3. Angela Carter (1979), The Bloody Chamber

This is the second book I read for the now-unlikely-to-happen DracSoc trip to Bath, again because its author lived there in the early to mid '70s. On one level it is a series of ten 'takes' on traditional fairy-tales, but even to say that rather over-simplifies and understates what Carter does with them. Most are entirely recast, reset, reframed - more riffs on the original stories than even retellings, and sometimes taking two or three iterations to explore different angles on the same archetype. All of them reflect her famously radical feminist perspective, but while that might now conjure up a vision of stories about women triumphing over patriarchy, perhaps with a queer emphasis, Carter's focus is more on demonstrating the workings of patriarchy, the ways in which women are often complicit in it, its damaging effects and (sometimes) the ways in which women can counter or escape from it. Most of the stories are also distinctly Gothic in nature, involving violence, the monstrous, isolated fantastical settings and a general sense of heightened drama and emotion. ( My notes on individual stories follow below )