EMPOWERING THE DAMSELS IN DISTRESS
CARTER, Angela The Bloody Chamber. London: Victor Gollancz. 1979.
8vo. Original publisher's black cloth lettered in gilt at spine, Illustrated red and white dust jacket by Michael Ashman; pp. [vii], 157, [3]; slight bumping to head of spine, otherwise near fine.
First edition of a feminist classic.
Unusually and significantly, publishing house Gollancz, (famed for their yellow dust jackets devoid of image), made the decision to publish this speical first edition in vivid illustration.
An electric collection of feminist retellings of classic fairytales, Angela Carter insisted that these were "new stories" inspired no doubt by the traditional writings of Charles Perrault, whose works she had translated (Histoires ou Contes du Temps Passé, Carter had published in 1977); "My intention was not to do ‘versions’ or, as the American edition of the book said, horribly, ‘adult’ fairy tales, but to extract the latent content from the traditional stories and to use it as the beginnings of new stories".
Subverting the traditional tropes of the fairytale, in which the female assumes the role of a passive character, these richly imaginative stories grant the female protagonist dominant perspective. Although still managing to maintain the familiairty of the original tales, they are boldly and unashamedly formatted as tales of sex and violence, lavishly excavating the themes that truly lie beneath the conventional bedtime tales of childhood…
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