Burden of Blood

During class today, the story of Bluebeard was recited to us, which was the basis for Carter's "The Bloody Chamber."  Though each piece shared the almost exact plot of the other save for the ending, I found that the stories differed greatly in the morals presented.

In the fairy tale, I got the sense that the woman would have been find if she had obeyed Bluebeard.  Perhaps she would even have gone on to find happiness with him.  When she opens the room and discovers the fate of her predecessors, though, we understand that she has fallen into the same trap as they had in her inability to follow the set guidelines of her captor, the authority figure.  The reason Bluebeard makes such a big deal of leaving the key in plain sight to tempt her in order to set up the moral of the story.  I feel that this fairy tale is trying to teach children to respect authority, but also teach little girls to obey their husbands to avoid trouble.

"The Bloody Chamber" flips this around and presents the story in a more feminist light.  The author goes to great lengths to paint an otherworldly setting and give the reader the sense that something is off, both in the setting and with the husband.  The woman is described as corruptible, but as a converse, we are also told that she is not corrupted by that point.  There's nothing wrong with the woman, and her innocence is assured.  Whereas the fairy tale points out the faults in its female character, in this story, she is portrayed as more human.  With that humanity comes a natural curiosity.  Even though she disobeys her husband and opens the room, the woman remains innocent in that curiosity is a natural human trait.  The woman remains blameless, and thus no moral of obedience can be determined.  This only serves to further exemplify the faults of the husband and how he is the one corrupt instead of the woman.

As a feminist statement, this fairy tale needed to be rewritten as women are not and should not be beholden to the commands of their husbands as described in Bluebeard.  The husband in "The Bloody Chamber" serves to prevent his wives from becoming actual people rather than possessions.  This is why he is the villain and why the story goes to such lengths to portray him as such rather than focus on the disobedience of the wife. 

The Ringmaster's Lament

In The Circus Animal's Desertion by Yeats, he starts it off with a deep look into his past works. He almost seems disgusted at how showy they were and he admits that they were actually very terrible as far as works of art.

This is also a good example of demonstrating what happens with age. In his youth he was able to create these extravagant and beautiful works whereas now he is unable to come up with anything. He is extremely apathetic and it's like he has given up hope on having any kind of influence in the world at all anymore.

I find this sad as most of the country is like this as well. They are very apathetic towards there work and anything they have accomplished in the past that they were so excited about back then, they find really had no significant value or impact what so ever. This is a prime example of dying at 40 and buried at 70.

50 Shades of Bloody Chamber

Angela Carter's "The Bloody Carter" is a very dark story based off the tale of Bluebeard, in which Bluebeard stores the bodies of his previous wives in a chamber. Carter's story also makes a lot of references to tales and legends such as King Mark, Dracula, Tristan and Isolde, and Red Riding Hood ("All the better to see you.") These references as well as the many others gives the reader an idea of the atmosphere the main character is in. It's dark and sinister and deals with a passionate 'love' which is really just an obsession. It also gives the reader an idea about how young and naive the new bride is.

The choker made of rubies is a fascinating symbol of the story because it represents wealth, extravagance, ownership, humiliation, and even survival. It represents survival because the girl tells the story of how people who escaped execution during the Reign of Terror would tie red ribbons around their necks. This is very appropriate for the girl considering she herself is almost beheaded. She overcame her sadistic Big Bad Wolf much in the way her own mother conquered her would-be victimizers. (the mother even shoots him much like in certain versions of Little Red Riding Hood.)

The Bloody Chamber

I think it's interesting that this story is told from the female's perspective. This sets up the story to be a feminist piece from the beginning. Because it was published in 1979, it is very likely that Angela Carter was influenced by the second wave of feminism throughout the late 1900s. Angela Carter herself was known for her feminist literature, and I believe that this fact is important when reading "The Bloody Chamber." Though the overarching theme within the story is feminist, and the heroine eventually "wins," there are also small hints of feminism throughout the piece.

At first, the short story appears to be focused on the narrator's journey into wifedom. On page 1484, she states, "And, in the midst of my bridal triumph, I felt a pang of loss as if, when he put the gold band on my finger, I had, in some way, ceased to be her child in becoming his wife." This one line in particular stood out to me as feminist. She feels as though she has lost part of herself in becoming a wife. Her identity shifts into some realm of which she is uncertain. By gaining her husband, she loses her mother. One identity cannot coexist with the other. She is either a wife or a daughter, but never both.

"The Bloody Chamber"

Upon reading Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber," I was pleasantly suprised to see it was actually a feminist piece. Despite the horror of a man killing all his previous wives that would normally indicate the patriarchal power balance, Carter threads details into the story that make it ultimately feminist. At first, the young girl's innocence and desire to marry a man thrice wed would make her appear naive and impressionable. However very quickly, with small line such as "I'm sure I want to marry him" it is more obvious that she is capable of manipulation more than she lets on. Even as a young girl, she needs no comfort from her father, and instead is entranced and empowered by the final scene of Isolde.This is no ordinary, meek young girl, she is capable of corruption and even acknowledges it herself, "I sensed in myself a capability of corruption that took my breath away."

