In The Bloody Chamber, Carter uses traditional fairy tales as a model for discussing gender and sexual politics. Thus, although his short stories contain conventional forms of transformation - men turn into wolves in The Company of Wolves, at the end of The Courtship of Mr. Lyon, Mr. Lyon becomes a man again, and in the conclusion of The Bride of the Tiger, the protagonist changes. in beast as well - they also include a deeper metaphorical notion of change. At the time of writing, the second wave feminist movement had reached its peak; this change in attitude may have influenced Carter's frequent use of symbolic imagery to denote a character's emotional and psychological transformation. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Carter advocates a compromise between the binary opposites of the tiger and the lamb of human nature as a way to achieve wholeness. The titles of The Courtship of Mr Lyon (TCoML) and The Tiger's Bride (TTB) clearly emphasize men; the fact that the protagonist is described as "The Tiger's Bride" suggests that he owns it, an obviously unequal power dynamic. However, by the end of the stories (both of which involve physical metamorphosis), the relationship between the male and female figures has also changed, expressing Carter's desire for socially constructed notions of gender to be rejected. The last line of TCoML – “Mr and Mrs Lyon are walking in the garden…” – symbolizes the two opposing forces conforming to meet the needs of the other. This ties in with key concepts of the feminist movement of the 1970s, which highlighted ideas regarding gender as a social construct. This notion was presented in the book by Simone de Beauvoir, the famous French feminist, The Second Sex (1949); The author wrote: “We are not born a woman, but we become one.” This reflects both de Beauvoir's and Carter's belief that femininity does not arise from biological differences, but is a construct of civilization; someone's circumstances determine their character. People are gradually shaped by their upbringing, and biology does not determine what makes a woman a woman – women learn their roles (or have them imposed on them) by the male-dominated society in which they live. They are not born passive, secondary, and nonessential, just as men are not born dominant, superior, and authoritarian, but outside forces have conspired to make them that way. Lawrence Phillips, of Carter, wrote: "Change, [his work] seems to suggest, is an extremely difficult undertaking to achieve." These forces are difficult to defeat and will inevitably take a long time, but it is within our reach. Glimpses of this optimistic attitude are apparent throughout The Bloody Chamber (TBC) stories, but especially in The Company of Wolves (TCoW), the last line of which reads: “See! soft and healthy, she sleeps in grandmother's bed, between the paws of the tender wolf. This highly symbolic physical accommodation not only resembles the biblical image of the lamb lying down with the lion, but it also reinforces Carter's assertion that "I'm all for putting new wine in old bottles", the "new wine" in this case being the whole obtained from the fusion of two previously conflicting halves, and the "old bottle" being the "grandmother's bed", which is a symbol of patriarchy – old , irrelevant and outdated.Carter's use of allegorical symbolism as a means of promoting his visions of equality and unity goes hand in hand with his goal of transforming classic fairy tales into a form of literature that inherently reinforces the socially constructed nature of female identity and sexuality, in a feminist political rewriting. of the kind. Carter's stories deal with the objectification of women in a phallocentric order and how traditional fairy tales reinforce the perception of women as mere objects. For example, in The Snow Child (TSC), the woman's defining characteristic is that she is the Earl's wife, and her appearance reflects this; “wrapped in the glistening pelts of black foxes” and other glamorous objects, her identity is based entirely on materiality. The Count himself also views women as objects, the repetition of "I wish" is a symbol of the patriarchy that molds and molds women to fit the desires and expectations of men. The nature of these expectations is intrinsically linked to the treatment of women as disposable property; the Count's desire for a "girl white as snow" and "red as blood" evokes images of corpses, suggesting that women are most attractive when dead and therefore completely submissive to male figures. Helen Simpson wrote: “The threat does not lie in the darker side of heterosexuality, in sadomasochism and the idea of ​​fatal passion.” This notion is reinforced when the Count “throws his virile member into the dead woman”; it is not necessary that she be autonomous for the Count to consider her as a sexual object, in fact he, symbol of patriarchy, prefers her in a state in which she is absolutely passive. The rivalry between the two female figures also testifies to the materiality by which women are valued: while the count rejects the demands of the countess, "the furs spring from [his] shoulders and wrap themselves around the naked girl" , symbolizing the change of status. The Count's affection. The Countess's dependence on the Count is made evident as she is "left naked as a bone", her nudity being a metaphor for her vulnerability and helplessness in a male-dominated society. The treatment of women as mere objects is prevalent throughout TBC's main story; the Marquis gleefully asserts his dominance over the anonymous protagonist as he seeks, like the Count in TSC, to transform her from an autonomous, free-thinking individual into a submissive sexual object. The Marquis undresses the heroine (again evoking the connotations of helplessness that accompany nudity) "as if he were removing the leaves from an artichoke" - Carter's choice to compare the narrator to a vegetable underlines the desire of the marquis for her. enter a vegetative state, passive and without resistance. When the marquis prepares to execute him, he remarks: “Such a pretty neck, [...] A neck like the stem of a young plant”. Rosemary Moore wrote: “In the late 17th century it was considered natural for husbands to control their wives. The Marquis is the paradigmatic Western man whose attitudes toward sexuality are feudal and who believes that woman is his slave. However, it seems that he aims to reduce the protagonist beyond the status of a slave, to a simple piece of meat, considering her a "lamb chop". Carter's relentless and visceral handling of objectification demonstrates patriarchal society's goals to demean and undermine women's autonomy in order to maintain the unequal power dynamics already in place and prevent any transgression or transformation. Carter's use of contexts emphasizes the nature.