Angela Carter’s, ‘The Bloody Chamber’ and Mary Shelley’s, ‘Frankenstein’, both challenge this ideal of ‘the perfect woman’ existing in the passive case. Through the medium of fairytale, Carter’s inversion and subversion of women being, ‘defined in the passive case’ generates agreement and rebuttal in line with the critical interpretation. Similarly, Shelley’s trauma of losing her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, oozes through the writing of Frankenstein. Shelley ironically plays with the passivity we see through means of Justine and Elizabeth and then refutes such with the suggestion that the monster is like a woman in a patriarchal society, suggesting that she is ‘the object’ of Frankenstein’s ‘desires’. Both The Bloody Chamber and Frankenstein are novels infused with pivotal moments in which women are not defined in the ‘passive case’, and conversely, moments when the existence of living in the ‘passive case’ leads to be killed, I intend to explore these deeply.
Shelley directly exposes that ‘to exist in the passive case is to die in the passive case- that is, to be killed’, through the death of Elizabeth. Unlike Carter’s inversion through the physical means of a collar of passivity, the ‘choker of rubies’. Shelley’s craft of Elizabeth’s death takes marital consummation and twists it with the gothic. A moment of sexual transformation, is deteriorated by the ‘grin on the face of monster’ who has left a ‘murderous mark…on her neck’. The process of strangulation is intimate and carries such vulnerability; similar connotations to the marital consummation which Shelley erupts into the pure gothic nature of Frankenstein. Shelly focuses on her ‘neck’ with a ‘handkerchief thrown across it’ drawing links to Carter’s similar focus on the control associated with such: ‘His wedding gift, clasped around my throat. A choker of rubies… like an extraordinarily precious slit throat.’ Carter’s intrinsic link to the macabre concept, a vital Gothic concept accentuates the grotesque threat of death. It foreshadows the passive nature of the unnamed girl from the offset and it hints at the inevitable fate of the girl, which of course is ‘to be-killed’: just like Elizabeth. Shelley focuses on the death of Elizabeth to generate a direct juxtaposition from the virtuous and caring nature that she characterises Elizabeth within throughout Frankenstein. Shelley ironises her anger towards the passivity of women, echoing similar views to her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft’s novel ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Women’ through an underpinning current of passivity that we see in Elizabeth. Shelley intensifies such through the dynamic shift in language and structure that we see in the contrasting pathetic fallacy, leading to the graphic strangulation of Elizabeth. It can be suggested that such image mirrors that of Fuseli’s painting The Nightmare. Shelley would of known this classic gothic painting well and it does not seem that it is coincidence that Elizabeth’s death is almost identical. Shelley takes this hugely erotic and sensual image of a woman, her ‘body outlined’, helpless, again the focus on the ‘neck’ being exposed with a monster sat on top of her and then infers the same image in Elizabeth’s death. Supported through Shelley’s focus on her ‘posture’ in which ‘her head lay upon her arm…the deathly languor and coldness of the limbs’ and of course presence of the monster at the forefront on the painting and Elizabeth death.
Furthermore, although we cannot directly infer that Carter too looked to parallel Fuseli’s The Nightmare, it can be viewed that the association with the death of women, echoes similar connotations to Shelley. Carter’s dead bodies, hidden behind the doors of The Blood Chamber, where ‘The opera singer lay, quite naked, under a thin sheet of very rare and precious linen…On her throat…the blue imprint of his strangler’s fingers’, focus on the process of strangulation as a means of murder. Both Shelley and Carter’s, focus on the imprints left, ‘the blue imprint of his strangler’s fingers’, futures this idea of being ‘defined in the passive case, is to die in the passive case’ quite literally. The virtue of these women has been erased by the branding of their bodies, acting as a total image of objectification. Although we cannot directly infer that Carter and Shelley were both influenced by Fuseli’s The Nightmare, there a shared motives in both Shelley and Carter’s approaches, which aim to cast light on societal issues that otherwise have been repressed. Carter’s ‘The Bloody Chamber’, influenced by tale of Bluebeard, takes the collective knowledge of wives being murdered and refutes the passive blindness that previously provided them with an ease to ignore. Carters tales are all about challenging this, subverting the issues and casting light on what has previously been ignored. Understandably easier for Carter to do writing in the late 20th Century than Shelley writing in the early 19th century. Shelley too wants to cast light on such issues, and we can see such through the inversion of her aggression at the collective blindness of society to misogyny, however, in her attempt to hide her motives from Percy Shelley’s heavy handed editing, Shelley inverts all through the enriched use of literary devices.
