All the cool girls love wolfmen, honest.

I'm wearing a wolf jumper today. Spooky.
So we are in The Company of Wolves today and I'm supposed to be blogging on the ending but I thought I'd comment on the rest of it first...it seems something a responsible literature student would do.
From the beginning the wolf is shown to be the...best...? Is that the right word? She refers to them as 'One beast and only one'. She also shows them to be the epitome of the hunter, calling them 'carnivore incarnate'. They are unstoppable: 'he cannot listen to reason', and shown to be part of the supernatural. However she also shows they are to be pitied to some extent: 'never cease to mourn their own condition', 'not one...hints at the possibility of redemption', 'he half welcomes the knife that despatches him.'
For the most part of this piece Carter writes anecdotally, telling legends of the men who turn into wolves, it is portrayed as folklore; a warning. She sets up women as victims, especially newly wed brides whose husbands get turned into wolves and then come back to haunt them. There is also a special emphasis on clothes; they link to society and humanity, but also protection from sexual predation.

The girl in the story is virginal: 'moves within the invisible pentacle of her own virginity', but not naive or innocent: 'She has her knife and she is afraid of nothing.' She welcomes the sexual advances of the man she meets in the woods: 'she wanted to dawdle on her way to make sure the hadnsome gentleman would win his wager.' When she arrives to the obvious daner of a wolf man in her grandmother's house she takes control of the situation. She shows pity instead of fear for the wolves outside the door which gives her power. Then....strangely enough she decides to take off her clothes. No messing around just gets naked. Guess she knows what she wants. Within this story the significance of the clothes shows us the girl is ready to strip herself of her humanity, or her social standing, for this man/wolf. She burns them, so there is no going back. Maybe this is her giving up everything for love, like the mother in The Bloody Chamber 'defiantly beggared herself for love'. Or maybe I'm reading too much into that and she's actually just getting frisky. Ha. No I think the actual ending shows this to be a story about loving the wrong person. Carter is showing it to be noble, and there is an equality at the end between the girl and the wolf which I guess is like the ending of The Tiger's Bride, or maybe The Courtship of Mr. Lyon. Actually it is different to those two, cos there is no change in either of the lovers, the girl is still a girl, and the wolf is still a wolf, but they don't care.
Good for them. Screw the system. Marry a wolf.

Call off the torches and pitchforks...she's a werewolf not a witch! What a relief.

So I was thinking The Werewolf may have the same structure as earlier versions of Little Red Riding Hood but actually the differences make it something entirely new.

In the original the girl is innocent and sweet whereas in this one she's got some balls. Then there's the wolf being a talking wolf, accepted as supernatural, but in this one the wolf is actually the grandmother in wolf form. And finally the ending is somewhat grimmer than the original in which the girl and grandmother are cut alive from the wolf's belly...highly unlikely but a happy ending nonetheless. But in Carter's version the superstitious locals stone the grandmother to death believing her to be a witch.
I had planned to write more but this was so long ago I can't bring myself to it.
Inabit.

maaaan I love that lady's house.

I've just been for a run so I warn you I might fall asleep on the keyboard.

So Lady of the House of Love is the token vampire story of this collection. Interesting as I can't recall many vampires in fairytales. I suppose they come in different forms, nameless monsters that drink your blood. Makes sense, linking to the unknown.

The biggest thing you pick up on when you start this story is the loneliness, despair and inevitability of the lady's tragedy. When she repeats the action of turning over her Tarot cards and gets the death card, we may well wonder if it is her death being predicted or her victims'. Perhaps it's just the omniscience of death in her fate.

I think an interesting aspect of this story is the ending. This girl is living death, trapped in the past and alone. You would think that the introduction of love to the story would be a redemptive feature but it isn't, it is what kills her in the end. So love equals death. But actually it is the death of someone living an awful existence, so is love actually a release from suffering rather than a damning event? Reference to Sleeping Beauty here would be appropriate I suppose. In the original, true love's first kiss wakes the princess up. So assuming the vampire lady's life was something similar to sleep, then death is waking up...I can't make sense of that so I'll just move on.

Question is do I have anything else to say?

Or the strength to say it?

I guess the whole thing is also good for looking at the struggle in the gothic between logic and the supernatural. Logic would lead us to the assumption that when we die, we die. But no...obviously we are wrong. The Countess shows us the supernatural side of things. Then the soldier represents reason, or the natural, with his reliance on technology like the bike. What I'm finding it hard to decide is, which one wins? In Dracula and Faustus it's easy to prove that in the end of the gothic reason triumphs over the absurd. But here, even though the vampire dies, the legend lives on in the rose the soldier brings back to life, and it is not a happy thing that she is dead, as they had loved each other. How sad.

:(

My fingers are tired.

See you tomorrow guyyyyss.

oh look...another huge metaphor for sex :|

Today is Hans Christian Andersen's 205th birthday. How fitting. Or...not fitting as the story I'm looking at now has nothing to do with him. Ha.

