Secret Areas in Selected Stories from - Masaryk University

Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature

Jana Mártonová

Secret Areas in Selected Stories from “The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories” and “American Ghosts and Old World Wonders” by Angela Carter Bachelor‟s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: prof. Mgr. Milada Franková, CSc., M.A.

2010

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Author‟s signature

Acknowledgement: I would like to thank to my supervisor prof. Mgr. Milada Franková, CSc., M.A.for her valuable guidance and advice.

Table of Contents

Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1 1. Introducing Secret Areas .......................................................................................... 4 2. Qualities Shared by Secret Areas.............................................................................. 13 3. Introducing Entities and Acts Connected with Entering the Secret Areas .............................................................. 18 4. Qualities Shared by Entities and Acts Connected with Entering the Secret Areas .............................................................. 26 5. Introducing Persons Entering the Secret Areas ........................................................ 33 6. Reasons for Entering the Secret Areas...................................................................... 36 7. Qualities Shared by People Entering the Secret Areas ............................................. 43 8. Consequences of Entering the Secret Areas ............................................................. 47 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 54 English Résumé ............................................................................................................ 56 Czech Résumé............................................................................................................... 57 Works Cited .................................................................................................................. 58

List of Abbreviations

BC……………………………………………... The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories AG………………………………………….. American Ghosts and Old World Wonders

Introduction

Angela Carter was a brilliant novelist who, among other things, collected and edited fairy tales and legends. She wrote reversionary versions of these fairy tales and legends in order to draw attention to cultural stereotypes which appear in their original versions in large numbers. The new versions of fairy tales and legends which were edited by Carter and the images and stories appearing in them as Betsy Draine1 says “both carry with them the history of their previous use in the literary tradition and mean, for each reader, in relation to current material, cultural, and political conditions.” The aim of this thesis is to discuss secret areas in reversible fairytales and legends from short story collections The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories and American Ghosts and Old World Wonders by Angela Carter.

To be specific, the thesis is based on discussing short stories The Bloody Chamber, The Courtship of Mr Lyon, The Tyger’s Bride, The Erl-King and The Lady of the House of Love from the collection The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories; and Lizzie’s Tiger, John Ford’ Tis Pity She’s a Whore, Gun for Devil and Alice in Prague or The Curious Room from American Ghosts and Old World Wonders.

The thesis works with an idea that there exist secret areas which should better not be entered. It is necessary to mention that the term “secret” used through the thesis refers rather to a fact that is unknown about something, than to a piece of information known only by one or a few persons and should not be distributed any further.

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Draine, 335

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The thesis discusses various forms in which the secret areas appear in the short stories. It separately discusses the notion of secrecy in buildings, places, persons and institutions, and also the qualities shared by these areas. The thesis further pays attention to entities that can be met in these areas. It also works with persons entering the secret areas, discusses their reasons for doing so and studies the qualities shared by these persons. Finally, the thesis pays attention to consequences resulting from entering secret areas.

The first chapter of the thesis introduces the secret areas where the stories take place. These are buildings – mainly aristocratic manors; marked out places – such as obscure villages; and physically existing areas – that are represented by woods for instance. This chapter discusses the notion o secrecy in these places and specifies reasons why they are regarded as secret. The second chapter is devoted to similarities between the secret areas. It pays attention to the resemblances between the physical appearances of the secret areas. It also discusses the notions of solitude and loneliness, which are shared by the secret areas. Finally, it works with the notion of darkness which is omnipresent throughout the short stories. The third chapter introduces the entities that can be met within the secret areas. These are mainly foils for the main heroes that enter the secret areas. Beside these entities, this chapter works also with acts of marriage, revenge and with the sexual acts that are interconnected with the secret areas. The fourth chapter works with the qualities shared by the entities and acts that are met in the secret areas. It discusses both physical and psychological resemblances between the entities. Further it pays attention to similarities between the acts of

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marriage and sexual acts in terms of the conditions under which these acts happened as well as in terms of the importance of these facts. The fifth chapter of the thesis introduces the persons entering the secret areas. The sixth chapter discusses various reasons for entering the secret areas as well as the forces that make the persons, introduced in chapter five, enter these areas. The seventh chapter then discusses all possible consequences resulting from entering the individual secret areas.

Throughout the thesis, most attention is paid to the short story The Bloody Chamber. This is due to the fact that the story is much more comprehensive than the other stories are.

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1. Introducing Secret Areas

The first chapter is dealing with the notion of secrecy in buildings, marked out places and physically existing areas. It introduces secret areas in individual short stories, and gives reason why they are regarded as secret areas. In The Bloody Chamber, it is apparently the “bloody” chamber itself, but before entering it, the main heroine gets acquainted with the whole castle in which the chamber is situated. The whole castle is actually one of the secret areas. It is a hereditary residence with rich history, which is, however, unknown to the heroine. The castle is situated in a solitary place at the sea, “at home neither on the land nor on the water, contravening the materiality of both earth and the waves” (BC, 7). It is mainly the lack of the heroine‟s knowledge of the castle together with its appearance that makes it a secret area, but there are also other aspects, that contribute to this notion. It is for example the housekeeper with her “pale, impassive, dislikeable face” and “correct but lifeless” demeanour, who was “as much part of the house” (14) as the count was. Another secret area present in this story is the count‟s library, which is to some extend a forerunner of the already mentioned “bloody” chamber. The library offers an insight into count‟s enigmatic nature. It is equipped with numerous rows of calf-bound books, among which the main heroine finds, as if by coincidence, volumes such as The Initiation, The Key of Mysteries, The Secret of Pandora’s Box or The Adventures of Eulalie at the Harem of the Grand Turk; portraits like Sacrificial Victim, and a canvas called The Foolish Virgins. It is speculative whether she was supposed to find these items, whether it was a clever trap set for her by the count in order for her to be caught in, or whether it was just a coincidence. The above mentioned pieces of art actually predict the heroine‟s destiny at the castle. The Initiation certainly has to do with her first

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sexual intercourse ever which takes palace in the castle, The Key of Mysteries is evidently associated with the ring of keys which the heroine gets and on which hangs the key that opens the “bloody” chamber. The Secret of Pandora’s Box is then linked to the process of entering and exploring the “bloody” chamber which was forbidden – such as the opening of the Pandora‟s Box originally was. Finally, The Adventures of Eulalie at the Harem of the Grand Turk clearly substitutes the heroine‟s stay at the castle where the Harem represents the number of the count‟s wives and the Grand Turk stands for the count, the “owner” of many wives. The canvas The Foolish Virgins refers to the willingness of the count‟s wives to follow him to his castle and to trust him, and, finally, the painting of Sacrificial Victim to the doom of the count‟s former wives and to the main heroine‟s anticipated fate as well. Thus the notion of secrecy in this room is caused by the importance of objects the main heroine finds there. The objects give hints to the main heroine about the true nature of her husband and about what is actually going to happen in the castle. The moment the count announces his departure and gives the main heroine a ring of keys that open every single lock in the castle in her possession, she has the opportunity to use them in order to find out more about her bridegroom. She enters her husband‟s office with expectations of learning about his nature from the objects she may find there, but she enters a “singularly impersonal room” (25). She searches through it, pays attention to her bridegroom‟s desk, carefully investigating every letter she finds there. By a coincidence, she touches a hidden spring and opens a secret drawer, where she finds a file marked “Personal.” In this file she finds several love letters and a postcard with a scene of a Transylvanian village graveyard. She does not understand the things she just found there or is not ready to understand them yet. But she feels they give her a hint that will help her to make an opinion of her husband. As she says: “nothing in my

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life of family love and music had prepared me for these grown-up games and yet these were clues to his self that showed me, at least, how much he had been loved…” (26) The count‟s office (such as the library in the previous paragraph) gradually carries the notion of secrecy because it gives hints about the true nature of the count and about the main heroine‟s destiny in the castle. Mary Kaiser actually says, that “the rooms of the whole castle are deliberately planned as stages for symbolic action”2 – gradual opening of The Pandora‟s Box. Realizing that she is gradually collecting information about her husband makes the nameless heroine wanting to know more and her curiosity makes her go to the forbidden chamber. The “bloody” chamber itself is forbidden to the main heroine with the explanation that it is “only a study, a hideaway, a den … where (the count) can go on those infrequent yet inevitable occasions when the yoke of marriage seems to weigh too heavily on my (the count‟s) shoulders”. (BC, 21) It is the already mentioned Pandora‟s Box, a room “designed to desecration, … a torture chamber, … a little museum of perversity” (28), a “private slaughterhouse” (30), the “kingdom of the unimaginable” (36) the heroine was not supposed to enter, yet it was predestined for her to open it, in order to learn the truth about her husband and, perhaps, to change herself. The chamber with walls of naked rock contained many instruments of mutilation, such as a great wheel and the rack, and also funerary urns, one at each corner of the chamber, and remains of the count‟s last three wives “displayed as grandly as if they were items of statuary“ (28). Seeing all this made her realize that she is supposed to become another exhibit in her husband‟s collection. She reveals the secret of Pandora‟s Box.

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Kaiser, Mary. "Fairy Tale as Sexual Allegory: Intertextuality in Angela Carter's 'The Bloody Chamber'." The Review of Contemporary Fiction 14.3 (Fall 1994): 30-36.

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In The Courtship of Mr Lyon, the place regarded as a secret area is the Palladian house where Beast, a creature with leonine appearance, lives. The place, entered by a nameless father and later by his daughter Beauty, is hidden behind “snow-laden skirts of an antique cypress” and has a “sweet, retiring melancholy grace” (42). The secrecy of this place is caused by the appearance of the house as well as by a paucity of its inhabitants. The house is large, all neat and tidy, but empty, since the personnel is invisible, and the only physically existing creatures there are a dog in the role of a housekeeper and finally, Beast – the master of the house with head and paws of a lion and with a very kind character. The place is regarded as a secret area because it is supposed to hide Beast from the outer world, or, the outer world from Beast. Beast‟s nature is not that of a misanthrope, the reason why he avoids people is the awareness of his otherness. As beauty presumes, he dislikes “the presence of servants because, a constant human presence would remind him too bitterly of his otherness” (45). It is no wonder that Beauty presumes this, since her reaction to Beasts appearance is far from being positive. She “found his bewildering difference from herself almost intolerable; its presence choked her” (45). From this statement it is obvious that at the time of their first encounter, she does not think of him as of Beast, a living being that deserves respect, but rather as of a beast, a thing that does not deserve anything. Reactions like this probably made Beast to live in solitude. His castle, then, became a sanctuary for him, a secret place that should not be entered.