Moreover, Shelley exemplifies the suggestion that ‘to exist in the passive case is to die in the passive case- that is, to be killed.’ through the means of Justine Moritz. Again, Shelley sculpts Justine to embody perfectly the nineteenth-century patriarchal idealisation of a woman: ‘pretty, domesticated, virtuous, passive and devoted to others’ (Knudsen, 53, Reading between the lines: An analysis of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein). Knudsen’s depiction ‘devoted to others’ is exactly what Justine was, her entire life fitting perfectly in line with the stereotyped role of a submissive women. Shelley portrays Justine to embody ‘perfection’ to ironise further that no matter how ‘perfectly passive’, Justine or Elizabeth were, there fate would always be death as a consequence of Victor’s actions. Both Justine and Elizabeth are the monster’s primal targets, being ‘passive’ women, Shelley crafts them to be easy targets due to the fact, more apparently in Justine’s death, that they both do not possess the credibility to convince the jury of Moritz’s innocence. Shelley sculpts Justine to be accused of William’s death through the futile and insignificant image of a ‘necklace’. Shelley places emphasis on the fact that Justine cannot control her life in the trial of Justine’s life, even saying herself, ‘I rest my innocence on a plain and simple explanation of the facts which have been adduced against me…I hope the character I have always borne will incline my judges to a favourable interpretation’. Shelley ironises the naivety in her thoughts to think that the ‘character she has ‘always borne’ could turn the jury’s judgement. Shelley takes the perfect passivity she has shown her entire life and even makes what women depict as the most important seem insignificant. Shelley then furthers her attempted subtle anger when Justine is not concerned about the imminent loss of her life but whether her loyalty has been questioned by her master and mistress: ‘It removes more than half my misfortune; and I feel as if I could die in peace, now that my innocence is acknowledged by you, dear lady and your cousin.’ It is in this moment that we depict Shelley’s more subtle criticism of female inferiority, in contrast to her mother’s Mary Wollstonecraft’s, ‘the first woman to present her distress and dissatisfaction openly’ (Vycpalkova 9), deepen.
Although, Shelley struggled to express herself in regard to her inferior position as a woman in such a prejudiced society, Frankenstein, is a text that is clearly ironising the passivity of women. It could debated that Shelley’s motive behind Frankenstein differs from Carter’s due to the fact that Carter takes on more of an explicit approach, namely in The Snow Child. This short fairytale, is explicit in sexual content relating to a named influence text of Carter’s work: the Marquis De Sade. Carter’s novel, ‘The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography’ is a feminist re-appraisal of the work of the Marquis de Sade and similar content is suggested in The Snow Child. The countess could be seen as a Sadeian woman, one who is constantly abused but never acts upon it, supporting the patriarchy and remaining passive. Carter characterises the snow child, to be a product, an ‘object’ of the Counts ‘desires’, similar to the monster being an object of Frankenstein’s desires. Carter is exploring this manipulation and the fact a man can never be satisfied once the female is no longer virginal property. In the first four lines, Carter presents the count to be wishing for another object: ‘I wish I had a girl as white as snow…as red as blood…as black as that bird’s feathers.’ Carter’s monochromatic colours bring about a powerful symbolism, instantly creating the ‘child of his desire’ who supports the patriarchy by following the desires of the count. Carter is placing emphasis on the fear of the female, once she is no longer pure. There is a demand for the untouched, due to the fact that once a girl transitions to a woman and becomes aware and takes charge of her own desires, they seem to immediately pose threat to this hegemony. Carter makes this fear directly explicit in the count’s graphic and disturbing raping of the dead girl; he ‘unfastened his breeches and thrust his virile member into the dead girl…then the girl began to melt’: she is no longer of any use. Shelley infers a similar means through the destruction of the female monster, Frankenstein fears the potential destruction a female monster could cause and therefore: ‘with trembling passion, tore to pieces the thing on which [he] was engaged’.
It seems that with Frankenstein we constantly consider Shelley to be inverting her aggression towards female inferiority. However, influenced by Mary Poovey,, My Hideous Progeny: The Lady and the Monster, I would argue that Frankenstein is a work centralised around the fear of the female. It seems that indeed, Shelley may not be being as explicit in her views as Mary Wollstonecraft who urges ‘It is time to effect a revolution in female manners…time to restore to them their lost dignity—and make them, as a part of the human species, labour by reforming themselves to reform the world.’ (A Vindication of the Rights of Woman 3.25) However, she utilises the third narrative voice of the monster to place emphasis on a similar focus to her mother that being through ‘reforminging themselves to reform the world’ through the means of a female monster. Both Shelley and Carter focus on male desire, prodominatly seuxal desire. It is ironic that both novels echo that the male can never be satisfied, hence why Victor creates his own object. On a literal level, Shelley is clearly well acquainted with the scientific advancements in the early 19th century that centralise the creation of the monster be an an ‘object’ of Victor’s ‘desires’, through the focus on excluding a female intervention from the process of reproduction, such strips away what one would view the primal female quality. On a symbolic level, the suggestion that the monster is female, derives from the fact the monster acts out the implicit content of Frankenstein’s desires. Shelley creates this monster to be born and totally abandoned, to continuously be ignored mirroring the image of woman in a patriarchal society. Shelley could continue to embody the monster within the stereotype of a woman in a patriarchal society, like Elizabeth or Justine. However, Shelley generates a female monster who is not passive but acts out.
