"Bluebeard" and "The Bloody Chamber": The Grotesque of Self-Parody and Self-Assertion Author(s): Kari E.

Lokke Source: Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1 (1988), pp. 7-12 Published by: University of Nebraska Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3345932 Accessed: 19/11/2010 21:16
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=unp. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

University of Nebraska Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies.

http://www.jstor.org

Bluebeardand The Bloody Chamber: The Grotesqueof Self-Parodyand Self-Assertion

Kari E. Lokke
Like many fairy tale motifs, the Bluebeardlegend is grotesquein essence.Thistaleof the wealthy, seeminglychivalrous aristocratwho murdersseven young brides and inters them in his cellarbringstogetherviolence and love, perversionand innocence, deathand marriagein an unsettlingcombination. of The intermingling seeminglyincongruous elementsandthe of juxtaposition oppositeschallengeaudienceexpectationand habits of thinking in a manner typical of the grotesque as definedby theoristsas variedas Wolfgang Kayserand Mikhail Bakhtin. 1 As readerswe expect the grotesquein fairy tales, perhaps becausethesestoriesaredisplaced a never-never beyond to land the demandsof logic andverisimilitude. And if Bakhtinis corand rect in assertingthat the grotesqueaestheticin literature art is an outgrowthof medievalcarnivals,folk festivals, and of then the reasonsfor the predominance the popularculture,2 In grotesquein folktalesbecome self-evident. the MiddleAges and the Renaissance,Bakhtinsuggests, the grotesquehad an of function,for thejuxtaposition oppositesbroke emancipatory down false societalandideologicalbarriers expose the truth to of life's unpredictability spontaneityand to celebratethe and unityandpowerof thatlife in all its most corporealmanifestations. Bakhtinsees Kayser's"timelessconceptionof the grotesque"3 as an attempt to project the modem grotesque backwardsinto history.In this modem grotesqueas defined by both theorists,the juxtapositionof incongruouselements a pointsto a fundamental absurdity, terrifyingemptiness,and even a demonic disorder in the universe. we Perhaps tend, as moderns,to tell ourselvesthatthe world of the fairytale is not our own, buta morenaiveandprimitive one of long ago and far away. Witness Charles Perrault, defender the modemsagainstthe ancientsin the seventeenthof centuryQuerelledes Ancienset des Modernes,tryingto comfort himself and his readerwith this ironic moral to his own of tale: "Itis easy to see thatthe events rendering the Bluebeard describedin this storytook place manyyearsago. No modern husbandwould dare be half so terrible,nor to demandof his wife such an impossiblething as to stifle her curiosity.Be he ever so quarrelsomeor jealous, he'll toe the line as soon as she tells him to. And whatevercolour his beardmight be, it's easy to see which of the two is the master."4 In fact, two contemporary authors,Angela Carterand Max Frisch, seem to disagreewith Perrault's urbane,sensible, and tale. Carter attitude toward grisly Bluebeard the "enlightened" in TheBloody Chamberand Frischin Bluebeardhaveplaced this ancientfairytale motif at the heartof recentnovellaswith aboutviolence, the obviousintentof makingstrongstatements and lonelinessin contemporary maleexploitation,alienation, female relationships.Neither Carternor Frisch makes Perrault'scavalierassumption thata wife is alwaysher husband's "master." Carterstates in the forewordto her translation As of Perrault's tales, "Eachcenturytends to createor re-create fairy tales after its own taste."5And in its own image, one might add for emphasis. of tale These two recreations the Bluebeard certainlyreflect differentauthorialstances and backgrounds.Max strikingly Frisch, along with Friedrich Diirrenmatt,one of the most and Swiss authors, uses prominent best knownof contemporary his publisheddiaries and diary-likenovels, includingStiller, Homo FaberandMontauk,to underminethe rational,empirical conceptionof self as a logical, coherent,definableentity. Frisch'sworkrepresents position,bothprivilegedandunenthe viable, of the male heir to the Westernpatriarchaltradition

Kari E. Lokkewilljoin thefaculty of the University California,Davis in September1988 as assistantprofessor of English of and comparative literature. Her recentlypublishedbook G6rardde Nerval: The Poet as Social Visionary (French Forum, 1987) discusses the political implicationsof Nerval's mysticism.Thearticlepublishedhere is relatedto her currentresearchinterests in the aesthetics of the grotesqueand the sublime.Kari Lokkeis gratefulto the EditorialBoard of FRONTIERS insightful for novella. on that in commentary The Bloody Chamber allowedher to makesignificantimprovements her analysisof this remarkable Vol. FRONTIERS X, No.1 o 1988FRONTIERS Collective Editorial