The Tiger’s Bride has its secret areas in the whole Italian city in which the story is situated, and in The Beast‟s house as well. The whole region where the story takes place is described as melancholy, “sunless, featureless … (with) sullen river” (53) and the city is referred to as being cruel and unkind, with inhabitants who “used to hang

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condemn man in cages from the city walls“ (53). As Carter further writes “unkindness comes naturally to them … and they lie to you and cheat you, innkeepers, coachmen, everybody” (53). The village is a place that should better not be entered, that should stay secret. Another secret area in The Tiger’s Bride is the tiger‟s palace. It shares many similarities with the house which was discussed previously. Such as in The Courtship of Mr Lyon, the place where The Beast lives in is a world in itself, but in this case “a dead one, a burned-out planet,” (57) a shabby one with all its equipment covered in dust, “bundled up in cloth, (with) pictures taken from their hooks and propped with their faces to the walls as if their master could not bear to look at them.” The Beast, or Tiger, who lives there hides his real appearance behind a mask of a perfect face, (57) and such as Beast in The Courtship of Mr Lyon, the tiger s aware of his otherness and tries to isolate himself in his palace. He has no human servants who could remind him of his inhuman appearance, as his uncanny valet says: “we have dispensed with servants … we surround ourselves, instead, for utility and pleasure, with simulacra and find it no less convenient than do most gentlemen.” (60) As the girl who comes to live in The Beast‟s palace says, “The Beast bought solitude, not luxury, with his money” (57). Thus The Beast‟s palace is nothing else than a sanctuary for him, a secret place that should not be entered.

In The Erl-King the secret are is the wood where the story is situated. It is the wood in which it is easy to get lost, the wood with all its animal inhabitants and with the ErlKing, the mysterious spirit of the woods. The wood is the secret area which should better not be entered, because there is no way out of it:

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You step between the first trees and then you are no longer in the open air; the wood swallows you up. There is no way through the wood any more, this wood has reverted to its original privacy. Once you are inside it, you must stay there until it lets you out again for there is no clue to guide you through in perfect safety ... the trees stir with a noise like taffeta skirts of women who have lost themselves in the woods and hunt round hopelessly for the way out. (84-85) The thing that makes the wood a secret area is also the presence of Erl-King. It is a creature, the spirit of the wood, who is supposed to do “grievous harm” (85) to any girl entering the wood. As the main heroine claims, he changes them into birds and keeps them, “those silly fat, trusting woodies with the pretty wedding rings round their necks” (87) in cages in his house.

The story The Lady of the House of Love has its secret areas in the bleak Romanian village and in the dark, high Nosferatu castle with its rich history. The village, forsaken by its inhabitants, is now in the possession of army of shadows, of “subtle and vindictive inhabitants who manifest their presence by shadows, … by a sense of unease” (93). The place is all desolated, an army officer who decided to spend the rest of his vacation in this region perceives the village as follows: The roofs of all cottages caved in and tall weeds thrusting through the piles of fallen tiles, shutters hanging disconsolately from their hinges, an entirely uninhabited place. And the rank vegetation whispers, as if foul secrets, here, where, if one… were sufficiently imaginative, one could almost imagine twisted faces appearing momentarily beneath the crumbling eaves… (98). The village by sight invokes that no living creature should stay there.

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The castle, inherited by the countess from her father Vlad, is a damaged, cursed place with ghostly occupants, “surrounded by haunted forests and mysterious habitations” (95). The vampire countess lives there with her mute governess and kills any living creature she meets on her nightly walks, because she needs to eat. The rumour going round Romania about the countess causes that only ignorant and foolhardy persons arrive at that place.

The short story Lizzie’s Tiger has its secret area in the circus which is a completely unknown world to little Lizzie Borden. After she runs away from home to circus in order to see a tiger she saw on a circus poster, the four-year old girl finds herself in an area full of “unpremeditated smells and never-before-heard noises” (AG, 8) and red and white stripped tents, some of them so large, that “you could have popped (in them) the entire house … and the yard too, with enough room to spare inside for another house” (7). She finds there many people different from her – with different complexion, speaking different languages. The experience is too strong for her: Too much for Lizzie to take in at once, too much for Lizzie to take in at all – too rich a feast for her senses, so that she was taken a little beyond herself and felt her head spinning, a vertigo, a sense of profound strangeness overcoming her. (8) The circus is a secret area for Lizzie because it is a world she has never been to, it is unknown to her and she has no knowledge of it. The only thing that makes her go to the circus is her strong wish to see a tiger.

In John Ford’s Tis Pity She’s a Whore the secret area is the solitary farm on the prairies where two siblings, Johnny and Annie-Belle (or Giovanni and Annabella) grow

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up in cold and solitude of that place, isolated from other people, seeing them only on Sunday services. The children live there with almost no contact with the outer world. “Out there, in that little house on the prairie, so lonesome … Nobody for those young folks to talk to „cept cows, cows, cows” (22). Their only companion is their father who, hovewer, does not pay much attention to them. He likes to be alone, as it is said in the text, he “looked forward to his solitary” (27). The only experience the children have was gained by of their daily routine. They knew how to conduct a farm but not much else. The lack of guidance connected to the lack of life experience makes it possible for them to get bogged in incestuous relationship. The solitude of that place, its isolation from the outer world and the lack of information closely bound to this reality makes their farm a secret area where even an incestuous relation is possible.

The secret area discussed in Gun for Devil is a Mexican border town, “a town without hope, without grace, at the end of the road for all those who‟ve the misfortune to find themselves washed up here” (45). The town is operated by bandits, inhabited by corrupted people, and the only respectable and profiting place is the local brothel. The fact alone, that the only profitable place is a facility where men go and pay to have sex with prostitutes, makes the town a rather desperate place. And the inhabitants can be regarded as desperate as well - they are the bandits, prostitutes, corrupted bank clerks, even the priest and the sheriff are corrupted. The only newcomer finds himself in the village, because he seeks for his revenge for his parents‟ death. Carter offers a felicitous definition of that town: “In this town, nobody asks any questions. Who would live here if they had the option to live anywhere else?” (46) So once again, village functions as a sanctuary for people who need to escape or hide from their past. It is a secret area separating its inhabitants from the outer world.

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In Alice in Prague or The Curious Room it is the Archduke Rudolph‟s curious room (or also his Wunderkammer, cabinet de curiosités or his proto-museum) in the magician‟s tower in Prague, with a secret laboratory of Doctor Dee, Ned Kelly and other alchemists which is the secret area. It can be regarded as such because of the fact that it is not meant to be accessible for the public. On its door there is a sign which says “Forbidden” (121) which supports this notion. The other reason why it can be regarded as a secret area is its content, which makes the curious room a world of its own, where everything is possible, or rather nothing is impossible. The Archduke Rudolph stores there his collection of his treasures and curiosities and he “numbers the Doctor amongst these treasures”(124). In his collection, there is Doctor Dee with his crystal ball, a contraption which helps him in his everlasting seek for knowledge; Ned Kelly with his scrying dics on which angels frequently appear, stuffed flying turtle, or an aged mermaid in the jar. It is a world of its own where the limits between the real and the unreal are blurred.

Now that the secret areas have been introduced, we can proceed to other parts of the thesis, which are further discussing the secret areas. The following chapters are devoted to the discussion of similarities between individual secret areas, to entities that are closely connected to the secret areas and to resemblances between these entities. Attention will be paid also to persons entering the secret areas, to their reasons for entering them, to qualities these persons share and finally to consequences resulting from the fact, that they once entered the already mentioned secret areas.

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2. Qualities Shared by Secret Areas

The aim of this chapter is to discuss similarities between individual secret areas in terms of buildings, rooms and places. It works with similarities between the appearance of places – mainly palatial houses - between their surroundings and between the omnipresent atmosphere, which is usually mutual for both houses and their surroundings. The first part of this chapter deals with solitude of secret areas, the second part with their loneliness. The third part then works with the atmosphere of these places and with the notion of darkness surrounding them.

The similarity to begin with is the fact that the plot of many of the stories the thesis deals with takes place in castles or palaces, since their owners are counts. In The Bloody Chamber, The Courtship of Mr Lyon, The Tiger’s Bride and The Lady of the House of Love, the main heroes find themselves in old hereditary castles with walls of stone, antique furniture, numerous cobwebs, portraits of ancestors and windows shaded with heavy velvet curtains of crimson red. This conception of old, large, bleak, almost empty houses strengthens the notion of mystery and secrecy. What is more, all of the houses are situated in solitary places – in the first case it is ashore, in the second one it is on a solitary place hidden behind iron gates and many cypresses, the third story is situated far behind the city, “as far as eye could see, not one thing living,” (BC, 57) and the last one is set in a deserted village, as the countess says “this place is so lonely, now the village is deserted…” (102). But solitary are not only the above mentioned manors. The story of Annie-Belle and Johnny in John Ford’s Tis Pity She’s a Whore takes place far out of town, in the loneliness of prairies; Gun for Devil is situated in a corrupted Mexican border town; and in Lizzie’s Tiger Lizzie finds

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herself in an open space full of circus tents behind the city. The Erl-King takes place somewhere in the middle of woods, and Alice in Prague or The Curious Room, although the magician‟s tower is not situated somewhere outside the city, it is in solitude, since it is not accessible to anyone except for Archduke Rudolph. The solitude of all the places makes the above mentioned secret areas worlds of their own. It offers the possibility of hiding something, it suggests that anything can happen there with no real consequences, since what happens in these isolated worlds of their own also stays there forever.

