Draft:"The Courtship of Mr Lyon" and "The Tiger's Bride" by Angela Carter

"The Courtship of Mr. Lyon" and "The Tiger's Bride" are two short stories from British author Angela Carter's larger short story collection, The Bloody Chamber. Both of these stories are based on Charles Perrault's fairytale Beauty and the Beast. The stories' retelling of this classic fairytale combines themes of subvert feminism, fantasy, mythology, and the deconstruction of the fairytale form that has been appropriated by those upholding the status quo.

The Bloody Chamber was first published in Great Britain by Victor Gollancz Ltd. in 1979. The original cover art portrays a partially naked woman with a lion's head in black-and-white with Georgia O'Keefe-style, red roses covering the lower parts they represent. The more recent 2015 75th Anniversary Edition features a black-and-white cover depicting a lion-head door knocker surrounded by an intricate mane and leaves. This edition also includes an introduction by author and editor Kelly Link.

Carter is well-known for her use of magical realism as well as other postmodern, literary components and themes such as intertextuality, fantasy, female sexuality, myth and Gothic elements.

Story Summaries

The Courtship of Mr Lyon

(Based on Charles Perrault's Beauty and the Beast – the concept of the Beast as a lion-like figure is a popular one, most notably in the French film version of 1946 and the Disney film version, Beauty and the Beast of 1991)

In Angela Carter’s retelling of Beauty and the Beast, The Courtship of Mr. Lyon tells the story of Beauty, a snow-white girl whose father lost their fortunes and, in the opening of the story, has failed yet again to restore them. He doesn’t have enough money left to buy Beauty her only request, a single white rose. On his way home from the failed venture, his car runs out of fuel and he walks on foot to look for help.

The father then comes across a set of wrought iron gates and behind it is the Beast’s Palladian home. He passes through the gates in order to reach a single white rose growing on a bare, tangled vine. As the gates close behind him, he hears the great roar of the Beast from a distance. The father then proceeds to the front door as it opens for him. The only sign of life is a spaniel wearing a diamond necklace in place of a collar. The dog gently herds the father to a table set with food and drink labeled with the instructions Eat me and Drink me. Afterward, the father finds a telephone with the number of a local mechanic. He calls the garage and the mechanic’s tone changes when the father describes the Beast’s residence. After the call, the father is disconcerted but is met with the spaniel holding his hat in her mouth and the front door swinging open, signaling for him to leave. On his way out, the father decides to steal the single white rose for Beauty, instantly summoning the angry Beast.

The Beast appears as a ferocious, giant lion standing on his hind legs in a dress jacket. He shakes Beauty’s father violently, calling him a thief. The father pleads that the rose was only for his daughter and he shows the Beast her photograph. The Beast then tells the father to take the rose, but to also bring Beauty back to dinner at his house that evening. Her father relates the news to Beauty but does not reveal what he knows of the Beast’s animalistic nature.

At dinner that evening, Beauty recognizes the Beast for what he is, and she is moved by the sadness in the Beast’s eyes. However, she also feels like lamb being led to slaughter. She sits through dinner to appease her father and eventually realizes that she will be staying with the Beast indefinitely.

Beauty’s bedroom is lavish and decorated with a glass bed but she notices the lack of human servants in the house. During her stay, Beauty reads from a revolving bookcase, dines on fine food, and converses in the evenings with the Beast. During their first conversation, the Beast manages to master his animal-like shyness and Beauty decides to master her own nerves about him as well. At the end of the conversation, the Beast throws himself at her feet and buries his head in her lap when she gets up to leave. He begins to lick her hands and Beauty understands that he is simply kissing her hands. He stops and gazes at her before bounding away on all fours.

The next day, the Beast goes hunting in the morning as Beauty walks with the spaniel in the garden. It is noted that all the natural laws of the world were held in suspension when she was on the Beast’s lands. Carter imparts the mystique of the magical by hearkening back to the thematic tradition of otherworldliness historically found in fairy tales in this line. Then, Beauty suddenly gets a call from her father beckoning her to come home. The Beast asks her if she will come back soon and she agrees to return by the close of winter. A taxi comes and takes Beauty away.