FRONTIERS

who examinesand describes the dissolution of that intellectual and political tradition. The Englishiconoclastand feminist, Angela Carter,on the the other nand, consistentlyrepresents outsiderin her novels, short stories, and essays. "Black Venus,"for example, is an Creole mistress. eerie portraitof JeanneDuval, Baudelaire's "The Cabinet of Edgar Allan Poe" gives us Elizabethand and Virginia Poe, the motherand wife of the celebrated haunted writer.TheSadeian Woman examinesthe culturalsignificance of the life and writingsof the Marquisde Sade. A twentiethcenturyMadamedAulnoy,Cartertakesmythand folklore,the world of collective subjectivity,as her inspiration.From her fantasticFireworks tales to her carnivalesque novelNights at the Circus,Carter's writingsbringthe vitalityof whatBakhtin Britishliterature calls "popular culture"into contemporary by the motifs of myth and folklore into the language translating of the sophisticated aesthete.Thus the collection TheBloody of Chamber containsrenderings severalwell-known fairytales, and including"Puss-in-Boots" "LittleRed RidingHood,"as well as the title story that retells the tale of Bluebeard. In the folktale,Bluebeard a wealthymerchant king who is or marriesand then murdersa series of wives, usually threeor seven. After marriage,each wife is given the key to a forbidden chamberof horrorswhere the formerwives are interred, and, of course, each wife breaksthe taboo and entersthe forbiddenroom when the husbandis absent.The "disobedience" of each wife is, in turn, betrayedwhen the key becomes indelibly bloody. Finally,the cycle is brokenwhen the last wife is saved and Bluebeardhimself murdered,by the bride, her brothers,or a page, dependingupon the specific version of the tale. Bluebeard is a widespreadEuropeanfolktale with many variants-German,French,Basque,andEstonian,to namebut a few. In Norwaythe husbandis a troll, in Italy,a devil, and in an ancientGreek version, death itself. Accordingto Funk and and Wagnall's Dictionaryof Folklore,Mythology Legend, the centralmotif of the story is the brokentaboo, the forbidden chambermotif.6 CharlesPerrault seems to agree, for his first moral to the story reads as a warningto young wives: "Curiosityis a charmingpassion, but may only be satisfied at the price of a thousand regrets;one sees aroundone a thouis sandexamplesof this sad trutheveryday.Curiosity the most fleeting of pleasures;the moment it is satisfied, it ceases to exist and it alwaysprovesvery, very expensive."7 Carter But and Frisch seem much less willing to place the womanin the wrong,8 and for them it is the murderoushusbandor the murderous that and marriage is the objectof interest criticism. These two novellashaveothersignificant similarities besides thematicones. Each is a structural stylistic tourdeforce, and the Cartertext throughgrotesqueoverstatement excess, and the Frischthroughequallyextremesparseness,reticence,and understatement. Each text has a strong element of grotesque symbolism, with much of the symbolism presentedtonguein-cheek.And finally,powerfulironyandparodyof traditional are plot and narrative expectations essentialto bothBluebeard and TheBloody Chamber.Yet if the similaritiesbetweenthe two works are important,the tonaldifferencesare even more striking. Frisch'sgrotesqueis closer to the modern conception of the grotesquebornof Romanticintrospection, individualism, and alienation,whereas Carter'sis more akin to the original, emancipatoryRenaissancegrotesque called "grotesque realism" by Bakhtin.