Sooo...
The Snow Child.
Well first of all I should mention how much I bloody love this story. It makes me laugh so much. Congrats Angie you truly surpassed yourself. It's written in the present tense and is quite short, so we guess that Carter meant it as some sort of allegory. It's based on the story Snow White by the Brothers Grimm, the major difference in that story being that it is the mother, not the father, who makes the wishes for a daughter, gives birth to her then dies shortly after. I think Carter made this alteration to portray the girl as a product of male desire, merely as a projection of how men idealise women. This version of the story was endorsed by Bruno Bettelheim who wrote The Uses of Enchantment, an analysis of fairytales, in which he claimed fairytales to be portrayals of oedipal conflicts between mother and daughter.
The child is a passive object, and in the Sadeian Woman Carter explores this kind of character:
"To exist in the passive case is to die in the passive case--that is, to be killed... This is the moral of the fairy tale about the perfect woman".
In this one the man has the power of the narrator, to make things happen at his will ie. create the snow child, he symbolizes controlling, possessive man. He is also portrayed as a pornographer, like in the Bloody Chamber, clothed, he imagines up the perfect female: naked, pure and ready to defile. Both females in the story are under man's control, and because of that they can only exist as rivals, so the Countess hates the child, which seems to agree with Bettelheim's interpretation of fairytales.
The Count's almost ritual undressing of the Countess displays his power over her, taking away her individuality, and her social status if clothed means civilised and nakedness means inferiority.
In the original of this tale the Count has to choose between the Countess and the child when his wife forces him to, but Carter instead portrays man's ultimate power in not having to choose, being able to assert masculine power over female sexuality.

The objects that inspire the Count's desired child are snow, blood and a raven's feather. There's the obvious implications here, snow meaning purity ie. virginity, blood indicating the violence of man's desire, and the raven is sometimes a symbol of gluttony and the antithesis of the dove's purity.
The Countess' clothes are symbols of her status as wife, but also her dependance on the man, shared by the child which is shown by their transferal to the child's body. The Countess' high heeled, scarlet, spurred boots cast her as the whore of the complex (Madonna whore that is), as a sexual object. Her pelts of black foxes portray her as a wild animal, something base and uncivilised perhaps.

The conclusion to the story is that the child is pierced by the thorn, bleeds and dies. This symbolises the loss of her innocence, the blood could be menstrual or that shed in the loss of virginity. The Count rapes the corpse, showing man to be desperate in sexual desire, and the child melts away, as she has served her purpose to the man, that is her sexual purpose. Her melting also shows her as a part of nature, casting the whole story as male power vs. female sexuality being an allegory for society vs. nature. The death of the puppet of man's ideal woman, and desire, could portray a death of male dominance, as afterwards the Count picks up the rose and offers it to his wide, submitting to her? The fact that the rose bites represents the pain that accompanies female sexuality.

I'm quite proud of that. Think I'll go watch Lost now.

i need some new boots actually

Maybe i'll go on asos instead of doing this...
Ok no I have no money anyway.

PUSS. in boots!
So this narrator is the first male one, and he comes across to start with as arrogant and sex-driven. I wonder what Carter could have meant by that? He seems to be smart though and comes up with schemes to help his master, but actually the the big plan of the story is thought up by a girl, though Puss takes credit for it. It's as if Carter felt bad about not letting men have their say in the book, but couldn't bring herself to be nice about it.

The characters in this one are based on the Italian Comedia dell'Arte. The cats represent the harlequin and the colombina as they are poor but witty and manage to get their own way in the end. The Pantaleone obviously fills the role of the Pantalone, as the old, greedy man, but the hag also fills this role as the baddie. The man and the woman represent the lovers, defined by their desperate love for each other, and aiding no other purpose other than to create a scenario for the other characters to revolve around.
The woman is an interesting character because, although she is one of the passive lovers, she is not the passive, yielding woman you might expect her to be. She takes an active role in wanting to be rescued from her awful marriage (and from virginity). Like in previous stories such as The Tiger's Bride the woman steps up to the initiation of sex rather than submitting helplessly. This shows Carter's theme of strong women as equal to men in sexuality and everything else.

Sexuality itself in this story is much different to the other stories. It is portrayed as something to be laughed at and enjoyed, rather than something to indicate power and control, or ownership over someone. To begin with Puss views sex as some sort of 'cure' for love, perhaps indicating a belief that woman are just something to be used and disposed of. However this changes as the narrator falls in love with the other cat, and he starts to see that it is about mutual gain rather than male pleasure.

Goodbyeeee

has it come to this?

That my sunday nights are so empty I choose to write a blog when I have a whole two days left to do it last minute?
How awful.

Oh well I'm here now.
I'm gonna do The Tiger's Bride and The Courtship of Mr. Lyon together cos I find the parallels and contrasts interesting.
Ok I'm not. I'm going to bed and finishing this tommorow...maybe.

