Lit Gothic dot com

Well for a start they need to make their user face more exciting, because if I hadn't had to I wouldn't have bothered reading much further due to the dull nature of the website.. but also!

I found it interesting scrolling through the authors section and looking at authors such as Jane Austen in particular – who when I picture her I picture Pride and prejudice and a more comedic and satirical state of writing. However it noted her romantic period and divuldged in great detail in to her novel (to quote the website) “uninterested in the Gothic except as an object of parody. Her early novel Northanger Abbey is a wonderful Gothic satire—one which demonstrates a real knowledge of the genre, and its excesses.Northanger Abbey specifically mentions a number of genuine Gothics, often referred to as the Northanger novels.”

I thought it just goes to show that I can’t assume authors only have one genre of writing! Who knew we could study Jane Austen in the gothic literature section.

Also after a lot of opening tabs and new web pages I found links to Angela Carter and her biography – which I found very interesting as it’s something I don’t recall looking at previously.

“During the war years, she was removed by her grandmother to South Yorkshire.” OUR SOUTH YORKSHIRE???

“THE MAGIC TOYSHOP (1967) developed further the themes of sexual fantasy and revealed Carter's fascination with fairy tales and the Freudian unconscious.” – This I found particularly interesting because I didn’t realise Angela Carter had been influenced by the works of Freud! Just goes to show when we make notes that are seemingly stretching the boundaries a little we could just be making the right assumptions!

“In 1970, having separated from her husband, Carter went to live in Japan for two years. During this period she worked at many different jobs, among others as a bar hostess. The experience of a different culture had a strong influence on her work. In 1979 Carter published THE SADETAN WOMAN, where she questioned culturally accepted views of sexuality, and sadistic and masochistic relations between men and women.” Seems perhaps she became more of a feminist AFTER she split up from her husband.. Suspicious. But very interesting that she experienced what it was like elsewhere, as opposed to writing stories just based on England. This makes me feel her work goes deeper than I originally thought – perhaps some of her texts could be reaching out in to more foreign concepts of thinking?

“BLOODY CHAMBER (1979), a collection of stories retelling classic fairy tales, and an anthology of subversive stories by women.” That’s pretty much all this particular article touched upon bloody chamber which I found rather disappointing after reading the massive thing.

Carter's screenplay for THE COMPANY OF WOLVES (1984), based on THE BLOODY CHAMBER (1979) was a bloodthirsty, Freudian retelling of the 'Little Red Riding Hood' story, directed by Neil Jordan. This visually groundbreaking film studied the wolf-girl relationship in the light of sexual awakening. Re-writing fairy-tales from a feminist point of view, Carter argued that one can find from both literature and folklore "the old lies on which new lies are based." However, her critics saw that using the old form, Carter produced the "rigidly sexist psychology of the erotic".

I feel a lot more confident in exploring the work from a point of view of someone I now feel I know a bit more about. I found the article very interesting but found it very difficult finding one which had such information!