Both novellas are told in the first person, a point of view foreign to the traditionalfolktale. But these two first-person narrativeperspectivesseem to have almost nothing in common. TheBloody Chamber the intenseandbreathless is retelling of a young girl's seductioninto and escape from a deadly The readeris pulledinto the flow of the lush, erotic, marriage. rhythmicprose from this first remarkablesentence: I remember thatnight,I lay awake the wagon-lit in in how, a tender, delicious of cheek ecstasy excitement, burning my the linenof the pillowandthe pressedagainst impeccable of that pounding my heartmimicking of the greatpistons the that the ceaselessly thrusting train boreme through night, fromgirlhood, awayfromParis,away awayfromthe white, enclosed of into quietude mymother's apartment, theunguessablecountry marriage.9 of Eachdetail-from the pallid,fleshywhitenessof her husband's face, to his leather-bound library,to the "cruel pornographic necklace,"the priceless "bloody bandageof rubies"that he forcesher to weararound frailneck-increases the reader's her horror at the seeming inevitabilityof the victim's death by The decapitation. tension-almost, but not quiteunbearablecommon to both the best erotic fiction and the best horror of storiesis the trademark this tale. At the same time, the narrativehas an ironicqualityof genreparodybecausethe reader knows from the very first word that the heroine survives to tell her tale. Thus Carter's prose has the powerto do the impossible, to createoverwhelming suspenseeven when the conditions for that suspense are in fact nonexistent.The reader in simultaneously experiencesintenseemotionalinvolvement the story and a more detachedand intellectualadmiration for Carter'sstorytellingskills. The heightof both readerinvolvement and irony in the tale comes at the moment when the youngbride is rescuedby her strong,courageousmotherand Carterexplicitly turns the tables on an age-old literaryand World: mythic tradition,the traditionof Love in the Western TheMarquis at stood transfixed, dazed, a loss.It must utterly havebeenas if he hadbeenwatching beloved his for Tristan thetwelfth, thirteenth andTristan the time then stirred, leapt fromhis bierin thelastact,announced a jaunty interin aria from that were over Verdi bygones bygones, posed crying spilled milkdidnobody good, andas forhimself,he proposed any to live happily after.Thepuppetmaster, ever open-mouthed, at wide-eyed, impotent the last, sawhis dolls breakfreeof their abandon rituals hadordained them the he for since strings, and timebegan start live forthemselves; king,aghast, to the the of witnesses revolt his pawns.(44-45) Frisch's text plays a similarly sophisticatedbut opposite game. Frisch creates the interiormonologue of a character, Felix Schaad, who has recentlybeen acquittedof murdering his sixthwife andwho obsessivelyrelivesthe trialin his mind. Schaad's consciousnesshas, in fact, been so invadedandoverwhelmedby his own memories,his sense of guilt, the persistent questions of the prosecutor,and the testimoniesof the and many witnesses thathe has become a totally fragmented self-alienated humanbeing.The fragmentation reachesthegrotesque as personalmemories and ridiculoustestimoniesfull of irrelevancies non sequitursmingle with accountsof his and currentattemptsto appease his sense of guilt with billiard games:

Lokke
-And whenhe wasdrunk, Frau Schaad-and is myfinal this did question--what he do whenhe hadtoomuchto drink? -He talked..... -What about? -Always the samething .. -And thatwas? -I can'tremember. -You can'tremember.... Sometimes presiding the judgehas also hadenough: -Can the witnessnowbe allowed standdown? to The witnesstakesup her handbag. -The trialis adjourned Monday to at morning eight. I placemy billiard backin the rack.I puton myjacket. cue I hadnot removed tie for the game;I pull it tight.... my I look for my car.No ticket,though parking meterhas my runout.I getin behind steering I the wheel.Itis raining.insert the ignitionkey and ask myselfwhereI am living at the
moment.10

"Whatdoes emerge from the variousaccountsis that he has not murderRosalinde,but he could have. The murderwas a specific event, but his guilt is a conditionof the soul."12The technicalexoneration Schaadand the confessionof the real of murderer seem as insignificant the murderof Carter's as Bluebeard and the rescue of her heroine are exhilaratingand liberating. In Felix Schaad,Frischhas createda patheticandridiculous figure who is forced to confront the ludicrous loneliness of his existence as reflectedin the testimoniesof the witnesses. None of his friends or his former wives has anythingeither trulypositiveor negativeto say abouthim. A cold and empty proprietyseems to reign in all his relationships.When asked if she has feared strangulation her formerhusbandwhen by he was angry,one wife replies, "I don'tthinkhe had it in him to do that" (45). His currentwife calls him ChevalierBluebeardas a "termof endearment" only becausehe "already not had six wives in the cellar,"but also because he is so "chivalrous" (91). Similarlythe murderedwoman'sapartment manager states that "Herr Doktor Schaad is a gentleman"(7). UltimatelySchaad seems reducedto playing the absurdrole of tax advisor to all his wives, women whose lives he supLike his name,whichis related posedlyonce sharedintimately. to both schaden, to harmor hurt, and schade!, what a pity!, too bad!, Felix Schaad is both frighteningand pathetic. Indeed, he exemplifies the grotesque characteras defined by Gilbert Muller: Thegrotesque character a comicfigure. is impossible is It to sympathize him,despite agonies, with his because view we himfroma detached and perspective, whenwe arenotemoin we tionallyinvolved his suffering, are amused ... As withthegrotesque the of character, entire technique the is view the comic,for we always grotesque also essentially To the matter from grotesque a vantage point. becertain, subject of thegrotesque-the material raw which creates vision-is the but of horrible, thetreatment thismaterial always potentially is comic:thisexplains peculiar the of complexity tone,combothhorror theludicrous, and whichcharacterizes the bining as grotesque an art form.13 In TheBloody Chamberit is not the heroine-narrator who is the grotesquefigure,but ratherher monstroushusband.He is an inhumanembodimentof sexual perversionand destructive power,ultimately symbolof deathitself. His face is more a masklike than human, never revealingany emotion: Buthis strange, heavy,almostwaxenface was not linedby to seemed havewashed perit Rather, experience. experience like on whosefissures been have smooth, a stone a beach fectly eroded successive Andsometimes face,in stillness tides. that by whenhe listened me playing, theheavyeyelids to with folded overeyesthatalways disturbed by theirabsence light, me of seemedto me like a mask,as if his real face, the facethat all trulyreflected the life he hadled in the worldbeforehe metme,before, that even,I wasborn,asthough facelayunderneaththis mask.Or else, elsewhere. (3-4) TheBloody Chamberis a contemporary of transformation that quintessentially grotesquemotif, the dance of death and the maiden, a modern, feministtransformation which for in once the maiden is victorious over death itself. In fact, it is
lived his life as a supremely egotistical creature. .
.

