Carters Version of Fairy Tales Are Always Darker Than The originals? To What Extent Do You Agree?

In the Werewolf, the story can be seen as a darker version of the original red riding hood story. The pathetic fallacy ‘cold; tempest; wild beasts in the forests’ creates an image of desolation and fear which the original tale lacks.

The minor sentence ‘harsh, brief, poor lives’ reflects the mood of the story in that it is bleak. Carter’s writing style differs greatly from Perrault’s as she deliberately uses simple, monosyllabic sentences to create a gothic atmosphere.

She utilises setting to create a dark mystic and haunting atmosphere which makes it more explicitly gothic. The staccato telegraphic style that she adopts generates feelings of tension and unease within the reader. In this way it can be seen that the werewolf story is a darker version of the original fairy-tale.

Similarly, in the story wolf Alice, Carter, creates a darker version of the story by using gothic tropes and elements. The narrator’s descriptions ‘gloomy castles, mirrors, moon, churchyard’ are all common gothic themes that are used to enhance the sense of despair and fear within the reader.

The title of the story is noteworthy as wolf would typically be associated with fairy tales such as red riding hood and the three little pigs. Although Alice may be and intertextual allusion to Alice in wonderland.

The combination of an innocent young girl with an infamous wolf may be and attempt from carter to rework her stories so that they are deliberately darker and more sinister. The use of Alice only servers to enhance the sinister feel to the story.

The snow child could also be said to be a darker version of the original snow white fairy tale. Throughout the bloody chamber carter has deliberately made fairy tales highly sexualised.

However, the snow child is unique as it triggers a feeling of disgust in the reader. When the count ‘thrust his virile member into the dead girl’, this can be seen as perverse and unsettling for the reader.

Despite the remake sharing the same fundamental elements as the original tale ‘girl as white as snow’ although it is the sexual and perverse image that shatters the once innocent story of the original fairy tale. It is the penetration of the snow child that corrupts the story and makes it significantly darker than the original fairy tale.

Although not all carter’s stories could represent the darker side to the original fairy tales. Puss in boots is the only story that could be argued to be more humorous than gothic. The comedy lies in the idea that a domestic cat is using highly sophisticated long purple prose.

This language is then merged together with bawdy humour which is essentially what makes the story unique to all other stories in the bloody chamber. Therefore, it can be seen that puss in boots is in fact more comedic than Perrault’s original story rather than darker.

Overall it can be seen that in regards to Carter’s the bloody chamber, most stories have been deliberately chosen and reworked so that they are darker and more sinister. Most of Perrault’s stories at the heart of it have a sense of fear and a darker side to them which carter enhance and merge them with sexual ideas. Carter offers a darker side to the fairy tales to offer and alternative critique of society.

By Libin Farah