Myths[M]. New York and London:Teachers College Press. [8]Bressler, C. E. (1999). Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice (2nd edition)[M]. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. [9]Carter, A. (1978). The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography [M].New York:Pantheon. [10]Carter, A. (1983). Notes from the Front Line [A]. In. J. Uglow (Ed.). Shaking a Leg: CollectedWriting (PP.36-43) [C]. London: Penguin. [11]Carter, A. (1993). The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories[M]. New York: Penguin Books. ---- ―The Bloody Chamber in‖ The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories[M]. New York:Penguin Books. ----―The Courtship of Mr. Lyon in‖ The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories[M]. New York:Penguin Books. ----―The Tiger‘s Bride in‖ The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories[M]. New York: PenguinBooks. ----―The Company of Wolves in‖ The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories[M]. New York:Penguin Books. 44 [12]Carter, A. (1995). Burning Yours Boats: Collected Short Stories[M]. London: Chatto & Windus. [13]Crunelle-Vanrigh, A. (2001). The Logic of the Same and Difference: ―The Courtship of Mr Lyon. [A]. In D. M. Roemer and C. Bacchilega. (Eds.).‖ Angela Carter and the Fairy Tale(PP.128-158) [C]. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.[14]Derrida, J. (1981). Positions[M]. Chicago: The Chicago University Press.[15]Derrida, J. (1988). Drrida and Différence[M]. D, C. Wood. and R, Bernasconi. (Eds.). Evanston: Northwestern University Press. [16]Derrida, J. (1997). Of Grammatology[M].Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press. Carter‘s[17]Duncker,P.(1984).Re-imaginingtheFariyTales:AngelaBloody Chambers[J].Literature and History, 10,3-14 [18]Dworkin, A. (1974). Woman Hating[M]. New York: Dutton. [19]Eaglestone, R. (2003). The Fiction of Angela Carter: The Woman Who Loved to Retell Stories[A]. In R. J. Lane, R. Mengham and P. Tew (Eds.). Contemporary British Fiction (PP.195-209) [M].Cambridge: Polity Press. [20]Genette, G. (1980). Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, (E. L. Jane Trans.) [M]. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. [21]Grimm, J. & Grimm, W. (1987). The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm[M]. New York: Bantem Books. [22]Haase, D. (2008). The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales[M]. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press. [23]Henstra, S. M. (1999). The Pressure of New Wine: Performative Reading in Angela Carter‘s The Sadeian Woman[J].Textual Practice, 13, 97-117. [24]Irigaray, L. ( 1985). This Sex Which Is Not One (C. Porter Tans.). [M]. Ithaca: CornellUniversity Press. [25]Kaiser, M. (1994). Fairy Tale as Sexual Allegory : Intertextuality in Angela Carter‘s The Bloody Chamber[J]. The Review of Contemporary Fiction, 3,30-36. [26]Katasvos, A. (1994). An interview with Angela Carter[J]. Review of Contemporary Fiction, 3, 11-17. [27]Kelley, K. (1987). Females, Males and Sexuality: Theories and Research[M].New York: State 45