Shelley ironises this idea that Frankenstein is the catalyst for all of the monsters actions, he figuratively murdered his family, the female monster literally did. There is such rebellion in the image of the female monster, she will not allow Frankenstein to force her to not cultivate her own independent desires like he does with Elizabeth and Justine. Such underpins the reason as to why Frankenstein fears the monster leading him to be a victim of the ‘passive case’. There is a bitterness in the fact that Shelley has to apply the strength of the female to a the monster, something inhumane to create such fear. There is such a limitation on Shelley’s writing, not only from her husband’s heavy-handed editing in the versions from 1818 to 1831, but also due to the fact that unlike Carter’s ability to be explicit her approach to cast light had to be more hidden. To a modern audience, the medium of having to use a creature to reflect Shelley’s anger places emphasis on the struggle Shelley and her mother faced, to remove women from the stereotypical image of being ‘Angels of the house’. Although Shelley does not directly infer that the monster is female, it would not be surprising, considering the feminist subtext that underpins this novel. The only way in which Shelley could highlight her anger towards the misogynistic attitudes of the 19th century, was by creating a creature, unnaturally, who inhabited the elements she wanted to portray of the female. Shelley did so to generate a direct juxtaposition against the passivity we see in Justine and Elizabeth and therefore had to do so through the means of a an artificial and unnatural monster, making it seem almost unachievable. Although the female monster may have been ‘an object’ of Frankenstein’s ‘desire’ she was most definitely not a victim of the ‘passive case’.
Conversely, moving away from the hidden allegorical figures of perhaps a female monster or the evil witch with a poisonous apple. Writing in the late 20th century, Angela Carter explicitly recontructs ‘the fairytale of the perfect women’ by casting light on the hidden, taboo subject of sex and the power of the female through taking on the medium of the fairytale. A medium which has historically influenced society, which she flips on its head, she deconstructs and turns traditional fairy tales to stories engrossed with the gritty grim, heavily sexualised and graphic retellings of the hidden knowledge in the original tales of Bluebeard, Puss in Boots, Little Red Riding Hood and Snow-White. In the Bloody Chamber, Carter makes explicitly clear the strength of the female through the Heroine’s mother, a feminist’s dream. Almost embodying the figure of a father, Carter from the offset depicts the mother to be unsure of the Marquees: ‘Are you sure you love him?’. Carter, not needing to put the mother into any allegorical figure, portrays the Herione’s mum to be the Knight in Shining armor. Carter is reversing the traditional roles of the fairytale, having the mother: ‘without a moment’s hesitation, raised my father’s gun, took aim and put a single, irreproachable bullet through my husband’s head’. The moment is so quickly created by Carter, throughout the story we have seen the Heroine being manipulated into an object of the marquis desires, fully prepared ‘to die in the passive case…to be killed’, but Carter then in the space of four lines, flips the tale on its head and has the mother, re-enact that movement of what should have been her father. The focus on the fact it was ‘single’ and ‘irreproachable’ further enhances the fact that women are not ‘passive’ they are more than an ‘object’ of a man’s ‘desires’ and Carter does not fear to accentuate this with full force.
The critical statement, ‘To be the object of desire is to be defined in the passive case. To exist in the passive case is to die in the passive case- that is, to be killed. This is the true moral of the fairytale about the perfect women’, is almost as though it is the spoken words of the Marquis or Victor Frankenstein. However, both Carter and Shelley embed there novels with a feminist approach. Shelley has to embed her feminist critique more subtly through the means of ‘a female monster’ who indefinitely refutes such statement. Shelley had to craft Elizabeth and Justine to be victims of the passive case, to allow her to cast light on the problem. Some may say it is difficult to view Frankenstein in a feminist light, however, looking deeper into the subtext of the novel, one can depict that Shelley is heavily influenced by her mother’s novel A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and although it cannot be as bashful and explicit as Carters, the echoes seem similar. In The Bloody Chamber, Carter bravely twists the traditional fairytale, re-constructing this image of the ‘perfect woman’, to not be killed in the passive case, but to instead rival the patriarchy. Both novels seem to have a similar approach in what they want to achieve, but have too conversing styles in which such is done with. It is almost as though, Shelley is trying to create a new form of the fairytale, still hiding the collective knowledge but infusing it with the gothic. Subverting this ‘collective knowledge’ was exactly what that Carter aimed to deconstruct. But of course, for Shelley it had to be done to make it through the heavy handed editing of the male, her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, a passive representation of society’s response.
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