Marxism applied to the Bloody Chamber

What Marxist critics do:

1. Make a division between the 'overt' (manifest or surface) and 'covert' (latent or hidden) content of a literary text relating the covert subject of the work to Marxist themes (class struggle, progression of society, historical stages).

Angela Carter in varying degrees provides a particular division between the appearance of the text and the content which is not in view for us. Carter herself claimed that her stories were not the retelling of stories or a collection of adult fairy-tales, they are written "to extract the latent content". Carter's "Bloody Chamber" was published in 1979, a time of course at the beginning of 'Thatcherism' a time of class straggles with economic reform heavily inducing the mechanisms of capitalism further. One simple way of understanding the narrator's position is the way in which she arrives at the Marquis' castle. The industrialisation of the train can be seen a economic symbolism, but also as a demonstration of split classes. The train represents merely a gate-way to finance the richer (hidden content) rather than provide a more convenient way of travelling (overt).Carter's use of the train within the text symbolises a 'Man-Made' society. The train is in reality used to get to somewhere quicker- it speeds up the Marquis’ marriage, the Marquis’ plans for a girl with no inkling of inheritance or financial power…

When we move towards the climax of the story, the girl is given all the keys to the castle, but cannot open one door. "All is yours; everything is open to you-except the lock that this single key fits". It seems to only be a façade to disguise the hidden content, she clearly doesn't maintain such power; wearing the ‘ruby chocker' given by the Marquis is a sign of control in itself.

On the surface it seems that the Marquis is attempting to hide his sadistic, barbaric murders of brutality. 

However, the keys provide a representation the opportunities of society to the lower classes. Giving such a person power in this sense to unlock any forbidden knowledge she may seek has its consequences. Having walked into that chamber, the girl has to accept death is approaching. The Marquis made it essential that she should not enter and she didn't maintain her role in society to keep herself locked out from the darkness behind ‘truth’, to stay in the realm of fabricated lifestyles. By understanding the darkness behind the rich-man, she must murdered in order for the Marquis to maintain his powers and keep the latent content 'hidden' as it were. This further links to the conflict that the people of the lower classes are given a false sense of power and control within their life when given the opportunity to do something or spend money - but they are never truly in a dominating position due to the Capitalist mechanism maintaining its control as a construction which disables the working people’s lives.

However the resolution finds the girl lucky, as her mother shoots down the Marquis. The actions hereafter by the girl however can be read as a representation of a victory for the struggling classes. Living with the blind piano turner Jean-Vyes and her rescuing mother, the girl finds herself spending a significant sum of her money inherited through the Marquis and his castle on charity. Perhaps a comparison on the behaviours of the Marquis and the girl can be contrasted in order to see the latent content. The Marquis merely slaughters those who see into the darkness of his chamber-room, where all have gone in none have left the castle and the Marquis only shares his wealth in order to continue his sadistic acts. The girl in comparison shares her realisation of the events and shares her wealth. By doing so its arguable the girl is less concealed by the gains of self-based riches which is the driver of capitalism.  

2. Relate context to social class status of the author . An assumption is made that the author is unaware of what she is revealing in the text

Carter was a women who had married twice , and had written in several universities. Carter could largely be described as a middle class woman through the 1970's. It seems that she attempts to exploit the lower and higher classes in TBC but does not instigate her own struggle perhaps. However with all seemingly under the upper class the struggle she emulates through the murder of the Marquis as a victory against the rich man and the narrator takes the wealth for herself and his power is removed.

Angela Carter's work- 'The Bloody Chamber' was published in 1979 with these short stories written during the 1970's. This social period was shown to depict the growth of Feminism and Marxism within UK and US culture and politics, as proved by obvious example of Margaret Thatcher but also the equal rights for women movement in the US. This growth of Feminism does appear to be shown within Carter's work: The Narrator is shown to be strong willed within 'The Bloody Chamber'- and her mother is described as "indomitable" and "eagle featured"; therefore showing her to be a "new woman" that particular movements in 1960's/ 70's were attempting to promote. However, Carter too uses her work to show Women as greedy characters that do not particularly conform with Feminist idealisms of Woman- as in 'The Courtship of Mr Lyon’, Beauty is shown to become a different Woman after the re-establishment of her father’s finance , indicating that we are all social constructions that can become manipulated by what money offers. Beauty appears naïve and idiotic to this notion as is shown to renounce love in the pursuit of wealth.

Furthermore, it was within the 1970's/ 80's that Marxist critics began to structure their theories in literary texts. Carter may have been able to view these proposed political thoughts and indirectly adapt them within her texts. Throughout these ‘short stories’ she shows the various worlds to be made up of class structures and one-upmanship in wealth through gambling men , and the establishment of the rich: The Marquis is able to take the narrator hand in marriage from her mother due to his payment in the form of Dowry. The Beast/ Mr Lyon’s house is shown to portray wealth across the house, the dog’s necklace as a replacement for the collar and through the use of "solid gold"/ "great chandelier". Perhaps Carter chose to expand upon the ideologies of  Karl Marx and Engles within her work- as she had seen the corruptions within society during this period and chose to 'shine a light' on unlawful happenings whilst celebrating the power of female desire to re-imagine the world and turn it topsy-turvy. However it seems she wanted both men and women to make realisations of each other and themselves.

Historical Goings on:

In the People's Republic of China, the Maoist government undertook the Cultural Revolution from 1966 through to 1976 in order to purge capitalist elements from Chinese society and entrench socialism. However, upon Mao's death, his rivals seized political power and under the Premiership of Deng Xiaoping (1978–1992), many of Mao's Cultural Revolution era policies were revised or abandoned and much of the state sector privatised.

The late 1980s and early 1990s saw the collapse of most of those socialist states that had professed a Marxist–Leninist ideology. In the late 1970s and 1980s, the emergence of the New Right and neoliberal capitalism as the dominant ideological trends in western politics – championed by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher – led the west to take a more aggressive stand against the Soviet Union and its Leninist allies. Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union, the reformist Mikhael Gorbachev (1931–) became Premier in March 1985, and began to move away from Leninist-based models of development towards social democracy. Ultimately, Gorbachev's reforms, coupled with rising levels of popular ethnic nationalism in the Soviet Union, led to the state's dissolution in late 1991 into a series of constituent nations, all of which abandoned Marxist–Leninist models for socialism, with most converting to capitalist economies.

3. Explain the nature of a genre in terms of the social period in which it was produced. The novel may speak for the social class it represents.

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Carter being middle class saw how the upper class (the bourgeoisie) and the lower class (proletariat) lived. As the Bloody Chamber was written in 1979 it reflects the struggle between the two classes. 

4. Relate the text to social assumptions of the time in which it was consumed . This is useful in the criticism of cultural materialism.

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Throughout this time social assumptions and stereotypes that define the era in which it was produced and consumed affect the way in which a text is perceived by the reader- as suggested through "Cultural Materialism". Society has changed its beliefs dependant on the Social Period. As the 1980's were times of moving equality for example growing social acceptance of women’s rights, it became the order of the day- suggesting that the readership of the late 1970's/ early 1980's would have been able to create their own distinctions to a certain extent between what Carter was able to put on the page and what latent content she had involved 'between the lines'. 

5. Politicisation of literary form (form is determined by political circumstance).

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