Helen Simpson: Quotes

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'passivity is not an intrinsically virtuous state'
The narrators of 'The Bloody Chamber' and 'The Tiger's Bride' alternate between strength and passivity. Carter's two versions of the character of Little Red Riding Hood are both far less passive than the girl in the original tale.
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'The stories in The Bloody Chamber are fired by a conviction that human nature is not immutable, that human beings are capable of change'
The anthropomorphic transformation Beauty undergoes in 'The Tiger's Bride' at the end of the tale is a remarkable compromise. She rejects the values of her father's civilisation but confirms the possibility of a 'peaceable kingdom'
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'turbo-fuelled Gothic themes'
Carter positively revels in extreme sensations, perceptions and locations. The gruesome display of the dead wives in 'The Bloody Chamber', the disorientation of the senses in 'The Erl-King.' Carter exaggerates the Gothic content of fairy tales.
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'These are new stories, not re-tellings'
The stories in 'The Bloody Chamber' take their inspiration from fairy tales. Her declared intention, however, was to 'extract the latent content from the traditional stories and to use it as the beginnings of new stories'.
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'The Bloody Chamber is often - wrongly - described as a group of traditional fairy tales given a subversive feminist twist'
Carter did not want to present a simplistic feminist revision of these fairy tales. They do bot present stereotypical feminist views of women as either heroic fighters against, or passive victims of, patriarchal dominance.
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Other cards in this set

Card 2

Front

The anthropomorphic transformation Beauty undergoes in 'The Tiger's Bride' at the end of the tale is a remarkable compromise. She rejects the values of her father's civilisation but confirms the possibility of a 'peaceable kingdom'

Back

'The stories in The Bloody Chamber are fired by a conviction that human nature is not immutable, that human beings are capable of change'

Card 3

Front

Carter positively revels in extreme sensations, perceptions and locations. The gruesome display of the dead wives in 'The Bloody Chamber', the disorientation of the senses in 'The Erl-King.' Carter exaggerates the Gothic content of fairy tales.

Back

Preview of the back of card 3

Card 4

Front

The stories in 'The Bloody Chamber' take their inspiration from fairy tales. Her declared intention, however, was to 'extract the latent content from the traditional stories and to use it as the beginnings of new stories'.

Back

Preview of the back of card 4

Card 5

Front

Carter did not want to present a simplistic feminist revision of these fairy tales. They do bot present stereotypical feminist views of women as either heroic fighters against, or passive victims of, patriarchal dominance.

Back

Preview of the back of card 5

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