Compare the ways in which Carter combines the Fairy Tale and the Gothic in ‘The Courtship of Mr Lyon’ and ‘The Tigers Bride’ ‘The Courtship of Mr Lyon’ and ‘The Tigers Bride’ both are adaptions of the Fairy Tale Beauty and the Beast. Carter twists both stories to fit the Gothic template which she uses to change conventions and typical ideologies of the traditional Fairy Tale by incorporating Gothic elements. ‘The Courtship of Mr Lyon’ is compared to the traditional tale it is based on, one being, the third person narrative. This is the common style of writing for Fairy Tales and is used to portray the story’s plot and a perspective of the characters from an outside perspective. In this story, Carter uses the traditional Fairy Tale …show more content…
plot to create tones of purity and naivety in the form of the characterization of Beauty. We ca see this from the strong connotations of snow, which she gazes upon, showing her as feminine, delicate and innocent.
All typical connotations to have for a traditional Fairy Tale. ‘The snow possessed a light of its own’ is used for the direct comparison of Beauty ‘whose skin possesses the same inner light’. Carter uses this comparison to present Beauty’s ‘absolute sweetness and absolute gravity’ which the Beast naturally felt when he first sees her. Carter uses the development of Beauty’s character to break away from the traditions of Fairy Tales, at the beginning of the story Beauty is the source of good in the world in a passive and loyal manner. Beauty is her father’s ‘girl-child, his pet’ which lives up to the expectations of Fairy Tale females being objectified and owned by a male. This point is further stressed by beauty herself being ‘miss lamb, spotless, sacrificial’ which is not only shows that a sacrifice by a female is usually to benefit her male counterpart over herself but is also a Gothic element, of women being in distress. However, it is crucial to see that Beauty ‘would gladly have gone to the ends of the earth for her father’ which sees …show more content…
her take control and responsibility for the situation which presents her as being strong-willed, opinionated and not just a source of beauty. Carter uses this story which begins with the stereotypical Fairy Tale female who realises her own importance and position in the tale which diverts from the typical, a female living the conventional life by being saved and uplifted by a male which is reversed in this story. ‘The Tigers Bride’ is not the conventional Fairy Tale which is prominent at the beginning of ‘The Courtship of Mr Lyon’. This is shown by Carter’s use of first person narrative, this allows for a personal insight into the character of Beauty which allows us to see a character takes control of her own thoughts, actions and decisions, which is far from the submissive Beauty in ‘The Courtship of Mr Lyon’. But most importantly Beauty understands her father’s actions and comments on them in a sarcastic manner which shows her intelligence and wit, when she says, ‘what a burden all those possessions must have been to him’. However, Carter still uses the male characters in this story to objectify Beauty, both her father and the Beast call her ‘pearl’ and ‘treasure’, both things to own and claim. From the beginning, Beauty is a ‘trade’ for the Beast’s advantage and pleasure. Beauty also shows this diversion when the Beast asks her to disrobe for him, to which she comments, ‘I wished I’d rolled in the hay with every lad on my father’s farm’ followed by a refusal clearly showing her active dismissal of being commanded. Carter also portrays this intelligence of Beauty by her understanding of the role women had and showing this enlightenment to the Beast claiming ‘that beats nor women were equipped with the flimsy’ ‘soul’, showing her understanding that men only see the physicality of women and never beyond it. This exact revelation is echoed when Beauty meets the soubrette doll and ponders ‘that clockwork girl who powdered my cheeks for me had I not been allotted only the same kind of imitative life amongst men that the doll had given her?’ showing Beauty’s want for more than just being a product of male entertainment and amusement. Carter uses the character of Mr Lyon, the Beast, to show the reversal of traditional Fairy Tale and Gothic elements. For example, at the begging of the story Carter chooses to describe Mr Lyon as the ‘king of beasts’ with a ‘mighty ferocious roar’ which shows the expectations of traditional male characters as being strong, intimidating and confident. With a temper and strength to ‘(shake) Beauty’s father like an angry child shakes a doll… until his teeth rattled’. Carter also includes a trade, a typical feature of Fairy Tales ‘take her the rose then, but bring her to dinner’ between Beauty’s father and the Beast. As the story progresses and the Gothic Supernatural element of ‘the human animal’ living in awe of Beauty, Carter swaps the gender roles expected of this story showing Mr Lyon as being vulnerable and helpless, ‘it will be lonely here without you’ to which the Beast continuously hides his ‘shyness’. This is encapsulated by the Gothic element of isolation where the Beast’s eyes were ‘green with agate’ at the thought of Beauty leaving him for the city and the possibility of her finding and being able to love. The Beast in ‘The Tiger’s Bride’ I constructed very similarly to Mr Lyon, both are masculine and confident creatures yet both have undertones of vulnerability, this is seen in both stories during moments ‘of fear of refusal’ from Mr Lyon and ‘when I saw how scared he was I might refuse’ describing the Beast. Here Carter wants the reader to feel the power the female has in this instance over the male, another diversion from the traditional tale. Further solidified by the Beast’s ‘single tear’. However, this image of mystery and fear is shown during Beauty’s recollection of her childhood, ‘the tiger-man will come and take you