Rather than the helpless fairytale maiden, the girl has a natural potential for the same type of destruction a man has. While her husband says he saw a face with a "promise of debauchery," what he fails to realize is the nature of it. He thrives on the thought of being the one to turn her perverse, but does not realize that she already has budding perverseness within her. Overall, Carter writes a short story that tells more about the capability of women to be just as naturally carnal or dangerous as men. Even the end has the mother coming to rescue her daughter, leaving no room for weak damsels, but rather a story that defies the meek archetype of women and introduces the concept of natural corruption within women equal to that of men.

A New Start

I cant help but draw parallels between The Darling Thrush and The Circus Animal’s Desertion. Both poems are looking back at the past with mixed emotions. The Darling Thrush glances at the entire state of literature at the cusp of a new era, and Yeats does the same thing only on a more personal level. The drive to produce something new and exciting seem to be a difficult task and they imply that past work was just good enough but needs a push in a new direction. Hardy is a little more optimistic as he stands at the coppice gate and sees the wilderness that can be cultivated into entirely new forms of literature. Yeats reflects on a past career and turns his back to the sharp horizon that he helped build. It is a much easier feat to comment on the literature in its entirety, but something completely different when putting yourself in that mix. Both men see different values of the past and both accept the challenge of starting fresh; putting pen to paper and cultivate the untouched land that stands before them.    

Crazy Jane..

Since we were discussing Yeats last week, I wanted to talk about Crazy Jane Talks to the Bishop. I am not gonna lie, the title is what caught my attention and my reasoning for writing about it. The poem is the interaction between a character Yeats based off of a woman he admired for her speech and lust for life. He ended up writing seven poems about the old woman, this being the sixth. The Bishop in the poem looks down at the woman and speaks negatively of her unkept appearance and unchaste life. In response the woman defends herself by teaching the Bishop of life and to welcome it while you can. I believe her response response to be given. Live while you can and enjoy what you have. Many people forget that lesson, or ignore it because of their status. While researching the poem, it suggests that the Bishop may have admired the woman at one point in time, and she rejected his advances. which is why he tried to hurt her verbally with the lines, "Those breasts are flat and fallen now, Those veins must soon be dry;". The woman's response is somewhat of a reflection on Yeats real life. He wrote this when he was almost 70, during a time when he reignited his own look at life and love. I liked that the rhythm drew me in with its sing song beat. It felt like a nursery rhyme almost, with each line rhyming with the next. Overall, I enjoyed the poem and liked that it was short. Even though it felt like there was little to read, there is a lot to interpret.

Yeats' Lapis Lazuli

I had to do a little research with this poem to figure out exactly what a Lapis Lazuli was and why Yeats would use it to title his poem. Once I learnt about the blue stone I could somewhat connect it's meaning to the poem. Like the the dark blue stone, there's a sense of cold and dreariness in this poem. Yeats opens it by talking about the women who say they are sick of poets who are always happy when it's such a dark period of time. I really liked Yeats answer for these women in saying that life is like a play and we're all performing our parts. It's almost like when you're a child and your parents tell you that life isn't fair, and it reaches to a relatable aspect of human nature. It's hard to maintain a positive outlook when there's so much negative around and Yeats wants the reader to see that art is a means of achieving positivity.

A Time of Lost Hope

I found it interesting how the presentations from our classmates on Monday were so related to the ideas presented in Yeats’ The Circus Animals’ Desertion. I remember the groups talking about how this time in literature was a very dark and pessimist time. It wasn’t dark in the sense that it was gothic and gloomy, but in the sense that all hope and light seemed to have been abandoned. It seemed as if many authors had lost their trust in the beauty of nature and humanity, and that directly affect their writing styles. This is clearly seen in Yeats’ poem. He writes about how he has completely lost poetic themes that once seemed to come so easily to him. Majority of the poem is spent with him reminiscing about his past poetic themes that were so purely complete. However, he quickly snaps out about the daydream of the past and comes to terms with the unfortunate present; he “must lie down where all the ladders start,/In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart”.  

A Bride Named Death

Of Rudyard Kipling's "Epitaphs of War",  The Bridegroom is one poem in particular which strikes my fancy.   Kipling effectively compares the narrator's "beloved" to the concept of death, employing personification to describe death, too, as a close lover.  The eerie terror of the notion put momentarily aside, I find this comparison quite poignant and precise.
"...this more ancient bride
Whom coldly I embrace
Was constant at my side
Before I saw thy face"

Were death a human being, would she not be a fellow's closest friend; closer, even, than a man's wife, lurking always over his shoulders?  And to marry death is to be removed from life:

"Our marriage, often set -
By miracle delayed"

"By miracle", the narrator throughout his life escaped his inevitable marriage to death, but as a result of participating in the war, was killed before he was able to wed his corporeal "beloved" ("From thy scarce-known breast / So little time removed, / In other arms I rest); sooner than he hoped.

However, the third stanza suggests that the death of the soldier results in a satisfactory form of marriage to his human bride, as he will, for the entire "Almost, of Memory", remain engaged to the woman, rendering their promise as "consummate", one that "cannot be unmade".