Not only solitary, but also lonely, with almost no presence of human beings, are the secret areas. There appear only a few nameless servants The Bloody Chamber; one of them the housekeeper who is perceived rather as a part of the house, than as a human being. In The Courtship of Mr Lyon there are only invisible personnel and a King Charles spaniel who takes care of the count‟s guests. The house is empty because, as it is said in the text, the count “dislikes the presence of servants because … a constant human presence would remind him too bitterly of his otherness” (45). The same situation appears in The Tiger’s Bride where there are no human beings in the house, except perhaps for the Beast‟s valet, “a strange, thin, quick little man who walked with an irregular, jolting rhythm” (54), who served also as an interpreter to the Beast‟s howling. All the other, indifferent, servants were machines, since “nothing human lives here” (59). As the valet says “we have dispensed with servants … we surround ourselves, instead, for utility and pleasure, with simulacra and find it no less convenient than do most gentleman” (60). In this house are even “pictures taken from their hooks and propped with their faces to the walls” (57). This is, again, because the

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Beast is aware of his otherness and does not want anybody or anything to remind him of this fact. The Erl-King lives “by himself, all alone in the heart of the wood in a house which has only the one room“ (86). The only companions to him are his caged birds who once happened to be women. His loneliness is caused by his difference, since he is not human, he is the spirit of the wood; and also by his solitude in the middle of the wood, since it is difficult to get through it. The countess in The Lady of the House of Love is also lonely in her castle. Although it is full of ghostly creatures, she isolates from them, since she would like to be a human. The only companion to her is her mute governess, so she has literally no one to speak with. Her loneliness also springs from the fact that she is a nocturnal creature, a vampire imposed of living at night, and all “normal” people are active during the day. Also, the area Lizzie in Lizzie’s Tiger enters is lonely. Despite the fact that the circus is an overcrowded place, it is lonely in the sense that it is a socio-cultural mixture, and Lizzie, a four-year old girl, is in this milieu all alone. The people there are of different nationalities and social classes. They speak languages other than she knows. She does not understand the words they say or the things they do. In this sense, she finds herself in a lonely place. In John Ford’s Tis Pity She’s a Whore the place where Johnnie and Annie-Belle live is not only solitary, but also lonely. No other people, except for their father who spends a lot of time out of home, are in their proximity. They get in contact with other people only on Sunday sermons. They have nobody to talk to or entertain with; or no one who would teach them what is appropriate and what is not. This together with their inclination towards each other, which has existed since their early childhood, starts up their incestuous relationship. Also when Annie-Belle gets married and moves to her

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husband‟s house, in the city and inhabited by other people as well, she finds herself in a lonely place. The revelation of her pregnancy caused not by her husband, and AnnieBelle‟s departure from the tradition which equals a rule, brings about her mother-inlaw‟s hatred and disdain. So she is, once again, thrown into a lonely place. In Gun for Devil, the piano player finds himself in a lonely area as well. As Lizzie in the circus or Annie-Belle in the city, he is surrounded by many people, but does not have any affinities among the locals, except for the count conducting the brothel, who is – such as the piano player – other than the locals are. He came from Europe, has different life experience and different values. Finally, the alchemists in Alice in Prague exist in a lonely area as well. They are surrounded by their crystal balls, retort-stands, curious creatures and plants, but no one else, except for other alchemists, Archduke Rudolph and possibly living products of their experiments cannot enter their laboratory, since the things happening there are not meant for public. The otherness of inhabitants and visitors of secret places is the factor that makes them lonely, even if they are, in some cases, surrounded by masses of people.

Another common feature of secret areas in terms of places is their atmosphere. The buildings mentioned at the beginning of this chapter are rather dark, such as is the impenetrable wood in The Erl-King or the archduke Rudolph‟s curious room in Alice in Prague…Also the seasons in which all the stories take place are mainly connected with the notion of darkness. The Bloody Chamber takes place in November, The Courtship of Mr Lyon and The Tiger’s Bride in December. Even though the plot of The Erl-King is set on a sunny light afternoon, the late October atmosphere negates the effect of that day‟s brightness and invokes rather sad feelings. Alice in Prague leads us to an

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unspecified afternoon in winter when “the moon is up already, … the moon grows more white, more cold, white as the source of all the cold in the world, until, ... everything will freeze – not only the water in the jug … but the blood in the vein” (AG, 124). The autumn and winter months invoke short, cold days, dimness, and, to some extent, darkness. Also The Lady of the House of Love and Lizzie’s Tiger are enacted mainly at night – and thus in darkness. One of the most important scenes in Gun for Devil – the pact made between the piano player and the devil - comes about at night as well. Only in John Ford’s Tis Pity She’s a Whore is the notion of darkness not specified, but in all the other stories, the dark atmosphere caused by seasons of the year or by night strengthens, again, the notion that something can be hidden or will not be seen in the darkness.

The secret areas discussed in the thesis have certain features in common. They are situated in solitary places, are lonely and invoke the notion of darkness. The difference of the inhabitants or visitors of these areas makes them lonely, and the solitary situation together with dark atmosphere makes it possible to hide many things, and makes the secret areas worlds of their own.

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3. Introducing Entities and Acts Connected with Entering the Secret Areas

Every secret area that is entered in the short stories has some inhabitants, who are closely connected with it, who are bound to it. They, to some extent, share the notion of secrecy with the areas they occupy, they are signed by that secrecy. Also the acts that take place in the secret areas have their foundations in the secret areas. This chapter introduces entities in terms of persons and creatures who are to be found in the secret areas and who are connected to the notion of secrecy. It also discusses acts connected with entering the secret areas that are important for events of the short stories; and these are the act of marriage, the act of revenge and a sexual intercourse.

The entity to begin with is the count in the short story The Bloody Chamber. Since the very beginning of the story, the count is a big mystery to his new young wife. She marries him after a short acquaintance and does not really know him. She is unable to read from his face and describes his facial features as “strange, heavy, almost waxen … not lined by experience. Rather, the experience seemed to have washed it perfectly smooth…” (BC 8-9). To intensify her feelings of uncertainty about her husband, the main heroine also compares the count to a lily, which is often referred to as a symbol of naivety and virginity, but also to death and the after-life. She cannot make a decision, what kind of a person her husband is. The main heroine cannot tell anything about the count‟s personality, not even from the look into his eyes. As it is said, eye is the window to the soul, but the count‟s eyes are as if blind, they have an “absolute absence of light” (9). So the count is one of the entities she meets in the secret areas. She discovers his true nature only gradually, by exploring the castle, getting acquainted with

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his possessions (such as old volumes and portraits that were mentioned in the first chapter), and she realizes what kind of a man he is only later, when she comes into his “bloody” chamber and puts together all the information she gathered so far with the reality she sees there. An act connected to entering the secret chambers in The Bloody Chamber is the marriage between the count and the main heroine. The reader gets almost no information about the ceremony or circumstances under which it was contracted, but learns, that the count was married already three times, that it was not a long time ago that he was left a widower and that his new wife is much younger than he is. She does not marry the count because she loves him, or because her mother persuades her to do so. She probably does not know the reason for her to marry the count either, she just knows she wants to marry him. When her mother asks her, whether she loves him, she answers “I‟m sure I want to marry him” (7). Another act regarded as an entity met in secret areas in The Bloody Chamber is the sexual intercourse. For the main heroine, a virgin, it is something unknown and unimaginable; nevertheless, her first experience probably does not fulfil her ideas about it. On the first night spent together, her husband showed his inclinations: In the course of that one-sided struggle, I had seen his deathly composure shatter like a porcelain vase flung against a wall; I had heard him shriek and blaspheme at the orgasm; I had bled. I had seen his face without its mask … Yet I had been infinitely dishevelled by the loss of my virginity. (18) This and also the “foreplay” the married couple had some time before the actual intercourse, reminds the main heroine of a pornographic etching the count showed her before they got married. The woman depicted there is young, almost a child, and naked, the man old and well dressed. The main heroine finds herself in exactly the same

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situation. And also this experience moves her closer to unrevealing the true nature of her husband.

The entity met in The Courtship of Mr Lyon is Beast, as he calls himself. A goodnatured being with leonine appearance, which lives in solitude of a large, well kept house. At the time of the first encounter of Beauty‟s father with Beast, Beast appears to the father to be “vaster than the house he owned, ponderous yet swift, and the moonlight glittered on his great, mazy head of hair, on the eyes green as agate, on the golden hairs of the great paws that grasped his shoulders … „ (44). Beast seems to be a combination of a lion with a nobleman: “Head of a lion; mane and mighty paws of a lion; he reared on his hind legs like an angry lion yet wore a smoking jacket of dull red brocade and was the owner of that lovely house and the low hills that cupped it” (44). In contrast to his wild appearance, his nature is very gentle and willing to help. Despite his kindness, he is judged on the basis of his otherness – of his “bewildering difference” (45) – and for that reason he prefers to stay in the solitude of his castle.

In The Tiger’s Bride the entity the reader meets is The Beast whose appearance is rather inconsistent, with both tiger and human features. He tries to be all human but, despite his considerable effort, he is not and looks rather absurd: There is a crude clumsiness about his outlines, that are on the ungainly, giant side; and he has an odd air of self-imposed restraint, as if fighting a battle with himself to remain upright when he would far rather drop down on all fours. He throws our human aspirations to the godlike sadly awry, poor fellow; only from a distance would you think The Beast not much different from any other man, although he wears a mask with a man's face painted most beautifully on it. Oh,

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yes, a beautiful face; but one with too much formal symmetry of feature to be entirely human: one profile of his mask is the mirror image of the other, too perfect, uncanny. He wears a wig, too, false hair tied at the nape with a bow, a wig of the kind you see in old-fashioned portraits. A chaste silk stock stuck with a pearl hides his throat. And gloves of blond kid that are yet so huge and clumsy they do not seem to cover hands. He is a carnival figure made of papier-mâché and crêpe hair… (53) He is aware of his difference and vain effort to make it less visible. Therefore he isolates himself in his castle.

The entity closely connected to the short story The Erl-King is obviously the ErlKing. He is a spirit of the wood, sometimes it seems he is the personification of the wood, since he “knows all about the wood and the creatures in it” (86). Also his appearance is woody - his eyes are “quite green, as if from too much looking at the wood” (86), “when he combs his hair that is the colour of dead leaves, dead leaves fall out of it. … his flesh is of the same substance as those leaves” (87-88). Another act regarded as an entity met in secret areas in The Erl-King is the sexual intercourse. Every time the main heroine goes to the wood the Erl-King “lays her down on his bed of rustling straw where (she lies) at the mercy of his huge hands” (85). The intercourse is important because of the fact that it makes the heroine feel desired and she is afraid of such feelings, she is also afraid of the fact she likes it to be desired. “I am not afraid of him; only, afraid of vertigo, of the vertigo with which he seizes me. Afraid of falling down” (88). She becomes aware of her sexuality yet she does not know how to deal with it.