. He did

Eventuallyall his meditationsand recollectionsseem to take the formof questionand answer,offense-defense betweendifferent parts of himself: -You weredeeply whenyousawthepolicephotograph, upset the bodyon the carpet,the five lilies on the body... -It was horrible. -It was not you who gaveher thoselilies? -There wereoftenlilies there. -You nevermentioned ... that -Always five. that? -Why didn't mention you

-I don't know...

-Yourdetention ten lasted almost months, HerrSchaad, the trial itselfthree of weeks; hadplenty time,Herr Schaad, you to mention everything. -It escaped memory. my -And today, in thewoods, nojudge question here with to you, it suddenly comes your to mind: wereoften liliesthere. there

(127-8)

The abrupt,disjointedqualityof Frisch'sprose discourages reader involvementjust as surely as the fluidity of Carter's style drawsone into her fictional world. The leaps in time, space, and context in Frisch'stext slow one down and force one to approachit as an intellectualgame or puzzle. Thus we remainas alienatedfrom Felix Schaadas he is from himself in his obsessiveattempts objectify,numb,andreify the pain to of his past withoutexpressingany feeling. He is like a walking dead man, an automaton,a machine, images common to the contemporary grotesque from Kafka to Beckett.11 At the beginningof the work, Schaad'sacquittaldoes not seem to provideconvincing proofof his innocence,yet his confession nearthe end of the novellaseems equally false. When the we finally learn the identityof the real murderer, revelaThe tion is totallyanticlimactic. workhas proceededby simulthe taneously buildingup andundercutting suspensesurroundguiltuntilfinallythe answerseems ing the questionof Schaad's Schaadhas shownsuchemotionalemptiness totallyirrelevant. and such an overwhelmingsense of guilt thatthe readertends to condemn him, as he condemns himself in his final false confession, even if he did not commit the actualmurder.As Sven Birkerts, The New Republic'sreviewer, emphasizes,

