Metamorphosis and Human-Animal Relationships in Angela Carter’s Fairy Tales: Liminal Subjectivities in The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the analysis of the female characters and human-animal relationships in Angela Carter collection of fairy tales The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (1979) and examines how Carter’s reassessments of traditional fairy tales address the construction of women’s identity in its full complexity, thus departing from reductionist, binary oppositions by offering a satisfactory communion between animality and humanity. I argue that the use of liminal metamorphosis and animal transformation in Carter’s narratives serve the purpose of deconstructing traditional gender roles in literary fairy tales in order to create an idiosyncratic conception of female subjectivity and sexuality. The different formal and ideological possibilities of the short story genre are explored in connection to Carter’s postmodern rewritings. This dissertation is also informed by significant findings in the field of animal studies in order to deal with the symbolic and empirical treatment of animals and women through anthropomorphism and zoomorphism.