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In The Lady of the House of Love the entity bound to the secret area is the countess of the Nosferatu castle. She is a nocturnal creature, a vampire, whose life at night sentences her to loneliness. Also her appearance makes her lonely since it separates her from the outer world. She is a curious mixture of human and animal features. She is so beautiful she is unnatural; her beauty is an abnormality, a deformity, for none of her features exhibit any of those touching imperfections that reconcile us to the imperfection of the human condition. Her beauty is a symptom of her disorder, of her soullessness (94) In contrast to her abnormal beauty are her animal features: she needs to hunt for food, for fresh blood; she has claws and teeth which “have been sharpened on centuries of corpses” (8). She is a curious mixture of human and animal features. (94) Not only her appearance, but also her nature is a combination of a human and an animal. She would like to love a man, but as soon as she gets closer to him, her vampire side takes over the control and she sucks his blood up: She would like to caress (boys‟) lean brown cheeks and stroke their ragged hair. When she takes them by the hand and leads them to her bedroom, they can scarcely believe their luck. Afterwards, her governess will tidy the remains into a neat pile and wrap it in its own discarded clothes. This mortal parcel she then discreetly buries in the garden. The blood on the Countess‟s cheeks will be mixed with tears (96) The countess is desperate of her life and wants to become human. But she is afraid it is not possible.

The entity connected to the secret area in Lizzie’s tiger – to the circus – is the tiger. It is the tiger and the notion of mystery surrounding him that makes Lizzie run away

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from her home to the circus. It is probably the fact that the tiger is an entity existing within another entity. And Lizzie feels that somehow. The tiger is a world in itself existing within the circus – another world in itself. The circus is a place where virtually anything is impossible, where curious creatures can bee seen. The tiger, for most people a curious creature, lives there among other creatures that are supposed to be exhibited. As the tamer says, the tiger has been tamed, in other words, he got rid of his wildness, of his beastly nature, he is now “a perfect imitation of docility and obedience” (16). But it had not lost its true nature at all. It is able to show it disaffection “and with a quick jerk of its sculptured head, flung the (tamer‟s) foot away so that, caught off balance, he half toppled over. And then the tiger was no longer a thing of stillness … but a whiz of black and red, maw and canines” (AG 18). It retains its wildness under the cover of tameness.

The issue to be discusses in John Ford’s Tis Pity She’s a Whore is the act of sexual intercourse between Johnnie and Annie-Belle. This act is connected to the secret area of this story – to the solitary farm – because it is for the solitude of that place that the intercourse actually happened. It is for the isolation from the outer world and with it connected the lack of knowledge, that the children make incestuous love. In connection with this, Johnnie and Annie-Bell can be compared to Adam and Eve who ate the forbidden fruit in Eden. Also the importance of the act of sexual intercourse is extensive. As a result of the sexual intercourse, Annie-Belle becomes pregnant and the father of the baby is her brother. She is therefore thrown into a difficult situation. According to the Bible, she has lost her only valuable possession – her virginity: “according to what the Minister‟s wife said, she had lost everything and was a lost girl”

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(17) .She is writhing in qualms. She decides to accept the Minister‟s son‟s proposal in order to begin a new life. The marriage is the other act that will be discussed in this part of the chapter. As it was already said, Annie-Belle supposes, that marrying the Minister‟s son could help her to begin a new life. After the marriage, when Annie-Belle‟s pregnancy is no longer a secret, the young couple decides to move west in order to escape the omnipresent gossip and to begin a new life there. The fact that Annie-Belle is leaving, however, does not meet with Johnnies sympathy and he, moved by his feelings, kills his sister, her bridegroom and himself as well. Instead of beginning of a new life, Annie-Belle experiences death

The entities that will be discussed in connection with Gun for Devil are the count and the act of revenge. These two entities are interconnected, because the pianist‟s revenge would be impossible without the interference of the count. The count living in the Mexican border town is of European origin. He is the local brothel keeper with a reputation of a “marksman so extraordinary that everyone thought he had supernatural powers” (50). There is a legend surrounding him that he is in pact with the devil, “the old legend, about a man who makes a pact with the devil to obtain a bullet that cannot miss its target” (49). The pianist Johnny comes to the same town because of the revenge for his parents‟ death and as if by a coincidence, also because of the rumours about the old count. Johnny wants the count to help him with the revenge in terms of helping him to conclude a pact with the devil.

In Alice in Prague or The Curious Room the creature that can be regarded as entity met in the secret area is Alice. It is a character from Lewis Carroll‟s novel. It is a

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creature that connects the future with the past, since her character first appears in the 19th century and the plot of Alice in Prague or The Curious Room is situated at the hinge of the 16th century. As Carter writes: Alice was invented by a logician and therefore she comes from the world of nonsense, that is, from the world of non-sense – the opposite of common sense; this world is constructed by logical deduction and is created by language, although language shivers into abstraction within it (139). The act of entering the Archduke Rudolph‟s curious room has no particular reason; it is just an intersection of two nonsensical worlds, of two worlds of their own, since also the curious room is one (see chapter one). In accordance with the logic of Carter‟s statement mentioned above, the curious room is a place where almost everything is possible since the alchemists living in there deduce that it is possible.

Every entity that is found in the secret areas and also every act that takes place there is strongly connected to the secret areas themselves. Usually, the appearance of the secret areas mirrors the basis of the entities. Also the acts, whether the sexual ones or those of marriage or revenge that happen there, carry the notion of secrecy, since they are omnipresent in the areas and they infiltrate everywhere.

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4. Qualities Shared by Entities and Acts Connected with Entering the Secret Areas

The aim of this chapter is to discuss similarities between individual entities connected with entering the secret areas. The first part of this chapter discusses physical resemblances between the persons and creatures connected with secret areas. The next part works with psychological similarities between them. The third part discusses resemblances between acts of marriage and the final part works with similarities in terms of sexual intercourse between the main characters of the short stories.

Let us begin with physical resemblances between persons connected to secret areas. Those from The Bloody Chamber, The Courtship of Mr Lyon and Tiger’s Bride share features of a feline, the tiger in Lizzie’s Tiger is an actual feline, and the companion to archduke Rudolph in Alice in Prague…is a lion. The countess in The Lady of the House of Love shares some animal-like features. So what is the matter that connects them? The main heroine of The Bloody Chamber refers to the count as follows: I could see the dark, leonine shape of his head and my nostrils caught a whiff of the opulent male scent of leather and spices … that have been the only hint he gave me that he had come … for, though, he was a big man, he moved as softly as if all his shoes had soles of velvet (BC 8). In The Courtship of Mr Lyon the presence of an animal or animal-like creature is obvious since the moment the father enters the Palladian house: “And, from distance, though from what distance he could not tell, he heard the most singular sound in the world: a great roaring, as of a beast of prey” (42). When the father encounters the Beast, he perceives him as follows:

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The being who now controlled Beauty‟s father seemed to him, in his confusion, vaster than the house he owned, ponderous yet swift, and the moonlight glittered on his great, mazy head of hair, on the eyes green as agate, on the golden hairs of the great paws that grasped his shoulders … (44) The Beast in Tiger’s Bride hides his true appearance behind a mask of a perfectly symmetric face; nevertheless, later in the story, he puts the mask down and shows himself to the girl as follows: a great, feline, tawny shape whose pelt was barred with a savage geometry of bars the colour of burned wood. His domed, heavy head, so terrible he must hide it. How subtle the muscles, how profound the tread. The annihilating vehemence of his eyes, like twin suns. (64) Despite her almost unnatural beauty, also the countess from The Lady of the House of Love shares some animal-like features. She has long nails strongly resembling claws, and her vampire teeth can be compared to those of a beast of prey. The appearance of the tiger which is kept in cage in Lizzie’s Tiger, or that of the lion from Alice in Prague… which is the Archduke Rudolph‟s guard-cat, a lion, whom the archduke had pulled teeth, since he was afraid of them; does not need to be elaborated on, since the two mentioned creatures are real animals. The first similarity between the entities met in the secret areas is the fact that they all share features of nocturnal animals, of felines to be specific. And the “felines signify otherness, a savage and magnificent power, outside of humanity”3

Another aspect discussed in this chapter is a psychological one. It is the similarity of behaviour of living representatives of secret areas.

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Makinen

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Let us again begin with the count in The Bloody Chamber. He, although his face is perfectly human, behaves more like a beast of prey. His face is more like a mask to hide the beast inside him, it is like a mask that hides “the face that truly reflected all the life he had led in the world before he met me (his new wife)” (BC 8). He behaves like a beast in a sense that he plays with the prey he picks up, then he hunts them and kills them with pleasure. On the other hand, the Beasts in The Courtship of Mr Lyon and in The Tiger’s Bride are beasts of prey by appearance, but inside they are more human than the other protagonists of their stories are. The Beast in The Courtship of Mr Lyon is kind, ready to help in any moment, hospitable and well-behaved, the one in The Tiger’s Bride is honest and emotional. Also the Lady in The Lady of the House of Love, despite her vampirism and animallike features, exhibits more human emotions, she desires to be loved and to be human. Nevertheless, she cannot show them because, as a nocturnal creature, she is sentenced to live her life at night.

The appearance of all of the mentioned creatures is in contrast with their beastly nature. They all hide their appearance behind their faces. The count from The Bloody Chamber has a face that resembles a mask, since nothing can be read from it; Beast in The Courtship of Mr Lyon does not hide his face behind a mask, instead, he hides himself from the world; the Tiger in The Tiger’s Bride wears a mask of a perfect human face; the countess in The Lady of the House of Love is hidden in the darkness of night. They all hide their face in order to hide their beastly nature; in order to be more human.

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Despite all positive emotions the Beasts and the vampire lady share, they, as the count in The Bloody Chamber, like to hunt, or need to hunt – because of their beastly basis. The count in The Bloody Chamber hunts for young women whom he later kills and displays in his secret chamber; The Beast in The Tiger’s Bride even takes the girl he won in cards on hunt; the vampire lady hunts at nights, she “will sniff the air and howl. She drops, now, on all fours. Crouching, quivering, she catches the scent of her prey” (95). She would like to caress her prey, “she would like to take the rabbits home with her … but her hunger always overcomes her” (96). Also the Erl-King is a passionate hunter. He hunts for women, they change into birds and he locks them in wooden cages. The tiger in Lizzie‟s story, originally “the veritable incarnation of blood lust and fury,” (AG 16) a beast of prey, a hunter, though tempted and kept in cage, have not lost his true nature and attacks his tamer. Also the piano player in Gun for Devil is on a hunt – on a hunt for revenge for his parent‟s death. All of the mentioned beings have a piece of beast in them that makes them seek for hunt. The four characters mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph together with the tiger from Lizzie’s Tiger hunt because of their feline basis, the other hunt in order to achieve some goal – a revenge or collector‟s passion.