10

FRONTIERS
this rescue, the young widow donates her fortuneto charity and sets up house with her motherand the youngblind piano tuner with whom she has fallen in love in the midst of her In adventures. a structural reversaltypicalof this nightmarish ironic fairy tale, the punishmentdue the villainous husband has been meted out prematurely the innocentyoung lover. to This archetypaltale of the loss of innocence, which begins with the poundingof a younggirl'sheart, ends in mixedtones to appropriate the grotesque, with the heroine'srecognition of the evil within her and her acknowledgment the beauty of of her blind lover's heart: No paint powder, matter thickorwhite,canmask nor no how thatredmarkon my forehead; am gladhe cannot itI see notforfearof his revulsion, sinceI knowhe seesme clearly withhis heart-butbecauseit spares shame.(46) my In contrastto Carter'sopulent, exotic fairy tale, the symbolismof Frisch'sexaggeratedly mundane worldis muchmore subtleanddifficultto interpret. This symbolismis nevertheless humorin the responsiblefor much of the dry and understated text. We cannotsuppressa smile when, for example,we learn call thatRosalinde,who was a high-priced girl beforeshe was or lived on a streetcalled Hornstrasse thatshe had murdered, a cleaninglady named Isolde. (The Tristanand Isolde myth ironicdetail;it permeates findsits wayintoFrisch's through text TheBloody Chamberlike a heavy, recurrent melody.) SimiSchaad'sobsessive but distractedrubbingand chalking larly, of his phallicbilliardcues provoke chuckle.But, like so much a moderngrotesquehumor-that of FranzKafka,Louis Ferdinand Cl1ine, NathanaelWest, and GUinter Grass, for exama laughter is neverwholehearted that ple-Bluebeard provokes or full. It occurs againstthe backdropof a murdered woman's brutalized body. The image of Rosalinde'scorpse suffocated with a dirty sanitarynapkin,strangledwith Schaad'stie, and strewnwith five white lilies hauntsthe readerandpoisons the of atmosphere the storyjust as the bloody chamberof horrors taints the beauty of Bluebeard'scastle in the Cartertale. The lilies are powerfulsymbols of death in both texts, in The Bloody Chamberthroughtheir oppressivepresence, in Bluebeardthroughthe relativeabsence of other images with equalsymbolicweightandportent.It turnsout, of course,that the five lilies that were so often presentin Rosalinde's apartment, like the lilies mysteriouslyplaced on her grave, were the gifts fromthe murderer, youngGreekstudent.Equallysignificantis Schaad'sadmission, near the end of the novella, that he had sent lilies as a joke on the day of her murder.Is it possiblethatSchaad'ssuperficial,sarcastic gesture,his lack to of attunement the emotionalsignificanceof these flowers, fit a provoked murderous of jealousyon the partof Rosalinde's lover when he realized that someone else had sent her his flowers?This embarrassingly melodramatic question,straight out of a bad detective novel, leaves the reader wondering whetherFrisch is suggestingthat Schaadmay have "unconsciously" knownwhat he was doing, or whetherFrischis inlack of steadcommenting uponSchaad's of awareness theworld of symbols and revealingthe cruel and horrifyingresultsof Schaad'semotional blindness and repression. Hereagain, Frischseems, consciouslyor unconsciously, to not be engagingin metafiction,to be parodying only Schaad's emotionalinsensitivity,but also the style of self-expression, the language,that reflectsit. Frisch'sstyle-the languageof

the interpenetration death with such richly positive facets of of life-wealth, beauty, youth, and sexuality-that gives the symbolismof this novella its grotesqueand uncannypower. The Marquis,with his "deathly (15) composure" andhis "waxidentified with death worksstillness"(16),is most suggestively in his associationwith lilies. As doting husband,he fills his bride'sbedroomwith lilies so thatit looks like an "embalmlily-likepresence,deathand ing parlor"(16).In the Marquis's phallic sexuality are one: a I knowit mustseema curious analogy, manwitha flower, he to butsometimes seemed me like a lily. Yes.A lily. Posominous calmof a sentient sessedof thatstrange vegetable, lilies whosewhite like one of thosecobra-headed, funereal are out sheaths curled of a fleshas thickandtensely yielding to the touchas vellum.(4) The Marquis'snightmarish magical castle by the sea is yet a "Universeof Death,"both captivatingand repellent. Embodyingthe essence of the grotesqueaesthetic,it defies definition and categorization;"athome neitheron the land nor on it the water," is "amysterious, amphibious place, contravening the materialityof both earth and the waves" (9). References to Odilon Redon, Gustave Moreau, Puvis de Chavannes, Debussy, and Huysmans create an appropriatelydecadent This exotic,fairytalecastleis a worldof hothouse atmosphere. flowers, marronsglac6s, Asti Spumante,and wateredblack silk. Perhaps most intriguingis the manner in which this aesthete'sparadise,this world of overexquisite taste, through its amorality,intensity,and excess, borderson the hellish and the hideous. The grotesqueoften reveals that the seemingly but craft perverse ugly can be aesthetically fascinating, Carter's shows that the beautifulcan in fact be extraordinarily ugly. Like the "lush, insolent incense" of the heavy-headed lilies, and the "desirousdread"the lecherousvoluptuary inspiresin his young virgin bride, the atmosphereof this castle is both the Seen through glass of theirvase, seductiveand suffocating. the stems of the lilies resemble "dismembered arms, drifting drownedin greenishwater"(22). Thereis an edge of violence, to sadism,andcorruption all this luxuryandtaste,for the Marquis's wealth is based upon centuries of exploitation and enslavementand his pleasureupon the tortureand slaughter of the three women now entombedin his cellar. Against this background of perverse humor and overabundant sensuoussymbolism,the symbolof the heartstands the out in forcefulsimplicity.The young bride interprets key to the forbiddenchamberas the key to her husband'sheart. As she illuminatesevery room of the once dark castle, she "truenature" sees herselfas searchingfor her husband's (24), of for his soul. Her exploration the torturechamberunderhis descentinto hell, and the indelcastle becomes an archetypal ibly bloodyheartthatmarksthe key when she leavesthischamto as transferred her forehead the eternalmark ber is ultimately of Cain. This "telltaleheart"is the one unequivocallysupernaturaldetailin the story and as such is stronglyhighlighted. Finally the young heroine must admitto herself that she has sold herself to the devil for "a handfulof colored stones and the pelts of dead beasts" (16), that she has been seduced by her own potentialfor corruption. The Bloody Chamberends as a feministfairy tale should, with the rescue of the daughterby her strong and heroic indomitable"woman (2). After mother, an "eagle-featured,

