Beyond this site
Critical reading
AO5 asks for other readers, and the best of them live elsewhere. Everything on this page is a road out: the links open the essay, episode or document at its source, because the critics are in copyright and belong where they were published. Read there; bring back notes on the sheet at the bottom of this page.
Start with these
Three doors out
Femme fatale: Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber
Helen Simpson’s introduction to the collection, and the single most useful starting point: the tales as new stories rather than re-tellings, the demythologising project, and the sources behind each story.
Podcast · London Review of Books ↗Fiction and the Fantastic: J. G. Ballard and Angela Carter
Carter set beside a contemporary who also used the fantastic as social criticism. Listen with Exit West in mind: the fantastic as argument is exactly the AO4 bridge that pairing needs.
On this siteThe library: out-of-copyright source texts
Perrault’s Blue Beard in its first English translation and Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication, with the passages that matter most for Carter, hosted here in full extract because their copyright has long expired.
The critics
Four critical voices, each worth reading or hearing in full. Record every one you use on the bibliography sheet below, and remember the rule of AO5: a critic is tested against your own reading, never just quoted.
- Marina Warner, ‘Chamber of Secrets: The Sorcery of Angela Carter’ ↗ (The Paris Review, 2012). The fairy-tale tradition and the Gothic fused; Carter’s conspiratorial imperative voice; the collection as sorcery rather than subversion alone.
- Hannah Wardle, ‘Critiques of the Sadean Male in Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber’ ↗ (Polyphony, 2019). Answers Duncker’s ‘straight-jacket’ attack head on: the fairy-tale form as Carter’s weapon, read closely through the title story and ‘The Snow Child’.
- Dr Helen Stoddart, Carter: The Bloody Chamber ↗ (MASSOLIT video lectures). A full lecture course on the collection; sign in with your school’s MASSOLIT login to watch the whole series.
- Rosalyn Stilling, ‘Hypermasculinity and the Fetishized Male’ in The Bloody Chamber. Shared in lessons: masculinity itself as costume and fetish, a strong counterweight when your essay turns to the Marquis, the Count or the beasts.
Watch: Carter in her own voice
Carter talking to Lisa Appignanesi at the ICA: Freud, Sade, socialism, and what the old tales do to women. Short, sharp, and a reminder that the writer of these stories argued for a living. The film plays from YouTube below; if it does not load, watch it there.
Embedded material plays from its host and stays there; nothing is copied to this site. The same rule applies to anything you cite: link or reference, never lift.
How to use a critic
A critic in an essay is a sparring partner, never a substitute for your own reading. Quote a short phrase, name the critic, then take a position: agree and push the idea further, or disagree and show the passage that resists it. ‘As Simpson argues’ followed by agreement earns little; ‘Simpson calls these new stories, yet The Snow Child keeps the old tale’s shape almost untouched’ is an argument.
Keep a record as you read
The annotated bibliography sheet turns reading into material: source, argument, a quotable line, and how your essay will use it. Print it, or download an editable copy and type into it.
The rules of the record
- Record every critic and source while you read it, not from memory afterwards
- Keep the critic’s words and your words visibly separate, so nothing strays into the essay unattributed
- Note exactly where the source lives (book and page, or the address of the page online)
- Write the reference in full now; the bibliography then writes itself
Sources read
| Source: author, title, year, where found | Its argument, in one sentence | A line worth quoting (short, with page) | How I will use it: agree, extend or challenge |
|---|---|---|---|
AO5 rewards a critic tested, not a critic pasted in. The last column is the one the examiner reads in your essay: it is where a source becomes part of your argument.