Another topic this chapter deals with are resemblances between acts of marriage in the selected stories. There are three marriages within the discussed stories –in The Bloody Chamber, in Jon Ford’s Tis Pity She’s a Whore and in Gun for Devil. In all cases the marriage is supposed to be an escape from the old life and, at the same time, the beginning of a better life. In The Bloody Chamber the nameless heroine escapes from poverty, she is looking forward to the life with her husband about whom she does not know much, but thinks he

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loves her. In Jon Ford’s Tis Pity She’s a Whore, marriage should help Annie-Belle to begin a new better life, since she is pregnant and the father of her baby is her brother. She is aware that it is not legitimate and she sees her salvation in the marriage. In Gun for Devil the marriage planned for Teresa Mendoza is supposed to assure the life in welfare for her, since her husband is a rich bandit and the living condition she had so far condemned her “to live like a pig” (47). Nevertheless, in all mentioned cases the marriage ends in tragedy. In the first case the main heroine finds out, that her bridegroom is planning to kill her and after that to place her remains into his “museum of perversity.” Only thanks to her mother the nameless heroine comes out of her marriage alive and her husband is shot. In the second case, Johnnie, Annie-Belle‟s brother and also the father of her child does not bear the fact that she does not want to spend the rest of her life with him, and shots her, her bridegroom and himself as well. In the third case, Teresa Mendoza‟s marriage changes into the place of Johnny‟s revenge. Not only that she does not get married, she is also shot and dies. None of the mentioned marriages ends happily for its protagonists. For none of them the marriage means a change to better life. What is more, for most of the protagonists it ends in tragedy – in death by being shot.

Finally, there is the sexual act to be discussed. As opposed to the acts of marriage discussed in the previous paragraph, which shared many similarities, almost none are to be found in the sexual acts. Not even the loss of virginity is common to the individual intercourses. The loss of virginity, the loss of a certain kind of innocence, can be found only in the cases of the

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nameless protagonist of The Bloody Chamber and Annie-Belle and Johnnie in John Ford’s Tis Pity She’s a Whore. The circumstances under which the sexual acts happen differ from case to case. The protagonist of The Bloody Chamber has her first intercourse ever after she gets married and moves to her bridegroom‟s house. The nameless girl and the Erl-King have sex because of their desires. Finally, Johnnie and Annie-Belle involve themselves in sexual intercourse because their love for each other together with their lack of knowledge brings them together. Also the character of the intercourse differs each time. For the nameless heroine of The Bloody Chamber, the first sexual intercourse is a “one-sided struggle (BC 18). In The Erl-King, the girl willingly “lies at the mercy of his huge hands” (87) and AnnieBelle and Johnnie lose themselves in their love. Even the consequences of the intercourse are of different character. In The Bloody Chamber, the intercourse is one of the things that helps her to learn more about her husband‟s nature. His behaviour during the intercourse is rather beastly and the intercourse is described as a “one-sided struggle” (18). The intercourse between the girl and the Erl-King awakes sexual desires within the girl and makes her afraid of them, or rather, make her afraid of her self. In John Ford’s Tis Pity She’s a Whore the sexual intercourse between Johnnie and Annie-Belle causes division of the two of them, since Annie-Belle becomes aware that the thing they did was not right, decides to marry another man and Johnnie, influenced by strong feeling of betrayal, kills Annie-Belle, her bridegroom and himself as well. It seems there is no resemblance to be found between the individual intercourses. The individual acts of sexual intercourse differ in the circumstances under which they

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were conducted, in the character of the intercourse as well as in the consequences of the intercourse.

The entities that are connected to the secret areas share some qualities in terms of their physical appearance. There are also psychological resemblances between them to be found. The act of marriage is surprisingly similar in all cases that are mentioned in the text – both in terms of reasons for entering the marriage and in terms of tragic endings of all marriages. Finally, no resemblance is found between the acts of sexual intercourse that were discussed in this chapter.

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5. Introducing Persons Entering the Secret Areas

This chapter is a rather descriptive one. It introduces persons entering the secret areas and their very first emotions regarding the secret areas. It is dealing with them only briefly since they will be discussed in detail in chapters number six and seven.

The person to begin with is the nameless main heroine from The Bloody Chamber. It is a 17-year old girl, passionate piano player, who is, despite having doubts about the count, too willing to believe that his words and emotions towards her are true. She is “an inexperienced, poor young virgin who finds herself, for whatever reason, alone in a remote estate house with a dark, brooding, and very rich owner.”4 She is innocent of having any real information concerning the count or his castle. She imagines it as a “magic place, the fairy castle, whose walls were made of foam, that legendary habitation in which he had been born. To which, one day, I might bear an heir. Our destination, my destiny” (BC 8). She is entering her bridegroom‟s fairy castle full of expectations In The Courtship of Mr Lyon the person entering the secret areas is father, followed by his daughter Beauty. The father enters the castle with reluctance, but he needs his broken car to be repaired and to achieve this, he needs to call the service. Beauty enters the house after her father has stolen a rose for her and the Beast has asked him to bring his daughter to dinner. She is described as a person of “absolute sweetness and absolute gravity, as if her eyes might pierce appearances and see through your soul” (BC 44). She enters the room because of obedience Despite her father‟s affirmation that there is

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Laroche

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no need to worry, since the master of the house is good-natured, she enters the Beast‟s castle full of fear of the master of that place and of his leonine appearance in particular. The Tiger’s Bride introduces another person entering secret areas. It is a nameless girl, her father‟s treasure, “always the pretty one, with … glossy, nut-brown curls, … rosy cheeks. And born on Christmas Day,”(52) who enters the Tiger‟s castle predicting her destiny as follows: I knew well enough the reason for the trepidation I cosily titillated with superstitious marvels of my childhood on the day my childhood ended. For now my own skin was my sole capital in the world and today I‟d make my first investment (56) In The Erl-King, it is again a nameless girl. She enters the wood with some background knowledge, transmitted to her, perhaps, from her mother, or from old wives‟ tales. Through the story she bears in her mind that “Erl-King will do you (the girl) grievous harm” (85). She is so convinced that what she had heard about the ErlKing is true, that she does not admit any other scenario and “would go into the wood as trustingly as Red Riding Hood to her granny‟s house but … here she will be trapped in her own illusion because everything in the wood is exactly as it seems” (85). In The Lady of the House of Love, the person entering secret areas is a male for the first time. It is a “young officer in the British army, blond, blue-eyed, heavy muscled, … (who) decided to spend the remainder of his furlough exploring the little-known uplands in Romania” (97). He is naïve in term of not having much experience, despite this, or because of this, he is very rational and does not believe the rumours he has heard about vampires in this area are true. This ignorance with which he travels through Romania is advantageous for him, since he is not afraid to enter the countess‟s chateau.

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The person entering secret area, in this case the circus in Lizzie’s Tiger, is small Lizzie. She is a four-year old girl, not a typical child who knows very well how to get what she wants (she “did not show affection easily, except to the head of the house, and then only when she wanted something. She knew where her power was and, intuitively feminine in spite of her guff appearance, she knew how to court it” (AG 3). Despite her low age and a language barrier, she is able to get to the place she wants to see – to circus. She enters it with only one goal – to see a tiger. John Ford’s Tis Pity She’s a Whore introduces not one, but two persons, not entering, but living in an secret area at a time. First of all, there are Johnnie and AnnieBelle, or Giovanni and Annabella. They are siblings, half orphans, living in the solitude of prairies with their father. Their inexperience and naivety allows them to fall in incestuous love. In Gun for Devil it is Johnny, the pianist, who comes all the way from Vienna to the already discussed Mexican border town, the secret area, and seeks the revenge for his parents death. He is a “city boy, … a handsome boy, nice, refined, with educated voice” (48). In his appearance and manners, he differs from the inhabitants of that town. He wants to achieve his goal, no matter what happens. He enters the city with no fear, with no doubts, but with only revenge in his mind. Finally, in Alice in Prague or The Curious Room the persons entering the secret area – here the Archduke Rudolph‟s curious chamber, are alchemists. There are many of them – Doctor Dee – a man with many curious abilities, such as talking to the birds; the seeker for knowledge; “the English expatriate alchemist, (who) awaits the manifestation of an angel” (124). Another man that once enters the curious chamber is Ned Kelly – Doctor Dee‟s assistant, who “is also looking for the angels,” (125) but who cannot communicate with them.

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6. Reasons for Entering the Secret Areas

This chapter focuses on reasons the persons introduced in the previous chapter have to enter the secret areas. It deals with forces that make them to enter these areas.

The nameless heroine of The Bloody Chamber enters the castle and all secret areas it offers because she is married to its owner and obediently follows him to his domicile. During her stay at the castle, a secret area in itself, she enters several rooms regarded as secret areas before she proceeds to the “bloody” chamber that is forbidden to her. She enters them in order to learn more about her husband, since he is a mystery to her. She enters the rooms because of her curiosity as well as because of her will to seek for knowledge. She is “determined … to search through them all for evidence of (her) husband‟s true nature.” (24) She enters the library because it seems to be a place where she could find a clue about her husband, it seems to be “the source of his habitual odour of Russian leather” (16) which is an omnipresent mark of his presence and also the only hint that he is in her proximity, since he moves as silently as a cat, for “though he was a big man, he moved as softly as if all his shoes had soles of velvet” (8). The reason for entering the count‟s office is, again, her curiosity and her need to learn more about her husband. She enters it a short time after she gets the ring of keys that enter every single lock in the castle. In both rooms that just have been mentioned, she finds articles suggesting the true nature of her husband. Let us mention at least books, paintings or canvases with distinctive symbolic meaning, such as The Initiation, The Key of Mysteries, The Secret of Pandora’s Box, The Sacrificial Victim, or The Foolish Virgins. The meaning of these objects, which was discussed in chapter number one, starts to make sense as soon as her curiosity brings the main heroine to the forbidden chamber,

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where she gets acquainted with the doom of her predecessors and the anticipated fate of hers.

