Angela Carter
Angela Carter was born as Angela Olive Pearce on May 7, 1940 in Eastbourne, United Kingdom. She was an English novelist, short story writer, poet, and journalist. Her works were feminist, magical realism, and picaresque. She is most known for her book The Bloody Chamber, which was published in 1979. This book is currently being examined in Prof. Baker’s Social Justice in Modern and Contemporary Literature course. The stories that were covered consisted of “The Bloody Chamber”, “The Snow Child”, and “The Company of Wolves”. Each of these stories are all renditions of the Grimm Tales which exhibit very grotesques themes. To define grotesque, it has come to be used as a general adjective for the strange, mysterious, magnificent, fantastic, hideous, ugly, incongruous, unpleasant, or disgusting, and thus is often used to describe weird shapes and distorted forms such as Halloween masks.
Carter is certainly not like any other female author due to the very unique content that she has produced in her time. In learning about her life story, I have found that there were times in her life that have influenced her creative flow. We often question many authors influence in which we wonder why they choose to exemplify specific themes in their written pieces. Carter did not necessarily have a traumatic life so to speak. However, most of her life growing up was unpleasant due to neglect and mistreatment from her parents as well as the men that she was introduced to in her lifetime.
Carter began writing at a very young age which appeared to be a solution to express her feelings. I cannot recall whether she had any siblings but it did not seem that she had anyone to talk to about her feelings and emotions. She appeared to have suffered some form of abuse that was not physical in which she was prohibited from doing normal childlike things. She was also forced to eat many fattening foods which only made things worse for her in which people, including her family members began calling her out of her name. These constant mistreatments that she received led her to become disobedient with her use of bad language.
Carter married as a teenager out of her mothers wishes which she later regretted due to the poor treatment and carelessness that she received from her newfound husband. He had desires for her to be a ‘true woman’ which at this time meant for her to be obedient and completing all household duties such as cooking and cleaning. They had no children to care for. She believed that these tasks should be shared amongst one another but he very obviously disagreed leading her to have an affair with a man in China. She had intentions to further this relationship but the man did not feel the same in which he was described as a ‘player’. She clearly needed to just focus on herself at this point. Not that she thought she needed a man to rely on. It just would have been nice to have someone in her life who could love her the same that she could have possibly loved them.
Angela Carter passed away February 16, 1992 in London, UK. Her work has continued to live on and has become very relevant to the conversations that we have today. Some might say that she was ahead of her time in her writing.