Beauty returns to her father’s house in London to find him a wealthy man once again. It is revealed that Beauty’s father had ruined his family's fortunes before she was born and that her mother died during her birth. Beauty sends the Beast bouquets of white roses but does not return. After sending the roses she feels as though she has escaped some danger and is completely free but she feels a desolate emptiness as well. Winter is nearly over.

Beauty stays in London and, one night, she returns late from dinner and the theater. She is looking at herself with a satisfactory gaze in the mirror when the wind blows in from her open window and she feels as though she will cry. She hears the sound of claws at her door and all at once remembers everything about her time with the Beast. At first she thinks the Beast has come for her and is frightened, angry, and then joyful. However, when she opens the door she finds the spaniel. The dog is matted and dirty and, after leaping into Beauty’s arms, begins to tug at her and whimper. Beauty realizes that the Beast is dying. She leaves a note for her father and returns immediately to the Beast’s home.

Upon her return, the white roses in the garden refuse to bloom or grow. She sees a flickering light in an attic room. Inside, the house has lost its glamor, as if its conjurer had moved on from the space. In the attic room, Beauty finds the Beast near death, as his health had been failing since she left. Beauty swears that the Beast will have her and that she will never leave if only he will not die. As her transforming tears fall on the Beast’s face, he suddenly becomes a man. After a moment, the Beast simply says that he could eat and asks Beauty to have breakfast with him.

The story concludes with Mr. and Mrs. Lyon (Beauty and the Beast) walking through the rose garden while the spaniel dozes in the grass, surrounded by fallen petals.

The Tiger's Bride

(Also based on Beauty and the Beast.)

In her collection of short stories, The Bloody Chamber, British author and feminist Angela Carter retells the fairytale of Beauty and the Beast in her version, “The Tiger’s Bride.” In this short story, the main character, Beauty, although otherwise unnamed, begins her tale of how her father lost her to a mysterious, masked Milord at cards. The father drinks alcohol as he gambles away the last of Beauty’s inheritance. In his drunkenness and gambling, the father bets and loses his daughter to Milord, or The Beast. Beauty’s departure from her father the next morning for the Beast's residence is alluded to when the tear-beslobbered father asks for a rose to show that she forgives him. She pricks her finger on a thorn and the rose gets smeared with her blood. She has been made a sacrifice. Thus, she is lost to The Beast.

Upon arriving at The Beast’s palazzo, Beauty is shown a room high above the house. Then, a strangely sexual encounter happens between Beauty, The Beast, and the valet as he awkwardly attempts to express The Beast’s sexual desires to Beauty. The valet then speaks for the Beast, saying that his master’s only desire is to see her nude without her clothes. She is promised to come to no harm and she is also to receive fine gifts and the restoration of her father’s money that was lost in his card games with The Beast. At this Beauty lets out a raucous guffaw; no young lady laughs like that!...But I did. And do.

Then again, Beauty is met with another, similar request from The Beast via the valet. Again Beauty refuses, and the valet replies that if she will not consent then she must see the Beast unclothed. Beauty then sees the Beast in his true form which is that of a large tiger. Remembering his promise to do her no harm, Beauty then proceeds to remove her clothing, showing the Beast her naked body.

After this exchange, Beauty is returned not to her cell, but to an elegant room. In her beautiful new room she finds a pair of heart-shaped diamond earrings. She puts on the earrings and proceeds to undress down to her nightclothes. Beauty then makes her way to the Beast’s den. She proceeds into his room finding it scattered with blood and bone, the Beast among the carnage. The Beast begins to lick Beauty’s hand as she exclaims that he will lick the skin right off of her. Indeed, she is left not with her skin but with a shining coat of fur. Her diamond earrings turn to water as she shrugs the droplets off her fur-covered shoulders. In this reverse ending, Beauty is turned into a tiger, or a beast, to match her mate.

Themes

"Carter's fairy tales repeatedly bring to the fore her inexhaustible appetite for the multifarious and the hybrid" Several of Carter's intertextual themes include deconstruction and demythologization, fantasy and myth, and female sexuality.

