Elements of the Gothic - Notes from 'The Tiger's Bride' from 'The Bloody Chamber'

THE TIGER’S BRIDE

Confinement

The tiger’s purr is the sound of revolution, the sound of old conventions and traditions breaking apart: “It will all fall, everything will disintegrate.”

Diction

Carter’s Beauty is not afraid, only slightly sarcastic and analytical. Her cynicism and sarcasm responds to her father’s cynicism and folly at gambling his own daughter.

Narrative

Angela Carter’s ‘Beauty’ in ‘The Tiger’s Bride’ reveals that being a woman involves a degree of passivity and dependency on a man (in this case, the father). And although it could be argued that this dependency is almost natural, considering the man they depend on is their parent, the way the women react to the new masculine figure (the Beast) does speak about the author’s professed understanding of the relationship between genders.

Male/Female Roles

Male Role – The Beast
The beastliness of the Beast is mirrored in ‘The Tiger’s Bride’. The Beast is a tiger with “fur, paws and claws”, ferocious, ready to hunt and kill among the “gnawed and bloody bones”. But, his beastliness can also be understood as his sexuality: his desire to see Beauty naked, and the “rich, thick, wild scent” that the Beast drenches himself in (and continues to do so) after Beauty arrives at the castle are symbols of the Beast’s sexuality. He is active, independent and under control.

The Female – Beauty
Angela Carter’s Beauty does not act as a civilising agent on the Beast. She is aware of “the exact nature of his beastliness” as she aptly remembers her childhood tales of old wives’ and gossip about servants getting pregnant out of wedlock. Whilst she acknowledges her sexuality, she gradually and boldly adopts it, and allows herself to be attracted to the “beastliness” of the Beast. From the beginning, Beauty feels contempt for his appearance and demeanour “in spite of the quaint elegance of the Beast”. He also wins her at cards, is wealthy and is always with a valet, in contrast to the apparently passive and dependent Beauty. Nevertheless, it is important to note that Beauty does not tremble in front of the Beast, and rather is enraged at being traded around and literally objectified as a woman. When asked to present herself naked, she produces a “raucous guffaw” and offers to have sex with him in the manner of prostitutes; although she does it to shame the Beast, it shows that females in Carter’s world can be active, in control of their own body and expose their openness to sexuality. Whilst the Beast does not turn to human form in this version of the fairytale, Beauty is turned into a beast, where she embraces and explores her own sexuality, full of desire and sexual passion, all the attributes that Beast (and men) have had all along.

In “The Tiger’s Bride”, the female protagonist has typical puppet-type femininity. She is initially controlled by the male world – first, her father and later the Beast, the latter of which she was warned would “gobble her up”. The sight of the Beast’s “beastliness” shocks her, but only in a negative way: “I felt my breast ripped apart as I suffered a marvellous wound”. She is, nevertheless, impressed by the monster’s openness, that she shows him her naked body freely, which triggers a host of extreme feelings in her where she feels “at liberty for the first time” in her life.