The Bloody Chamber, again.

So, I managed to blog about the majority of the short stories in The Bloody Chamber yesterday but, I still have a few remaining and so here it goes.

On to the Lady Of The House Of Love, I quite liked this one because at times it felt a little like Sleeping Beauty, very loosely, but with vampires! One factor which stood out the most to me, and I felt represented the characters pain the most was the caging of the larks and how she found pleasure and maybe even happiness through it because she herself is caged. I also liked how Clark presented the soldier, I felt he provided a stark contrast to other characters/voices from other stories, most notably The Werewolf , as he appeared to have no fear of the gothic and the supernatural because he did not believe in it, whereas the narrative in The Werewolf suggests that many people had a heightened fear of the supernatural.  

Next up is The Werewolf, this one was quite short, only about 2 and a half pages. Out of the tales which were similar to Red Riding Hood this was my favourite as I like how Clark portrayed the Grandmother. I personally like Clark's idea of making and presenting the Grandmother as a witch as in the traditional tale the Grandmother was presented as the frail old woman who couldn't protect herself from the wolf and so the twist of the Grandma being the wolf was quite an interesting spin compared to the classic.

Another factor which I liked in the story was Clark's use of detail when describing and showing the superstition people felt century's ago and how flimsy the claims were, "discover a witch - some old witch whose old cheese ripens when her neighbours do not, another whose black cat, oh sinister!, follows her about." I felt the narrative suddenly had a mocking and sarcastic tone to it, which I felt helped show further how scared people really were of magic.

The penultimate story, The Company of Wolves was another Red Riding Hood related tale. I felt this one fitted the traditional tale of Red Riding Hood, as the wolf disguised himself as the Grandmother. However, the ending was entirely different and not what I expected. She ended up getting into bed with the wolf. Standard, you know. I found Clark's presentation of the wolves interesting and I feel it helped Clark insert a feeling or a theme of feminism into the story. The narrative starts the story by telling us "the wolf is carnivore incarnate and he's as cunning as he is ferocious", whereas by the end, we are told the wolf is "tender". I feel this suggests that maybe wolves are not as fearful as first perceived and that if women stood their ground and became "cunning and ferocious" then wolves, (and men as well) would not be as dominant/ dominating.

Part of me did wonder whether the wolf-man idea was meant to be symbolic of anger and possibly describing how men want to control but they themselves need to be controlled and put in place. However, I soon realised it wasn't because there was the description of wolves and their eyes which "shine like golden flame" at the beginning of the story which I had forgotten about and therefore suggests that a wolf is not symbolic of anger but actually is a wolf.

I also found out that The Company of Wolves was turned in to a little movie and so I might give it a watch and see whether it is true to the tale.

The final short story from The Bloody Chamber is Wolf-Alice. This is a story all about how a girl called Alice had her life flipped and turned upside down, and I'd like to take a minute of you just sitting right there and tell you how she became a wolf...yeah I couldn't make it rhyme. Ah well. But anyway, the story is about a human feral girl who is raised by wolves, sound familiar?

http://listverse.com/2008/03/07/10-modern-cases-of-feral-children/

Anyway, I found Wolf-Alice to be an interesting character because she appears to be the polar opposite to the other female characters in Clark's story because she starts off as a beast and inhumane and then becomes or regains her humanity slightly, but still remains a beast. Whereas other characters, like The Tigers Bride, were human but begin to accept their animal and beastly side, or in The Werewolf, the Grandmother and the wolf are one. One final note, the c word is used once more.

One thing I forgot to mention about The Bloody Chamber and thought I would add in here instead of in the first blog is the role reversal and the irony. I liked how the mother and therefore the woman became the saviour and defeated man because the story felt as if it was set during a time when society was very patriarchal and traditional. I liked the irony of how the husband, the Marquis, was killed by a women who killed him with his own gun. Effectively, his weapon killed him.

And that is all for now, I'll blog about Doctor Faustus and Frankenstein at some point over the weekend. Woo. Yeah. Fun.