Deconstruction & Demythologization

In author Anna Atlas's "Demythologising Social Fictions in Angela Carter's Reinterpretations of Fairy Tales" she states that in Carter's "collection of short stories, The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter rewrites the plots of Charles Perrault's fairy tales, calling it a 'work of demythologization.' Th[is] article identifies 'social myths' regarding women in the author’s two versions of the original story of Beauty and the Beast."

Again, as referenced by author Anđelka Gemović in “From Captivity to Bestiality: Feminist Subversion of Fairy-Tale Female Characters in Angela Carter’s ‘the Tiger’s Bride,'" critic S. Gamble also observes that Carter uses "the deconstruction of a form that has become appropriated by those who have a vested interest in upholding the status quo."

Carter accomplishes this deconstruction by retelling childhood stories through a subversive feminist lens and by challenging traditional gender roles. The character of Beauty is often transformed and matured throughout the tale, coming into her own sexuality by the close of the story.

Fantasy & Mythology

Carter also uses fantasy and mythology to deconstruct traditional gender roles and female sexuality portrayed in the folklore-based tales of Perrault. Through her adult retelling of familiar childhood fairytales, she challenges the reader to reconsider the traditionally submissive role of Beauty and the masculine sexual power that is traditionally represented in the Beast. Her reconciliation of these roles in Beauty and the Beast's final, integral union represents the woman's initial embracing of her sexuality as a key catalyst for the ultimate transformation.

Female Sexuality

Beauty's journey to sexual maturity is apparent in her sexual unity with the Beast at the end of both stories. In both endings, Beauty facilitates the transformation through her own coming-into-power and sexual maturation towards the beast. The beast's subsequent submissiveness to Beauty as she returns to him in each of the final scenes shows Carter's integration of both personality and sexual power in her ending union of the two characters.

Interpretations

The folk tale tends to define identity by role. Carter reverses and challenges these traditional roles in both tales. This is seen in the metamorphosis of Beauty's sexual maturity in both "The Tiger's Bride" and "The Courtship of Mr. Lyon," as well as Beauty's stepping out of her feminine role on several occasions, most notably in the examples below.

"The Courtship of Mr. Lyon" is notable for the beast's, here representing male sexuality and energy, moral and emotional blackmail on Beauty as well as a thematic sense of seeking an integration or union as the female character begins to embrace her sexuality as the story develops.

This embracing of Carter's subversive feminism concurrently integrates the personalities of Beauty and the Beast as the story progresses. Initially, Beauty finds she cannot touch the beast because he is so different from herself. Near the end of the story, as Spring arrives, Beauty suddenly remembers her time with the beast and decides to return to him. Her absence and return generate both a human and humane transformation in the beast. The result is the union of Mr. and Mrs. Lyon, now married and walking in the garden.

In another example from "The Tiger's Bride," Beauty lets out a raucous guffaw; no young lady laughs like that!...But I did. And do. Taken from the story, this statement from Beauty again shows Carter’s subversive feminist lens and techniques in having a young woman laugh in the face of a terrifying beast at his request to see her without clothing. Beauty would rather laugh in the face of a beast than be subjected to naked humility. However, by the end of the tale, Beauty seeks out the beast in his bone-ridden lair for a reversal reunion as she becomes a tiger to be with the beast.

Controversy

Aside from addressing adult themes head-on, Carter's themes of bestiality, female sexual exploration, and pornographic descriptions have fueled controversy among critics and audiences since the initial 1979 publication.

"For Carter, the virtue of the fairytale lies in its status as an inherently democratic narrative form, always open to appropriation and interpretation...the amount of controversy [the stories in The Bloody Chamber] have continued to generate indicates that pleasing her audience by providing them with a comfortably reassuring read did not feature on her list of priorities. A major source of that controversy lies in the fact that, all the time she was working on The Bloody Chamber stories, she was still trying to complete The Sadeian Woman."

The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography deals with Marquis de Sade and his "status of 'moral pornographer,' a figure defined by Carter as: an artist who uses pornographic material...as a critique of current relations between the sexes. His business would be the total demystification of the flesh...Such a pornographer would not be the enemy of women." ^[10] Carter's use of these historically iconoclastic ideas throughout "The Courtship of Mr. Lyon" and "The Tiger's Bride" have continued to invite controversy with its 75th Anniversary edition being published in 2015.