Dead women, entombed women, threatened women: many have argued that a fear of the feminine is at the root of much Gothic fiction. Outline how this fear of the feminine is present in, or perhaps challenged by, 2 of the gothic fictions we’ve looked at this semester.
The fear of the feminine is a constant in gothic fiction, especially during its infancy; women were the unknown; the world of the maternal and feminine was engulfed by male paranoia, ignorance, and fear. This universal trepidation is a defining connection between the tale of Bluebeard and its female-centred 1979 retelling The Bloody Chamber, written by Charles Perrault and Angela Carter respectively.
The blatant distrust and fickle representation of women is conveyed to the reader…show more content… “Female Curiosity” the alternative title of the tale, also establishes this curiosity and desire for knowledge as negative. When the wife is questioned whether she had entered the forbidden room and subsequently threatened with death, instead of contending this sentence she “threw herself at her husband’s feet, weeping and pleading to be forgiven, . . . [showing] how truly she repented for being so disobedient” (Perrault 108) and further corroborates the viewpoint that women are solely purposed for the domination of men, and are designed to be completely acquiescent to the events around them. Carter, however, uses a more sophisticated and expressive language to chronicle the fairy tale. Her flourishes allow the central character of the unnamed wife to communicate her internal monologue, and therefore, allows the reader to approach her with sympathy and benevolence. This is especially prominent in the first paragraph, as the young girl expresses her mixed emotions as she is taken “away from girlhood, away from the white, enclosed quietude of my mother’s apartment, into the unguessable country of marriage.” (Carter 111). The treatment of women, as depicted by Carter, shows the strength of both the unnamed bride and her “indomitable mother” (Carter 111), as they both refuse to be victims of male violence. In Perrault’s telling of the tale, it is the unnamed
