Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber through the Female Gaze
(2023) ENGK03 20222English Studies
- Abstract
- The discourse on Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber has primarily been focused on the feminist undertones of her neogothic fairy tale retellings. In this essay, I apply the male and female gaze to Carter’s collection, which are perspectives I believe previous research on Carter’s works has overlooked. The incorporation of the male gaze allows for a further nuancing of Soloway’s female gaze, and my analysis will thus utilize both perspectives as complementary frameworks. Analysing “The Erl-King”, “The Tiger’s Bride”, “The Company of Wolves” and “Wolf-Alice” against Soloway’s and Mulvey’s theoretical backgrounds, I will investigate how Carter dismantles the patriarchal hierarchy, and subverts the image of the objectified woman established... (More)
- The discourse on Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber has primarily been focused on the feminist undertones of her neogothic fairy tale retellings. In this essay, I apply the male and female gaze to Carter’s collection, which are perspectives I believe previous research on Carter’s works has overlooked. The incorporation of the male gaze allows for a further nuancing of Soloway’s female gaze, and my analysis will thus utilize both perspectives as complementary frameworks. Analysing “The Erl-King”, “The Tiger’s Bride”, “The Company of Wolves” and “Wolf-Alice” against Soloway’s and Mulvey’s theoretical backgrounds, I will investigate how Carter dismantles the patriarchal hierarchy, and subverts the image of the objectified woman established through the male gaze which has previously dominated the European fairy tale tradition. I argue that Carter, through this subversion, utilizes the female gaze to prescribe agency and subjecthood to the heroines of her novellas “The Erl-King”, “The Company of Wolves”, “The Tiger’s Bride”, and “Wolf-Alice”. To explore this topic, I observe how each female protagonist is focalized to evoke empathy, how they negotiate looked-at-ness on their own terms, and how they ultimately escape falling victim to the male gaze. The female gaze consequently becomes a politically reformative deconstruction of objectification and lookedat-ness, and allows Carter’s heroines to claim subjecthood and agency. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9109128
- author
- Bällsten, Julia LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- ENGK03 20222
- year
- 2023
- type
- M2 - Bachelor Degree
- subject
- language
- English
- id
- 9109128
- date added to LUP
- 2023-02-07 08:30:04
- date last changed
- 2023-02-07 08:30:04
@misc{9109128, abstract = {{The discourse on Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber has primarily been focused on the feminist undertones of her neogothic fairy tale retellings. In this essay, I apply the male and female gaze to Carter’s collection, which are perspectives I believe previous research on Carter’s works has overlooked. The incorporation of the male gaze allows for a further nuancing of Soloway’s female gaze, and my analysis will thus utilize both perspectives as complementary frameworks. Analysing “The Erl-King”, “The Tiger’s Bride”, “The Company of Wolves” and “Wolf-Alice” against Soloway’s and Mulvey’s theoretical backgrounds, I will investigate how Carter dismantles the patriarchal hierarchy, and subverts the image of the objectified woman established through the male gaze which has previously dominated the European fairy tale tradition. I argue that Carter, through this subversion, utilizes the female gaze to prescribe agency and subjecthood to the heroines of her novellas “The Erl-King”, “The Company of Wolves”, “The Tiger’s Bride”, and “Wolf-Alice”. To explore this topic, I observe how each female protagonist is focalized to evoke empathy, how they negotiate looked-at-ness on their own terms, and how they ultimately escape falling victim to the male gaze. The female gaze consequently becomes a politically reformative deconstruction of objectification and lookedat-ness, and allows Carter’s heroines to claim subjecthood and agency.}}, author = {{Bällsten, Julia}}, language = {{eng}}, note = {{Student Paper}}, title = {{Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber through the Female Gaze}}, year = {{2023}}, }