ANGELA CARTER’S THE BLOODY CHAMBER: A FEMINIST STYLISTIC APPROACH

Authors : Seda ARIKAN

Pages : 117-130

Doi:10.18069/firatsbed.346908

View : 40 | Download : 26

Publication Date : 2016-07-30

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :Stylistics, the study of a writer’s style, has incorporated various approaches, especially in the last few decades. Therefore, feminist stylistics based on the theories of feminist criticism appears as a significant approach defining “woman” and her place not only in society, but also in language. By examining male domination in society and literary works, feminist stylistics tries to present a counter-image of women both in language and social construction. The tendency of current feminist stylistics mostly focuses on the idea that there is a significant “women’s writing and style” that differs from men’s. These linguistic and thematic differences that are called “genderlect” or “gendered sentence” in women’s writing are the main interest of feminist stylistics. This study will depict the “genderlect” and “gendered” style in Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber . Carter’s The Bloody Chamber , a collection of re-written traditional fairy tales, “extracts the latent content from the traditional stories” in Carter’s words. Ten stories in the collection handle the topics of marriage, sexuality, gender roles, and female liberty with a subverting point of view. In this article, three stories narrated by female first-person narrators in this collection will be analyzed in terms of lexico-semantic items in the narration, and Carter’s style as an example of écriture féminine will be examined with regard to feminist stylistics. 
Keywords : feminist stylistics, Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber, genderlect, gendered style