"Born To Bleed": Myth, Pornography and Romance in Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber"

148 the minnesota review Michele Grossman "Born To Bleed": Myth, Pornography and Romance in Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber" The Future must no longer be determined by the past. I do not deny that the effects of the past are still with us. But I refuse to strengthen them by repeating them, to confer upon them an irremovability the equivalent of destiny, to confuse the biological and the cultural. Anticipation is imperative. — Helene Cixous, "The Laugh of the Medusa" Yet I had not bargained for this, the girl with tears hanging on her cheeks Uke stuck pearls, her cunt a split fig below the great globes of her buttocks on which the knotted tails of the cat were about to descend, while a man in a black mask fingered with his free hand his prick, that curved upwards like the scimitar he held. The picture held a caption: "Reproof of curiosity." ("The Bloody Chamber," 16-17) Dangerously stylish and chillingly efficient, this passage goes at once to the heart of Angela Carter's concerns in "The Bloody Chamber": the striking of bargains between myth and pornography, fantasy and history, gender and sexuality. Moreover, Carter examines through these and other vectors the nature of the "reproofs" suffered by characters and readers alike as they indulge their curiosity about what lies beyond the boundaries of their cultural construction as women. The punishment undergone by the victim in the preceding pornographic excerpt is mirrored by that of the reader, who is penalized by her contradictory reaction to such abusively elegant imagery. Carter goes beyond merely making such conflicts more visible, however. "The Bloody Chamber" is in many ways an exploratory challenge to a feminist cultural imagination that often denies or disguises complicity in being victimized by its contradictory desires. Such problematic desires, and the fears with which they are linked, have increasingly preoccupied the intense analysis and debate amongst feminists in the areas of gender and sexuality. And the complex cultural juxtapositions — both theoretical and lived — of sexual pleasure and political danger have come under recent scrutiny by feminists in ways that reveal fundamental breaks with earlier radical feminist thought. In an article tracing the development of feminist sexual politics from 1968-1983, Alice Echols argues that while "early radical feminists believed that women's oppression derived from the very construction of gender and Grossman 149 sought its elimination as a meaningful category," a more recent strand of feminist analysis claims that "[women's] oppression stems from the repression of female values and treat[s] gender differences as though they reflect deep truths about the intractability of maleness and femaleness."1 Echols terms this latter mode "cultural feminism," as distinct from "radical feminism," because of its desire to nurture "a female counter culture which it is hoped will supersede the dominant culture." (51) Cultural feminists' vision of gender and sexuality is feequently (though not always) essentialist, "committed to preserving rather than challenging gender differences" (51) and assigning to female and male sexuality rigidly defined characteristics which neither culture nor consciousness can fully efface, although they can be repressed to varying degrees. Thus female "nature," and its expression through sexuality, is seen as "nurturant, tender, and egalitarian" (53), while male sexuality is considered irremediably violent and rapacious: in Andrea Dworkin's memorable words, "the stuff of murder, not love." The conclusion of cultural feminism is that, whether biologically or socially constructed, the gender characteristics of women and men are immutable , and patriarchy is therefore seen as a non-negotiable construct.2 This non-negotiability is compounded for cultural feminists by the omniscience of patriarchal control over all aspects of women's consciousness and experience; to "ignore the fact of women's apprenticeship to the male point of view," for Susanne Kappeier, is tantamount to becoming "a gender traitor." (47) Alternatively, contemporary radical feminists continue to reject the permanence of gender construction and identity, however deeply inscribed that identity may be. Believing, as Paula Webster says, that women are made, not born, radical feminists argue that by articulating a feminist vision "without history, without an analysis of complexity and difference, without a critical eye toward gender and its constant redefinitions, without some scepticism about...