Comparing Transformation In The Awakening And The Bloody Chamber

Both Chopin’s The Awakening (TA) and Carter’s The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (TBC), explore the process of transformation, and the ability it affords individuals, i.e. women (in this case) to uncover their true, unoppressed identities. In Carter’s text, The Tyger’s Bride (TTB), the female ingenue realises the controlling nature of a patriarchal society, thus finding freedom in her physical transformation into a tiger. Similarly, within The Werewolf (TW) the alleged transformation of the grandmother, and later the girl, into a heroine who saves the village demonstrates the power such change can have. However, within The Erl King (TEK) the narrative highlights how transformation can be both a negative and positive aspect, as demonstrated with the girls in cages - each of whom are birds in enforced captivity - and the female protagonist, who dreams of her desire to change in order to destroy the Erl-King's

The fact that she grows tired replicates society’s view of her as a machine, whilst still maintaining her own sense of femininity with the linking of musical charm, demonstrating once again Beauty’s kindness and innocence. However, with Beauty sending her mechanical double to “perform the part of my father’s daughter” thereby reinforcing society’s image of her as a machine, as well as her father’s complicity in the maintenance of this view, there is a sense of the main character finally becoming her own person with the acknowledgment of freedom of choice. With Edna’s compromised feelings for Robert and sexual urge for Alcee, which she is unable to fully entertain due to the sensation of being trapped in her loveless marriage, Alcee’s eventual kiss acts as the catalyst that Edna has so longed for, igniting her sexual awakening, described by Chopin as: “the first of her life [the kiss] to which her nature had really responded. It was a flaming torch which kindled