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Friday 8 March 2013

Magical Realism at its Best! - A Review of Angela Carter's "Bloody Chamber"

Cover of "Bloody Chamber and Other Storie...
Cover of Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

Angela Carter was one of the boldest writers of the 20th century. Championed by feminists, Carter is not the usual PC promoting puritan that became a cliché in her time. Instead she strengthened female role models through her own imaginative ideas and often sourced through real evidence. She did this without diminishing other male characters in fiction; male and female villain roles can be equally treacherous, brutal and nasty. Her research into Gothic fiction and, in particular, folk stories reveals this best. This short collection of stories served as the source for the screenplay she wrote, "The Company of Wolves", one of the most startlingly original films of the 1980s. In Carter's works, characters familiar like Red Riding Hood do not overwhelm the male characters rather they compliment them with a different and yet equal strength.