In The Courtship of Mr Lyon, the castle is entered first by father because of need – his car broke up and he needed to call the service and to take the shelter from snow. After he was feasted and helped with calling the service, he stole a rose, the only thing his daughter wanted him to bring to her. This deed made the Beast angry, but after seeing the picture of the man‟s daughter, he calmed down and told the father to “take her the rose … but bring her (the daughter) to dinner” (45). So Beauty entered the castle because of obedience and love to her father. She obeyed her father‟ plea although she “could not control an instinctual shudder of fear when she saw him (the beast), for a lion is a lion and man is a man and, though lions are more beautiful than we are, yet they belong to a different order of beauty and, besides, they have no respect for us“ (45). Beauty found the Beast‟s presence “almost intolerable, his presence chocked her,” (45) but after the Beast sent her father to London and said he would help him to get out of financial problems, she decided to meet the Beast‟s wishes and stay at his castle, for “she knew with a pang of dread, … that it would be so and her visit to the Beast must be, on some magically reciprocal scale, the price of her father‟s good fortune” (45). Beauty entered and stood in the castle because of her feelings towards her father, because “she would gladly have gone to the ends of the earth for her father, whom she loved dearly.” (46) As Teverson 5says “She is a perfect example of how to be morally beautiful, modest, self-effacing, considerate, and of how to sacrifice oneself for the good of others.”

5

Teverson, Andrew. "'Mr. Fox' and 'The White Cat': The Forgotten Voices in Angela Carter's Fiction." Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies 5.2 (1999): 209-222.

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The girl and her father in The Tiger’s Bride enter the Italian village because they hope it is safe for the father. Safe in terms of having no casino since the father was a gambler whose “hands shake as he deals with Devil‟s picture books” (BC 51). Despite they were warned against entering the city, they came there since that “provincial place, out of fashion for two hundred years … boasted no casino“ (52). Ironically, there was a rule in that city, that “everyone who comes to this city must play a hand with the grand signeur” (52).The father, such as every gambler, believed in miracles, but he lost his daughter to the Beast and so she entered the Beast‟s (or Tiger‟s) house. Despite that the nameless girl is not angry at her father. She understands the belief of her father that he could not loose to the Beast and she also realizes that it was not she, but her father, who was in danger – in danger that the cards could destroy him. As she remarks, “it was not my flesh, but, truly, my father‟s soul that was in peril” (54).

The secret area in the story The Erl-King is entered twice, each time from a different point of view. The nameless girl enters it first because of her curiosity, later because of obligation she thinks she has. When she enters it for the first time, it seems that she is provided with some knowledge about the place. The source of the knowledge is not mentioned in the text, nevertheless it makes the girl sure that once she enters the wood, “The Erl-King will do (her) grievous harm.” (85) The knowledge models her perception of the wood and of the Erl-King and makes her convinced that she will not come out of it with no harm. The first time she enters the wood, she perceives feelings of curiosity and desire. But her perception of the wood and of the Erl-King is shaped by her knowledge. She is convinced that the Erl-King will destroy her. Despite that fact, she has sex with him, she always goes to the Erl-King and he “lays (her) down on his bed of rustling straw where

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I lie at the mercy of his huge hands. This situation makes her more afraid, but not of the Erl-King, the thing she is afraid of is her desire. As Linkin6 says: The protagonist fears her all-too-willing complicity in succumbing to an intensly erotic desire whose successive waves seem to break down the walls of her selfhood and make her dependent on the erl-king‟s pleasure for her existence.” In the text the main heroine describes this situation as follows: “I am not afraid of him; only, afraid of vertigo, of the vertigo with which he seizes me. Afraid of falling down” (BC 88). As it was already mentioned, the girl is convinced that the Erl-King will do her grievous harm. She thinks the Erl-King will change her into a bird and enclose her in a cage: I have seen the cage you are weaving for me; it is a very pretty one and I shall sit, hereafter, in my cage among the other singing birds but – I shall be mute, from spite. When I realized what the Erl-King meant to do me, I was shaken with a terrible fear and I did not know what to do for I loved him with all my heart and yet I had no wish to join the whistling congregation he kept in his cages although he looked after them very affectionately, gave them fresh water everyday and fed them well … in his innocence he never knew he might be the death of me, although I knew from the first moment I saw him how Erl-King would do me grievous harm. (90) She refuses to accept this state of affairs and as Linkin7 says: anticipating her entrapment in a cage …the protagonist envisions, finally, an alternate ending to the murderous plot … in which she strangles the erl king with

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Linkin, Harriet. “Isn't It Romantic?: Angela Carter's Bloody Revision of the Romantic Aesthetic in "The Erl-King".“ Contemporary Literature. Vol.35. No. 2. Wisconsin: U. of Wisconsin P. 1994, 309. 7 Ibid., 308.

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his own long hair before she loses her integral self to the image mirrored back in his mesmerizing eyes So for the second time, she enters the wood because of her belief. She wants to kill the Erl-King in order to stay free and have her own voice, her own importance. As Linkin8 says: Ultimately the protagonist of “The Erl-King” can only imagine exchanging the female for the male in her solution: rather than die into emblematic nature or turn into a reflection, she intends to kill him … she must go further than blinding and maiming the erl-king if she would be more than his eyes and amusement, she must kill him … to find her own voice.

In The Lady of the House of Love the reason why the young army officer enters the castle is simple – it is his tiredness. As the night arrives, he “hopes to find a friendly inn to rest the night; he‟s hot, hungry, thirsty, weary, dusty” (BC 96). He is disappointed when he finds out that the village he enters is shabby and deserted, but the notion of a place full of secrets together with the beauty of that place at sunset pleases his adventurous nature. He stops at the fountain in the village where he wants to refresh himself. At the sight of clear, bright water springing out of the fountain he did not hesitate and “washed his feet and hands, applied his mouth to the faucet, then let the icy stream run over his face” (98). After that he saw the mute servant of the countess who invited him to the castle.

The reason for entering the circus in Lizzie’s Tiger is Lizzie‟s desire to see the tiger. She knew she must see that place since the time when she saw a poster announcing the 8

Ibid., 310.

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circus to come. “As soon as Lizzie saw the poster, she wanted to go to the circus…“ (AG 5) But since neither her sister, nor Lizzie did not have any money to pay for the ticket , the only possible way how to achieve her goal was an escape. The naivety connected to her low age caused, that Lizzie did not realize any danger she could have been exposed to.

In John Ford’s Tis Pity She’s a Whore the main heroes do not enter the secret area from their own free will. They were born to that place and this fact affects their behaviour. The fact they have grown up in a solitary place with no one to guide them makes it possible

Gun for Devil offers another reason for entering a secret place. It is revenge that forces the young piano player to leave Vienna and move to the Mexican border town. The vindictive pianist carefully plans how to get back at Mendoza, the bandit responsible for his parents‟ death, who “tore the earrings from his mother‟s ears. And raped her. And somebody (of his bandits) shot his father when he tried to stop the rape. And then they shot the mother because she was screaming so loudly”(52). The pianist was not present to this villainy, but all the more he wants to get his revenge. He knows no boundary that could stop him in fulfilling his plan, he is blind with anger and does not care of any possible consequences of his well-planned revenge. He knows only that he “shall seduce the beautiful senorita (Mendoza‟s daughter) and give her a baby. And if (he) can‟t shoot her father and mother, (he) shall find some way of strangling them with (his) beautiful pianist hands” (52).

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The alchemists in Alice in Prague or The Curious Room enter the alchemists‟ laboratory because they in a sense belong to that place. They have abilities, such as to communicate with animals or to see angels, which actually make them members of the Archduke‟s collection as well. Here in the curious room, where anything is possible, they do not differ, they are perfectly normal.

As this chapter showed, reasons for entering the secret areas vary from person to person. The persons open the secret areas either from their free will, or because they are forced to do so. In the first case, they enter the secret areas because of their curiosity and seek for knowledge, because of their own desire, because of their adventurous nature or because they seek for revenge. In the other case, secret areas are entered because of obedience, necessity, adventure or seek for revenge. In one case, the main protagonists do not have the option whether to enter the area or not, since they are borne to the secret area.

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7. Qualities Shared by People Entering the Secret Areas

The aim of this chapter is to discuss resemblances between persons entering secret areas. In three parts this chapter discusses similarities in terms of their physical appearance, their virginity combined with naivety; and also the namelessness of many characters the thesis works with.

Let us begin with similarities in terms of physical appearance. Persons that enter secret areas are mainly females – except for John Ford’s Tis Pity She’s a Whore where the secret area is entered/occupied by a female (Annie-Belle) and a male (Johnny), and Gun for Devil where the person entering the secret place – in this case a village- is a male pianist. All girls appearing in stories the thesis deals with are described as young and pretty. There is not much attention paid to the heroine of The Bloody Chamber, she is described as17-year old girl with hair thee colour of mice and pianist fingers. Beauty in The Courtship of Mr Lyon is described more in detail - as a person of “absolute sweetness and absolute gravity, as if her eyes might pierce appearances and see through your soul,“ (BC 44) as someone who looked “as if she had been carved out of a single pearl” (48). The daughter in The Tiger’s Bride is being referred to as to “the pretty one, with … glossy, nut-brown curls … rosy cheeks“ (52). Lizzie in Lizzie’s tiger is a 4-year old girl and therefore is sentenced to be regarded as adorable. Annie-Belle in John Ford’s Tis Pity She’s a Whore is blond, freckled, growing to beauty. Also the two boys – Johnnie and the pianist – share these qualities. Johnnie is, such as his sister, blond and freckled, the pianist is a handsome, nice boy. Carter in her writings tries to point out some of the stereotypical representations of women. In traditional fairytales and in many stories they were usually described as

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beautiful but silly, and therefore unable to achieve anything. Carter shows an alternative to these stereotypical representations – her female heroinees can be both beautiful and clever, and able to survive. Just to give an example - the girl in The Bloody Chamber is able to get across her experience with her husband and establish a school for the blind; the girl in The Erl-King changes and is able to take destiny into her own hands and kill the Erl-King instead of being killed; Lizzie, though only four years old, makes it to the circus all alone; and Annie-Belle would probably successfully begin a new life if she had not been killed.