away’, this threat of abduction is an element of the Gothic and helps aid the portrayal of The Beast. It is also during this recollection that three Fairy Tale conventions are shown, ‘the Erl-King’s galloper’- a reference to death, ‘my Beauty’- the tale itself and ‘gobble you up’ all fit together to portray the Beast and conjure an element of fear and anticipation. Carter also uses the Gothic element of isolation as seen with Mr Lyon with The Beast, from the setting in which he is situated as being ‘uninhabited’ and ‘nothing human lives here’ provoke terror in the characterization of The Beast. But this sense of isolation is also used by Carter to allow the reader to sympathise with the character, ‘I never saw a man so big look so two-dimensional’, this suggests that the Beast is physically intimidating to hide the shallowness he has within himself which could suggest that he is also missing something in his life, acceptance or love? One of the biggest features of both stories is transformation, a feature which is typical to both Gothic texts and Fairy Tales. ‘The Courtship of Mr Lyon’ sees a self-conceited female who ‘smiled at herself in mirrors a little too often’ who felt an ‘instinctual shudder of fear’ when in the presence of Mr Lyon, the unconventional male who loved Beauty regardless of her rejections, when he ‘gazed at her with his… inscrutable eyes in which she saw herself repeated twice’. However, this transformation truly begins when Beauty having lost herself in the city feels ‘mysteriously joyful’ at the prospect of Mr Lyon having come to find her. When reunited, this transformation is certain when a woman who ‘could not bring herself to touch him of her own free will’ finally accepts the masculinity in herself and in her love to which she finally sees the person behind the Beast’s physicality’s. ‘He was irradiated, as if with a kind of halo, and she thought of the first great Beast of the Apocalypse’ this shows her transformation from a child to a woman with an awakening of the submission she must undergo into the masculine for the man now ‘in her arms’. The human/ animal transformation in ‘The Tiger’s Bride’ is one in which Beauty must trust in the Beast to find herself and by doing this she can accept who she has become and who the Beast is.
This begins when the Beast unrobes himself for her allowing her to see his true physical form in which ‘the lamb must learn to run with tigers’ so therefore accepting his way of living but to do this she must be accustomed to her own ‘nakedness’ and in doing so recognises she was a ‘pale, hollow-eyed girl’ that was not showing her true form. But by ‘stripping off (her) own under pelt’ she allows herself to expose her true self to the Beast who removes ‘all the skins of a life in the world, and left behind a nascent patina of shining hairs’ she has now truly rid herself of the girl she once. Beauty at this point had undergone metamorphosis and now understands that in every Beauty there is a Beast and in every Beast, there is a Beauty, and in seeing the Beast’s true form she can see herself, the woman she always knew she could be, just as the Beast can now show his true form without disguise and fear having found himself in the woman he
loves. Carter uses elements of both Fairy Tales and Gothic texts to show that one must find their true self in the person they love, no matter what gender, or form, reflecting real life. As in both stories it is the female which must adapt for love to succeed, which is typical of Fairy Tales. But the fact that these adaptions the characters must undergo involve the Gothic, Carter could be suggesting from this that complete happiness is not black and white and involves true reflection and transformation to be a success which is why Carter strayed from the conventional during aspects of the stories and stayed true to the conventional in others which is seen in real human relationships, allowing life to imitate art in an abstract way.
Various authors develop their stories using gothic themes and characterizations of this type to lay the foundation for their desired reader response. Although Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” and Peter Taylor’s “Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time” are two completely different narratives, both of these stories share a commonality of gothic text representations. The stories take slightly different paths, with Poe’s signifying traditional gothic literature and Taylor approaching his story in a more contemporary manner.
Additionally, the sisters in the story only wanted jewels, blamed Beauty for their dilemma, and acted as if Beauty did not exist when she came back whereas the brothers, “begged her to stay,” “declared that nothing should make them let her go,” and even offered to fight the beast when it were to come to take Beauty. Therefore making the women seem catty, weak, materialistic, but making the men appear as brave, strong, and caring. Again, the story presents misogynist views that are unhealthy to society. Lastly, the beast projects anti-feminist views. Although the beast speaks politely after Beauty refuses his marriage proposal, he repeatedly asks her and completely disrespects her answer. As mentioned before, women were treated horrible the era the story was written in making this story acceptable at the time, but presently this story should not be read to children. For many years, people viewed Beauty and the Beast as an uprising from misogyny, but when analyzing from a feminist perspective it is clear that the story is the complete
... need for hard labor but as they move to the country, Beauty has to learn to work alongside her future brother-in-law and do heavy work. She also moves away from her studies and turns to helping her family progress. After her year away from her family, she physically grows into a woman. She also finds herself dependant of the Beast rather than of her family as would a child.