Lokke
of his protagonist-is sparse,skeletal,stripped metaphor, symthe bol, andmyth. Nevertheless, lilies havepreciselythe primal powerthat Schaadwishes to deny them. They rise from the surfaceof the text as a fatefulsymbolof perversionand death in spite of-in fact, precisely by virtue of-Schaad's attempt to relegatethem to the level of a silly, slightlycrueljoke. And Swiss doctor,is forced Schaad,the properand well-respected to admitthat his personahas been invadedby the monstrous and mythicalcharacterof Bluebeard. nonsense" Similarly,Carterattacksmythsas "consolatory in the "PolemicalPreface"to her book The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography: for If women to allow themselves beconsoled their culturally debate determined of accessto themodesof intellectual lack of theyare great by the invocation hypothetical goddesses, into often themselves submission technique (a simply flattering of versions women usedonthembymen).All themythic ... and nonsense seems areconsolatory nonsenses; consolatory to mea fairdefinition myth, of Mother are anyway. goddesses 14 just as silly a notionas father gods. YetCarterdoes not escape the worldof archetypes,no matter she how "archaic"and "atavistic" may consider them. Her of animus is own sadisticMarquis the quintessence the negative archetypedescribedby Marie-Louisevon Franzin An Introduction to the Psychologyof Fairy Tales-the ruler of a land of deathwho tortureswomanandcuts her off from life. Bluebeard, Franz writes, "embodies the death-like, ferocious form. ... Woman, aspectsof the animusin his mostdiabolical on the otherhand, serves life, and the animaentanglesa man in life. . . . The animusin his negativeform seems to be the opposite. He drawswoman away from life and murderslife for her."15 on attack the mythsof male supremacy Carter's Furthermore, in TheBloody Chamberemploysa modern, feministversion descent into of the Demeter-Persephone myth:the archetypal the hell of the self and the slayingof the monsterkeeper of herthis realmof riches.And her courageous mother-daughter oines are variations on the Amazon archetype: powerful, strong-willed,steel-nervedwomen warriors.In fact, Carter's fairytales are exemplaryinstancesof the currentfeministrevisions of mythic archetypesdescribedby Estella Lauterin Women Mythmakers as (1984)andFeminist Theory: Archetypal Re-Visionsof Jungian Thought(1985). Interdisciplinary Despite her theoreticalassertionsin The Sadeian Woman, own art provesthatmythis not inherentlyregressive Carter's or atavistic.What is importantis how it is used. Thus The creates,froman ancientfairytaleandancient BloodyChamber mythicmotifs,a vital originalexpressionof a forcefulfeminist vision. Withthe rescueof the heroineby the powerfulmother figure, Carterrewritesthe traditionalfolktaleplot in which the heroineis rescuedby herself, a brother,or a futurelover. mothercomes gallopthe In TheBloodyChamber courageous ing wildly down the causewayand shoots the Marquisjust as the rising tide and the murdererare about to separatethe heroinefrom life forever.Here Carteris also challengingthe tradition sado-masochism, of which, as she brilliantly suggests in The Sadeian Woman, foundedupon a lover'spact with is deathanda hatredof the motheras giver-of-life.For the sadomasochistthe womb becomes a tomb, a "bloody chamber." which The geniusof thisnovellalies in its narrative structure, with the masochistic heroine firstseducesus intoidentification