Another quality shared by persons entering the secret areas is, that almost all of them are regarded as naïve and not experienced of life, except maybe for the girl in The Erl-King. Although she is not directly described as experienced, she seems to be so. She has “nicotine-stained fingers” and describes the wood with words that would be unknown to someone inexperienced. According to her, the light strikes the woods with ”dour spooks on the discoloured brambles,” the trees “have an anorexic look,” the cold is “lancinating,” the weather invokes “a sickroom hush” (84). As Linkin9 says, “a surprisingly strong hint of corruption underscores the first paragraph‟s conventionally Romantic description of autumnal nature in series of carefully interspersed modifiers whose cumulative excess points to a potentially decadent perspective. But let us get back to the notion of naivety and inexperience. The main heroine of The Bloody Chamber is a virgin and has her first ever sexual experience in her husband‟s castle. She is naïve in a sense she did not have much experience in her life so far. Also the main heroinees from The Courtship of Mr Lyon, The Tiger’s Bride or Lizzie’s Tiger share this lack of life experience and are virgins, and the army officer in

9

Ibid,. 311.

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The army officer in The Lady of the House of Love is naïve and innocent as well. He is described as someone having “the special quality of virginity, most and least ambiguous of states: ignorance, yet at the same time, power in potential, and, furthermore, unknowingness, which is not the same as ignorance.” (BC 97) This description can be actually used for all characters just mentioned. They all share this combination of ignorance and unknowingness. And once again, Carter here shows alternatives to the stereotypical representations of young naïve people and makes the reader aware that despite these qualities, the young and naïve people are able to take their lives into their hands.

Another quality common to most of the discussed characters is their namelessness. The main characters that appear in The Bloody Chamber, The Tiger’s Bride, The ErlKing, The Lady of the House of Love are nameless. In connection to this, it is also important to mention, that except for The Lady of the House of Love, the main characters are also narrators of their stories. The fact that the nameless main heroines of the stories are also the narrators implies that they, despite their naivety and innocence, managed it to get through difficult situations and to establish themselves as eligible personalities. As Linkin10 says “the narrator is not the passive young woman most critics take her to be but someone who is exploring her subject position and beginning to tell her own story.

Most of the persons entering secret areas are females. They are pretty young girls, mainly virgins, almost all of them are regarded as naïve and not experienced of life. The same qualities are found also by male heroes of the stories. Most of the heroinees are 10

Linkin, Harriet. “Rewiew: Telling Tales about Angela Carter.” Contemporary Literature, Vol. 44, No. 2. Wisconsin: U. of Wisconsin P. 2003, 324.

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nameless. This is connected to the fact that they, despite their youth and naivety, were able to establish themselves and therefore become narrators of the stories. That they changed from innocent to experienced.

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8. Consequences of Entering the Secret Areas

In the discussed stories, the act of entering secret areas does not stay without consequences. The experience of entering secret areas changes the main characters‟ lives to some extent, and the change caused by getting acquainted with the secret area and its contents is the subject of this chapter. For the main heroine in The Bloody Chamber, the consequences of entering the secret areas are dual. The immediate consequence is learning about the true nature of her husband, since she does not know anything about him until she enters several secret areas and takes the final view of him. A long-term consequence resulting from entering the secret areas is her change from naïve girl to a woman who is able to take care of herself as well as of other people, and who is able to build career. In The Courtship of Mr Lyon, the change is also of dual character. First, Beast helps Beauty‟s father out of poverty, and thus the first consequence is the improvement of living and financial conditions of Beauty and her father. Then, after Beast allows Beauty to visit her father, she forgets about everything and gradually changes into a spoiled child, aware of her own beauty. As the dog comes to her to signalize that something is wrong, she as if instantly grows up, realizes have not kept her promise, and hurries to the Beast because she realizes she loves him. Beast had taught her to be tolerant and not to judge someone on the basis of his physical appearance; it changed her from an obedient child to a grown-up woman and a loving wife to be. As Carter11 in her revision of Beauty and the Beast says “Beast shows traditionally female attributes of delicate respect for Beauty‟s feelings, nurturance, comfort, gentleness and patience, all

11

Carter, Angela. “Rewiev: Beauty and the Beast: Visions and Revisions of an Old Tale.” Folklore, Vol. 102, No. 1, Unknown: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 1991, 124.

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of which he has learned through a humbling experience … Beauty must learn the same.” And finally, the most significant consequence of entering the secret area touches Beast. The moment Beauty kisses the Beast, because she thinks he will die, the moment she realizes she loves him, and Beast changes from lion to a handsome man. In The Tiger’s Bride, the situation is pretty much the same as in The Courtship of Mr Lyon. The main heroine‟s stay in the Beast‟s castle means an escape from financial difficulties for her father. It is a question, however, whether this consequence is good for him, since he is a passionate gambler. For the main heroine, the change is both psychological and physical. As in the previous case, the Beast‟s gentle nature influences the girl. And again, as in the previous case, the moment the girl sees the Beast dying, she realizes she loves him. The tiger starts to lick the girl‟s skin, here the licking serves as a substitute for a human kiss. And such as the soldier‟s kiss changed the vampire lady, and Beauty‟s kiss changed Beast, the act of licking changes the girl into a feline. For the nameless protagonist of the The Erl-King is finding power to change her destiny. She is sure that the encounter with the Erl-King would cause damage to her. She, as she thinks, would be changed into a bird and entrapped in a cage. She would therefore lose her personality and her free will. She refuses to accept this destiny and decides to change it. The only possible way for her to do so is to kill the Erl-King. “ The consequence resulting from entering the castle is crucial for the countess in The Lady of the House of Love. As the reader gets from the text, the only thing she dreams of is to be human but she doubts it is possible: “in her dream, she would like to be human; but she does not know if that is possible”(BC 95). The meeting with the young army officer gives her hope for her dream to come true: When you (the army officer) came through the door retaining about you all the golden light of the summer‟s day of which I know nothing, nothing, the card

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called „Les Amoureux‟ had just emerged from the tumbling chaos of imagery before me; it seemed to me you had stepped off the card into my darkness and, for a moment, I thought, perhaps, you might irradiate it (103) She hopes that the army officer could bring her out of the never-ending life in darkness, that he could make her human. But she still doubts whether this change is possible: “And could love free me from the shadows? Can a bird sing only one song it knows, or can it learn a new song?” (103). At one point, the countess invites the officer to her bedroom, she cleans her dark glasses, they “slip from her fingers and smash to pieces on the floor“ (106). As she is trying to gather their fragments, she cuts her finger: “a sharp silver pierces deeply into the pad of her thumb; she cries out, sharp, real. She kneels among the broken glass and watches the bright bead of blood from a drop. She has never seen her own blood before, not her own blood”(106). At this moment she realizes that something has changed. But that is not the ending of changes. As Carter writes: he (the officer) is an exorcism. He gently takes her hand away and dabs the blood with his own handkerchief, but still it spurs out. And so he puts his mouth to the wound. He will kiss it better for her, as her mother, had she lived, would have done (106) The kiss breaks the spell that was cast on her and her family. There is a sentence appearing several times through the text of this story – “One kiss, however, and only one, woke up the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood” Nevertheless, the kiss makes her human, but this change kills her. The officer founds her not sleeping – as he thought. “In death, she looked far older, less beautiful and so, for the first time, fully human” (107). As would the countess say, love freed her from the shadows. Therefore the fact that the officer decided to enter her castle made it possible for her to become human and escape her solitude.

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For Lizzie in Lizzie’s Tiger “her confrontation with (the tiger), and its tamer, leads to a "sudden access of enlightenment" about power and its exercise in the world”12 She sees that although the tiger still keeps its beastly nature, it can be tamed via entrapment and via the usage of compulsory measures. As the tamer says: I‟m not half so scared of the big brute as it is of me! … For I bring to bear upon its killer instinct a rational man‟s knowledge of the power of fear. … in my cage, among my cats, I have established the hierarchy of FEAR and among my cats you might as well say I am TOP DOG, because I know that all the time they want to kill me… but as for them, they just don‟t know what I might do next (AG 17-18)

For all the protagonists of John Ford’s Tis Pity She’s a Whore, consequences of not entering but living in a secret area are tragic. The solitude of the place where they live together with their love towards each other brings Johnnie and Annie-Belle closer together. As Carter writes, “when they were children, all they knew was they loved each other just as, surely, a brother or a sister should” (23). But when their mother died, they lost her guidance to what to do and what no, and also the contact with the outer world. Because of their lack of knowledge and experience in life, they make incestuous love. They were not told that it is not allowed to do this. “How did they know what to do? From watching the cows with the bull, the bitch with the dog, the hen with the cock” (25). But they feel it was not legitimate. They thought, then, that they should kill themselves, together now, before they did it (made love); they remembered tumbling together in infancy, how their

12

Faulkner

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mother laughed to see their kisses, their embraces, when they were too young to know thy should not do it, yet even in their loneliness on the enormous plain they knew they must not do it… do what? (25) They vow fidelity to each other: Annabella: On my knees, / Brother, even by our mother‟s dust, I charge you / Do not betray me to your mirth or hate. / Love me, or kill me, brother. Giovanni: On my knees, / Sister, even by our mother‟s dust, I charge you / Do not betray me to your mirth or hate. / Love me, or kill me, sister. (25) Later when Annie-Belle gets pregnant with her brother, she realizes that marrying the priest‟s son could give her an opportunity to begin a new life. She thinks she could learn to love him and decides to marry him. Soon after the wedding ceremony is AnnieBelle‟s pregnancy revealed and the young couple decides to west, where “she would bear her child and he would love it. Then she would bear their children” (36). Nevertheless, Johnnie cannot reconcile himself to the fact that his sister got married, that she is leaving and that she told him that “it was wrong, what (they) did” (39), that it was a sin. For him, who loves his sister, who hungers after her, it is a betrayal. He does not want to let her go for he thinks Annie-Belle belongs to him: “He (the minister‟s son) shan‟t have you. He‟ll never have you. Here‟s where you belong, with me. Out here” (42). As a result of this, on the day of the married couple‟s departure, Johnnie kills his brother-in-low, his sister and himself as well.

