Vandermeer
“[Carter’s] characters are forever escaping, socially, mentally or physically, the traps laid by men”
Carter (versions of women)
‘the mythic versions of women’ - Sadeian Women
Laura Mulvey
‘the male gaze’ - coined term
Kieran O’Kelly
The Gothic “encourages us to examine ourselves for the damaging tendencies within us”
Angela Carter, The Sadeian Woman (strong vs weak)
“The strong abuse, exploit and meatify the weak’
Charlotte Unsworth-Hughes (the other)
The monsterous other is part of the human self, and therefore suggests that humanity contains something monsterous
Atwood
‘The Bloody Chamber is a writing against De Sade’
Buswell (Sex and Gender)
‘Carter explores the contemporary attitudes towards sex and gender in a patriarchal society’
Bidisha (TCOW)
‘It is a disturbing depiction of female hopelessness in which a victim who serves herself up to an abusive man is somehow brave’
Suzette A. Henke, A Bloody Shame (Fairy-tales)
‘Carter has re-appropriated the fairy-tale genre in the interests of feminist fantasy’
Donald Haase
Passive and beautiful heroines = good
Active and strong women = evil
‘While heroines who are passive and beautiful have typically belonged to the realm of good, female characters who are active and strong have usually signalled evil’
Maria Beville (Enlightenment)
‘the Gothic was… a reaction to Enlightenment and Neo-classical ideals, those that valued reason’
Angela Carter, the Sadeian Women (Godesses)
‘If women allow themselves to be consoled… by the invocation of hypothetical great goddesses, they are simply flattering themselves into submission’