11

throughthe richness and sensualityof its languageand then compels us to experience the horrific consequences of the heroine's surrenderto the Marquis. By acknowledgingthe as glamour of sado-masochisticself-annihilation well as its ultimatebrutality, ugliness, and misogyny,Carterrevealsboth the difficulty and the absolutenecessity of a feminist redefinitionof sexualpleasure desire.Thusthe hearton the heroand ine's foreheadis not only a markof shame,a sign of complicfor ity; it is also a badgeof courage.She is rewarded breaking the patriarchal taboo with a knowledgeof the humanheart. The powerof the heartis the unconditional powerof love, both the indomitablelove of the mother and the total acceptance of thegentlemalepartner. Carter As suggestsin theprovocative fear conclusionto TheSadeian Woman, of love is perhapsthe ultimateobstaclein the way of women'sfreedom:"It is in this holy terrorof love thatwe find, in both men andwomenthemselves, the source of all opposition to the emancipationof women" (150). The dynamic in both texts-the returnof repressedmyth and metaphor,the dialectic of enlightenment-is a kind of microcosm of the developmentof contemporaryEuropean to literature a whole, which has foundthatattempts denude as itself of myth and metaphorhave succeededonly in creating Hence Alain newerand evermore complexmythicstructures. Robbe-Grillet'ssimplistic attack on myth and metaphor in Nature,humanisme,tragtdie (1958)developedinto an obsession with recreating cultural mythologyin Projet contemporary une rvolution 'aNew York(1970),and RolandBarthes pour of came to see his attemptat demystification mythin Mythologies as itself a mythicact.16And in her lectureson Kassandra, ChristaWolf, despiteall her skepticismand rationalism, finds herself on a visit to Greece obsessed with the figure of the legendaryprophetessand hypnoticallydrawnto terracotta fertility goddesses and snake priestesses on the island of Crete. As Wolf reflects,all poets wantto believe in the power of prophecy,the power of the word.17These developments seem to bear out the assertions of such theorists as Ernst Cassirer in Language and Myth that metaphor,myth, and entities,thatmythandmetaphorare languageare inextricable central conditions of speech and human self-expression. With no positive vision of the future,Frisch, however,can see only silence and deathas Schaad'savenuesof escape from castle. Frisch'snovellaends the terrifying realmof Bluebeard's in disintegration despair,with Schaadtrying to alleviate and his guiltthrough falseconfessionanda futilesuicideattempt. a in Frisch'sthematicpreoccupations Bluebeardare identicalto those of Stiller, his first major novel. In fact, images of sexualfear, love, disintegrating loneliness,unhappy marriages, and crueltyhauntall of Frisch'snovels,Gantenbein (1964)and in Montauk Stiller,for example,like Schaad, (1975) particular. his becomes convincedthathe has murdered wife, thoughshe Stillerconfessesto her murder, has in factdied of tuberculosis. a realizingthat"thereareall sortsof waysof murdering person or at leasthis soul, andthat'ssomethingno police in the world can spot."18"Guiltis ourselves,"19 he announces.This guilt is the ubiquitous guilt of the Germanicrace afterthe genocide of WorldWarII, guilt projectedonto the faceless foreigner, the scapegoat,the anonymousGreekstudentwho is the "real It murderer."20 is also the collective guilt of man against woman, which some critics have suggestedis the dominant theme in Frisch's entire oeuvre.21The differences between Bluebeard Bluebeardand Stiller are stylistic and structural;

