The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter, 1979

The Bloody Chamber Review

About

Published in 1979, Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber is a collection of gothic fairy tales retold through a feminist lens. It’s lush, subversive, and unapologetically sensual. Carter dismantles the myths that shaped Western imagination—Beauty and the Beast, Little Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard—and rebuilds them as stories of female agency, desire, and power. Her prose is operatic yet precise, balancing horror and liberation.

Overview

The title story reimagines Bluebeard as a decadent, deadly marriage. Other tales—“The Company of Wolves,” “The Tiger’s Bride,” “The Lady of the House of Love”—reclaim archetypes of innocence, monstrosity, and seduction. Carter fuses fairy tale structure with surreal sensuality, using blood, mirrors, and transformation as recurring symbols. Her women are not victims but architects of their own metamorphosis. The result is part dream, part manifesto.

Summary

(light spoilers) In “The Bloody Chamber,” a young bride discovers her husband’s secret chamber and the murdered wives within. Her curiosity, rather than condemning her, becomes the key to her freedom. In “The Company of Wolves,” Red Riding Hood meets the wolf with self-awareness and consent, turning fear into desire. Each story overturns its source material’s moral logic: the monstrous becomes sympathetic, the innocent becomes knowing. Carter’s world is one where fairy tales grow teeth—and where women learn to bite back.

Key Themes / Main Ideas

• Sexual awakening — desire as autonomy.
• Power and gender — inversion of victim and predator roles.
• Myth and transformation — reclaiming archetypes for modern feminism.
• Violence and beauty — eros entwined with danger.
• Language — decadence as rebellion against restraint.

Strengths and Weaknesses

• Strengths — Dazzling prose, fearless imagination, and radical reinterpretation of myth.
• Strengths — Each story balances horror with empowerment.
• Weaknesses — The ornate style can feel overwhelming; every sentence drips with metaphor.
• Weaknesses — Readers seeking plot over poetry may find it opaque.

Reviewed with focus on themes, audience, and takeaways — Angela Carter