Also Gun for Devil belongs to stories where the consequence of entering a secret place is fatal. The pianist Johnny enters the nameless Mexican border town because of revenge for the brutal homicide of his parents. This fact alone indicates that the story will end in tragedy. Johnny comes to that town not only because of Mendoza and his

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bandits – the killers of his parents, but also because of the count, who became a legend back in Europe and who is said to have a contract with Devil guaranteeing that any bullet fired from his gun will not miss its target. After the first part of Johnny‟s revenge – seduction of Mendoza‟s daughter Teresa – is done, the count helps Johnny with the ritual of evoking the Devil, who will equip Johnny with a gun that will never miss its target. During the ritual “… hallucinatory figures emerge and merge, figures of demons or gods not necessarily those of Europe” (58). Then an Indian emerges and delivers the promised gun to Johnny. A gun with seven bullets. The Devil “will fire the seventh shot for you (Johnny), even though you pull the trigger. But the other six can‟t miss their targets. Though you‟ve (Johnny) never used a gun before” (59). Johnny wastes one of the bullets right at that moment, because he wants to know, whether what he just learned about the gun is true. With 6 bullets left, he goes to Theresa‟s marriage the next day. He shoots Mendoza, his wife and a few of his men. At this moment appears the count with his gun that the Devil once gave him, with the last bullet left. He aims at Johnny, but the bullet kills Teresa. Johnny runs away from the city where he meets the Indian that gave him the gun, who tells him: “I was waiting for you … We have some business to conclude” (65). This statement invokes that also Johnny will die.

The consequences of the alchemists‟ entering the curious room in Alice in Prague or The Curious Room are not crucial at all, since the place they enter is a nonsensical one, a world of its own where nothing is impossible and anything is impossible. All persons, creatures and objects that can be found in that place transgress the rules of logical sense. They just exist there, among other nonsensical persons, creatures and objects, and therefore, in this nonsensical environment, they have a sense. So for the alchemists who enter the curious room the consequence of their entering of that place is the loss of their

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“strangeness” within the ordinary world and the act of becoming members of the world which appears to be natural to them.

The consequences of entering the secret areas are various. For some of the heroines the act of entering the secret areas means a change from naïve girls to women who are able to take care of themselves as well as of other people, and who are able to build career. For some of them the entering of secret areas means a change –both psychological and physical. And finally, for many characters the consequences of entering the secret areas are fatal.

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Conclusion

The aim of this thesis was to discuss secret areas in reversible fairytales and legends from short story collections The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories and American Ghosts and Old World Wonders by Angela Carter.

As the thesis shows, the secret areas appear in various forms. These can be buildings – mainly aristocratic manors; marked out places – such as obscure villages; and physically existing areas – that are represented by woods for instance. Also the reasons why the places can be regarded as secret areas vary. To name just some of the reasons, it is because the places offer information leading to finding out the true nature of its inhabitants; because of the appearance of the places that is rather old and invoking mystery, because the places are existing independently of the outer world – because they are worlds of their own; because of the fact that the inhabitants of these places live there in order to hide themselves or to escape from their past. The secret areas discussed in the thesis have certain features in common. They are situated in solitary places, they are lonely and invoke the notion of darkness. The difference of the inhabitants or visitors of these areas makes them lonely, and the solitary situation together with dark atmosphere makes it possible to hide many things, and makes the secret areas worlds of their own. Every entity that is found in the secret areas and also every act that takes place there is strongly connected with the secret areas themselves. Usually, the appearance of the secret areas mirrors the basis of the entities. Also the acts, whether the sexual ones or those of marriage or revenge that happen there, carry the notion of secrecy, since it is omnipresent in the areas and it infiltrates everywhere.

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The entities that are connected to the secret areas share some qualities in terms of their physical appearance. There are also psychological resemblances between them to be found. The act of marriage is surprisingly similar in all cases that are mentioned in the text – both in terms of reasons for entering the marriage and in terms of tragic endings of all marriages. Finally, no resemblance is found between the acts of sexual intercourse that were discussed in this chapter as well. Most of the persons entering secret areas are females. They are pretty young girls, mainly virgins, almost all of them are regarded as naïve and not experienced in life. The same qualities are found also in male heroes of the stories. Most of the heroines are nameless. This is connected to the fact that they, despite their youth and naivety, were able to establish themselves and therefore become narrators of the stories and that they changed from innocent to experienced. The reasons for entering the secret areas vary from person to person. The persons open the secret areas either from their free will, or because they are forced to do so. In the first case, they enter the secret areas because of their curiosity and seek for knowledge, because of their own desire, because of their adventurous nature or because they seek for revenge. In the second case, secret areas are entered because of obedience, necessity, adventure or seek for revenge. In the third case, the main protagonists do not have the option whether to enter the area or not, since they are borne to the secret area. The consequences of entering the secret areas are various. For some of the heroines the act of entering the secret areas means a change from naïve girls to women who are able to take care of themselves as well as of other people, and who are able to build career. For some of them the entering of secret areas means a change – both psychological and physical. And finally, for many characters the consequences of entering the secret areas are fatal.

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English Résumé

Angela Carter was a brilliant novelist who, among other things, collected and edited fairy tales and legends. She wrote reversionary versions of these fairy tales and legends in order to draw attention on cultural stereotypes which appear in their original versions in large numbers. The new versions of fairy tales and legends which were edited by Carter and the images and stories appearing in them as Betsy Draine13 says ”both carry with them the history of their previous use in the literary tradition and mean, for each reader, in relation to current material, cultural, and political conditions.” The aim of this thesis is to discuss secret areas in reversible fairytales and legends from short story collections “The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories” and “American Ghosts and Old World Wonders” by Angela Carter. The thesis works with an idea, that there exist secret areas which should better not be entered. It is necessary to mention, that the term “secret” used through the thesis refers rather to a fact that is unknown about something, than to a piece of information known only by one or a few persons and should not be distributed any further. The thesis discusses various forms in which the secret areas appear in the short stories. It separately discusses the notion of secrecy in buildings, places, persons and institutions, and also the qualities shared by these areas. The thesis further pays attention to entities that can be found in these areas. It also works with persons entering the secret areas, discusses their reasons for doing so and studies the qualities shared by these persons. Finally, the thesis pays attention to consequences resulting from entering secret areas.

13

Draine, 335

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Czech Résumé

Angela Carterová byla vynikající novelistkou, která, krom jiných věcí, také sbírala a editoval pohádky a legendy. Psala obrácené verze těchto pohádek a legend s cílem upozornit na kulturní stereotypy, které se v hojném počtu objevují v jejich originálních verzích. Nové verze pohádek a legend které Carterová přepsala, a vyobrazení a příběhy které se v těchto nových verzích nacházejí, s sebou podle Betsy Drainové14 „nesou jak nádech jejich původního použití v průběhu literárních dějin, tak i jejich hodnotu v souvislosti se současným kulturním a politickým děním. Cílem této bakalářské práce je rozbor tajných oblastí v převrácených pohádkách a legendách z kolekcí povídek “The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories” and “American Ghosts and Old World Wonders”spisovatelky Angely Carterové. Tato bakalářská práce se zabývá ideou existence tajných oblastí, do kterých by sse raději nemělo vstupovat. Je nezbytné zmínit, že termín „tajemný,“ který se vyskytuje napříč bakalářskou prací, odkazuje ne na tajemství sdílené pouze několika osobami, ale na neznámá a nezveřejněná fakta o něčem. Tato bakalářská práce se zabývá různými formami podob, jaké na sebe berou tajné oblasti které se objevují v rozebíraných povídkách. Bakalářská práce dále věnuje pozornost bytostem, které se vyskytují v těchto tajných oblastech. Také se zabývá osobami, které do tajných oblastí vstupují, a rozebírá, z jakých důvodů tak již zmíněné osoby činí. V svém závěru věnuje bakalářská práce pozornost důsledkům, které plynou z faktu, že někdo vstoupil do tajné oblasti.

14

Draine, 335

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Works Cited

Carter, Angela. American Ghosts and Old World Wonders. London: Chatto and Windus Ltd, 1993. Carter, Angela. The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories. London: Penguin Books, 1981. Carter, Angela. “Review: Beauty and the Beast: Visions and Revisions of an Old Tale.” Folklore, Vol. 102, No. 1, Unknown: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 1991, 123-124. JSTOR. April 2010 . Drane, Betsy. “Review: Angela Carter and Kathy Acker: Not a Eulogy.” Contemporary Literature. Vol. 44, No. 2. Wisconsin: U. of Wisconsin P. 2003. 332-339. JSTOR. April 2010 . Faulkner, Peter. "Angela Carter: Overview." Reference Guide to Short Fiction. Ed. Noelle Watson. Detroit: St. James Press, 1994. Literature Resource Center. Web. 27 Mar. 2010. . Kaiser, Mary. "Fairy Tale as Sexual Allegory: Intertextuality in Angela Carter's 'The Bloody Chamber'." The Review of Contemporary Fiction 14.3 (Fall 1994): 30-36. Rpt. in Short Stories for Students. Ed. Kathleen Wilson and Marie Lazzari. Vol. 4. Detroit: Gale, 1998. Literature Resource Center. Web. 27 Mar. 2010. .

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Laroche, Rebecca. "An overview of 'The Bloody Chamber,'." Gale Online Encyclopedia. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 27 Mar. 2010. . Linkin, Harriet. “Isn't It Romantic?: Angela Carter's Bloody Revision of the Romantic Aesthetic in "The Erl-King".“ Contemporary Literature. Vol.35. No. 2. Wisconsin: U. of Wisconsin P. 1994, 305-323. JSTOR. April 2010 < http://www.jstor.org/stable/1208841>. Linkin, Harriet. “Rewiew: Telling Tales about Angela Carter.” Contemporary Literature, Vol. 44, No. 2. Wisconsin: U. of Wisconsin P. 2003, 340-344. JSTOR. April 2010 . Makinen, Merja. "Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber and the Decolonisation of Feminine Sexuality." Angela Carter. Ed. Alison Easton. Basingstoke, England: Macmillan, 2000. 20-36. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 85. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Literature Resource Center. Web. 27 Mar. 2010. . Teverson, Andrew. "'Mr. Fox' and 'The White Cat': The Forgotten Voices in Angela Carter's Fiction." Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies 5.2 (1999): 209-222. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 85. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Literature Resource Center. Web. 16 Apr. 2010. .

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