12

FRONTIERS
the (life-death,fact-fiction,matter-spirit, comic-tragic,organic-mechanical); of elements;and the assaultuponaestheticexpecintermingling incongruous sees the grotations,rational thought,and societalnorms.But whereasKayser aestheticphenomenon,Bakhtinpointsto the tesque as a timeless, ahistorical of historicaldevelopment the grotesquefrom the MiddleAges to the present. liberationfrom 2. Bakhtindescribes carnivalsas celebrating"temporary the prevailing truthand from the establishedorder;they markedthe suspension of all hierarchical rank, norms, and prohibitions.Carnivalwas the true feast of time, the feast of becoming, change, and renewal.It was hostile to to and all thatwasimmortalized completed" canons, (10). "Contrary the modern the grotesquebody is not separatedfrom the rest of the world. It is not a its closed, completedunit; it is unfinished,outgrowsitself, transgresses own limits ... The body discloses its essence as a principleof growthwhich exceeds its own limits only in copulation,pregnancy, childbirth,the throes of evercreating This is the everunfinished, or death,eating,drinking, defecation. body" (26). 3. Kayser,179. trans.withforeword The 4. Charles Perrault, FairyTales CharlesPerrault, of by Angela Carter(New York:Avon Books, 1979),41. 5. Perrault,17. 6. Maria Leach and JeromeFried, eds., Funkand Wagnall's Dictionary of Folklore,Mythologyand Legend, vol. I (New York:Funk and Wagnalls, 1949), 150. 7. Perrault,41. motif and the mythof Amorand Psyche 8. A comparisonof the Bluebeard would be rewarding. Curiosityalso leads Psyche to "disobey"her husband. Fora discussionof the AmorandPsychemyththatinterprets Psyche's curiosity Amorand Psyche:ThePsychic in a positivelight,see ErichNeumann, Development of the Feminine(Princeton,N. J.: PrincetonUniversityPress, 1956). and 9. AngelaCarter,TheBloodyChamber (New York:Harper Row,1979), 1. All parenthetical referencesin the text are to this edition. 10. Max Frisch, Bluebeard:A Tale, trans. GeoffreySkelton (New York: in references the Harcourt BraceJovanovich,1982), 46-147.All parenthetical text are to this edition. or 11. See Kayser's discussionof the mechanical technical grotesque,182-83. 12. Sven Birkerts,review of Bluebeard:A Tale,by Max Frisch, TheNew Republic, 11 July 1983, 32-35. 13. GilbertMuller, Nightmaresand Visions:FlanneryO'Connorand the Catholic Grotesque(Athens: Universityof Georgia Press, 1972),7. and the Ideologyof Pornography 14. Angela Carter,The Sadeian Woman (New York:PantheonBooks, 1978),5. to 15. Marie-Louisevon Franz, An Introduction the Psychologyof Fairy Tales (New York: Spring, 1970), chapter 8, 43. et du 16 Michael Spencer, "Avatars mythechez Robbe-Grillet Butor,"in Robbe-Grillet: Analyse, Theorie,ed. Jean Ricardou,vol. 1, Roman-Cintma d'Editions, 1976), 64-84. (Paris: Union G&nSrale einer Kassandra 17. Christa (Darmstadt: Wolf, Voraussetzungen Erzdihlung: Luchterhand,1983), 25. 18. Max Frisch, I'm Not Stiller,trans. Michael Bullock (New York:Vintage Books, 1962), 111. 19. Frisch, I'm Not Stiller, 390. of 20. RobertM. Adamsalso discusses Bluebeardas an embodiment the A in collectiveguiltof Germany his reviewof Bluebeard: Tale,by Max Frisch, Reviewof Books, 29 September1983, 14-16. The New York on 21. See GerhardF Probstand Jay F. Bodine, eds., Perspectives Max Frisch (Lexington:UniversityPress of Kentucky,1982), 3.

is a grotesquely sparseand skeletalversionof the earlierdiaryconfessional novel. In the end Schaad maintains absolute silence as he hears a doctor's voice, the voice of his own alienated emotional self, inform him that he is in pain. UltimatelySchaad'sself seems to disappearinto nothingness. This reductionto despairand silenceplaces Frischsquarely of in the modernist tradition Beckettandthe absurdists. Carter, on the otherhand, as a womanand a feminist,is refreshingly free from this unremittinglybleak male perspective. The is Bloody Chamber a lush celebrationof the heroine'svitality, sensuality,eagerness for adventure,and love of experience. of Even her acknowledgment shameand guilt seems a healthy coming to termswith herself, an acceptanceof responsibility rather than destructive self-deprecation.It is worth asking whetherthere is not, in contrastto the nihilisticgrotesqueof with femininegrotesque masculinewriters,a twentieth-century Isak as O'Connor, exemplars variedas DjunaBarnes,Flannery Dinesen, and Angela Carter.In its joyful acceptanceof both body and soul, its irreverenthumor, and its vision of the regenerative powerof love andhope, this grotesquefulfillsthe to emancipatoryfunctionthat Bakhtinattributes the original of Renaissance grotesque-the destruction rigidifiedhierarchy and the celebrationof the unendingcycle of life, death, and rebirth. Finally, then, the grotesque in both Bluebeard and The Bloody Chamberfunctionsas an unsettlingvehicle for exposdarkhumor,and irony,the brutaling, throughexaggeration, attitudestowardswomen. Ineviof traditionalpatriarchal ity tably,because Frisch'swork is told from a male perspective, voice is a voice of selfit becomes self-parody as Carter's just assertion.Carteroffersa wry expressionof faithin the human and heart,whereasFrischgives us nothingness despair.In the Europeanmodernisttraditionmen seem to be moving into silence. Women, on the other hand, are speakingout. It is tradition as if Frisch, standingwithin a Westernpatriarchal thathe knowsis moribund,feels an ethical obligationto help destroy the traditionthat fatheredhim. Carterhas the more the joyous and thankfultask of transforming ancientand the mythic into the radically new.

NOTES
1. See MikhailBakhtin,Rabelaisand His World,trans. Helene Iswolsky The Mass.: M.I.T.Press, 1968),andWolfgang Kayser, Grotesque (Cambridge, New York: McGraw in ArtandLiterature, trans.UlrichWeisstein (1963;reprint of and Hill, 1966).BothBakhtin Kayser emphasizethejuxtaposition opposites