Fairy tale is a story that features folkloric chapters and enchantments, often involving a far-fetching sequence of events. Fairy tales have been around for thousands of years, whether it comes from Grimm’s Fairy Tales which is what most people consider the “classic” or “traditional” fairy tales to Disney movies, the idea of the fairy tale fills our society with lessons and examples of how we should behave and live; fairy tales teach the same things in different ways, or teach different things with the same tale. A couple of these tales are “Beauty and the Beast”, by Jeanne-Marie Leprince De Beaumont and “The Pig King”, by Giovanni Francesco Straparola. They are both tales about falling in love with someone despite their appearance. The similarities and differences between “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Pig King” is captivating while still depicting a similar tale. They are similar in the way they find love and their love story but they also share a similar behavior pattern in the way the girls behave towards the prince. However, the two tales do display a difference in the attitudes of the princes and their actions towards their love
There are several events in the play which at one point or the other take a tragic turn which constantly undercut back into the play by speeches. What is set out in the play is a festive mood where people were engaged in activities of ‘Maying’ where people get together to sing and dance in the woods, activities that led to the maids’ belief that the pursuit if true love can be scored only through divination dreams (Barber 18). The fairy’s existence is conceptualized from the act of fusing pageantry together with popular games in a menacing way bring out their actual image of a relaxed
This triad of colors ̶ white, red, and black ̶ has dominated human culture since primitive times. On one hand, as we discussed in class, the three in partnership serve to represent the human itself: red being blood, white being bones and bodily fluids, black being excrement. This idea positions Snow-White in the realm of human, susceptible to mistakes. In this sense, she is reminiscent of Eve. Also considered within the context of the bible, these colors can place her in a divinely category, too.
When all the courtly love elements that flow through The Knight of the Cart are composed, in addition to a tale of love affair between Queen Guinevere and Lancelot of the Lake, a document revealing the enchanting history of the Twelfth Century Renaissance is created. Troyes, our powerful storyteller, was able to do this by taking us on a journey with Lancelot, not only though his exciting battles to Guinevere but, through his passionate and enamored thoughts and behaviors that yearns for his beloved.
The stories of “Sleeping Beauty” and “Snow White” both share the common theme or motif of being brought back to life with a kiss. ...
Through his portrayal of characters and unorthodox style of writing throughout the fairy tale, Goldman pokes fun at the literary process and ordinary fairy tales. Through his fairy tale, The Princess Bride, Goldman ridicules numerous tropes of fairy tales and simultaneously critiques overdone expositions. Every character represents an archetype of a common fairy tale, but they all have glaring flaws that directly contradict how they are supposed to act. William Goldman sets forth his satirical theme that the literary industry’s rigid rules reflect its inability to adapt in an ever changing society.
Warner, Marina. From the Beast to the Blond on Fairy Tales and Their Tellers. New York: Chatto & Windus, 1994. Print.
(Google ebook page 96) Roemer, D.M and Bacchilega, C. (2000) Angela Carter and the Fairy Tale. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press.
Anne Sexton’s poem “Cinderella” is filled with literary elements that emphasize her overall purpose and meaning behind this satirical poem. Through the combination of enjambment stanzas, hyperboles, satire, and the overall mocking tone of the poem, Sexton brings to light the impractical nature of the story “Cinderella”. Not only does the author mock every aspect of this fairy tale, Sexton addresses the reader and adds dark, cynical elements throughout. Sexton’s manipulation of the well-known fairy tale “Cinderella” reminds readers that happily ever after’s are meant for storybooks and not real life.
In the Middle Ages, when The Canterbury Tales was written, society became captivated by love and the thought of courtly and debonair love was the governing part of all relationships and commanded how love should be conducted. These principles changed literature completely and created a new genre dedicated to brave, valorous knights embarking on noble quests with the intention of some reward, whether that be their life, lover, or any other want. The Canterbury Tales, written in the 14th century by Geoffrey Chaucer, accurately portrays and depicts this type of genre. Containing a collection of stories within the main novel, only one of those stories, entitled “The Wife of Bath’s Tale”, truly outlines the 14th century community beliefs on courtly love.
The tale of Sleeping Beauty is influenced by oral folklore and various written versions. Today fairytales are told as a domain for the entertainment and teachings of children. In traditional storytelling, peasants transmitted folklore orally around campfires to audiences of mixed ages. However, during the 17th century, peasant tales, such as Sleeping Beauty, were altered by writers like Charles Perrault’s, to appeal to the courts of aristocracy. Thus the characters of Sleeping Beauty adorned a courtly air to appeal to the crown, such as Louis XIV of France. Throughout history, various cultural influences transformed the tale of Sleeping Beauty through the manipulation of various social forces to achieve better entertainment purposes and reflect Christian beliefs and customs. In addition, the moral of the tale conveys a message that women remain passive in hope to marry her true lov...
Beauty and the Beast is probably one of the most well known fairy tales that the Grimms’ reproduced. In it’s original form it was a long, drawn out story that was catered to adults. The Grimms’ changed the story to be more understood by children and made it short and to the point. Unlike many of the other fairy tales that they reproduced, Beauty and the Beast contains many subtle symbols in its purest form. It shows a girl and how she transfers to a woman; it also shows that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The one major thing that separates this story from all the rest is that Beauty gets to know the Beast before marrying him.