Good morning, good morning! We haven't talked the whole night through but I have been thinking about lions and tigers.
I think the major contrast between these two is how the two narrators begin in terms of free will. In Mr Lyon the narrator, Beauty, is loving and obedient to her father, and goes willingly to the lion's house. However in Tiger's Bride the narrator is disgusted by her father's actions and by the beast himself, at his request to see her naked.
However both narrators end the story by willingly loving the beast. In Mr. Lyon is he revealed to be a man, and in Tiger's Bride the narrator reveals her inner beast. I think both these endings portray the message that noone has to submit to anyone, not women to men or the other way around, but that we are all the same underneath.

Obviously both these texts are interpretations of the fairytale Beauty and the Beast, and I like the way Carter has used elements of the fairytale genre in each. In both Mr Lyon and Tiger's Bride the family in question has a recently lowered status and are looking to get it back, which i seem to find is often the case in tellings of fairytales. Another fairytale concept is the easy acceptance of the abnormal, like the father's lack of acknowledgement at a dog that wears jewels in Mr Lyon.

Right...yeah I'm gonna stop now.

im shutting the door on the chamber now

Like the chamber of secrets. I feel like reading Harry Potter. If only there was as much innuendo in it as there is in The Bloody Chamber.
So I finished last time on the character of the marquis. What a tw*t he was. A much nicer example of a man is the piano tuner. I won't go into detail on him cos I did a whole labour of love on him last week. Basically he rocks despite his blindness. Carter is widening access here. Nice one. Except the narrator doesn't need any wider access cos she's a ssshhhllaaagg. JOKES don't lynch me feminists (rosie f).
Anyway with the whole feminism thing, the character of the mother is a hugely powerful one. The other powerful figure in the story, the marquis, is a symbol of corruption and evil, whereas the mother's power is wholly good and admirable. From the very start we are aware that the narrator emulates her mother, and she is shown as strong and courageous, having shot tigers and fought pirates, even though those seem the kind of stories we are told as children which may not actually be true. My mum is weird like this. She used to tell us stories and change all the male heroes into female ones. Hence my confusion at seeing the film of the snowman...i was sure it should be the snowoman. Regardless, this mother figure actually is as powerful and wise as she seems. Her 'mother's intuition' tingles when she talks on the phone to the narrator. Because of course crying at gold bath taps means your daughter's husband is about to murder her. Duh. She rides in and saves the day. She is a great example of a powerful woman but I dislike the way she is portrayed as masculine, as if a woman has to be manly to be strong.
Another feminism thing is the 'shame' the narrator mentions at the end. I think this refers to shame at being a weak woman, having submitted to her husband's will, and accepting his decision to murder her. That's just insane. I would be ashamed of that. The narrator is comparing herself to her mother, who is powerful and independant, traits the narrator doesn't show.

I did have more to say but I'm hungry and my genius is spent.

That bloody Bloody Chamber

Hiiiiii long time no write. Not that anyone reads this i shouldn't really feel guilty. It's not like my blog has feelings.
Um.
Right.
Well.
Ok yeah The Bloody Chamber was a very interesting story to study. I found that all the way through I was anticipating the next sentence's meaning and looking forward to all the hilarious hidden meanings in it. It's like the whole story had several dimensions to it, not just the words you were reading.
Sheeeees electric. Sorry i love this song.
What was i saying. Ggggguyes. Dimensions.
For example, at the beginning you are thrown straight into a big ole bucket of fallic imagery. The story starts on the train which has 'great pistons ceaselessly thrusting' carrying her 'away from girlhood'. You'd have to be a bit simple not to catch those neon flashing signs saying 'SEX'. This sort of helps to illustrate the relationship our narrator is starting, and as we get further into the story it seems that the most important thing to the marquis is the sex. This is in contrast to the only other marriage we are told about in the story, that of the narrator's parents. What we see there is that the mother experienced love for whom she 'gladly, scandalously, defiantly beggared herself for'.
The narrator has done the oppsite here, fallen for the wealth the marquis radiates, and although she never actually says she is marrying him for his money, it is insinuated. Firstly, instead of suggesting her mother should be happy that she is in love, the girl thinks she should be more grateful for the money: 'as if it was with reluctance that she might at last banish the spectre of poverty from...our meagre table.' Also the girl is constantly obsessing over the gifts the marquis has given her, and the castle they are going to live in: 'The faery solitude of the place, with its turrets of misty blue, its courtyard, its spiked gate...' This description has huge resonance of fairytales, a childish tradition suggesting the narrator's naivety. It is also interesting that all the parts of the castle she mentions play a part in her near death - the courtyard where he will behead her, the gate that will lift to let him (and her mother) in to find her, and the sea that will almost cut her off from being saved.
Another dimension to the story are the hugely unsubtle references to death that deeply hint at the direction the story is taking. Again, within the very opening of the story we are being made to think about death. The narrator describes marriage as 'the unguessable country'. Traditionally the unknown is reserved for death. This particular imagery is closely related to Shakespeare's depiction of death in Hamlet as 'The undiscovered country from whose bourn/ No traveller returns'. It can't be a coincidence that Carter chose that image to portray marriage.
I can't believe im contemplating writing more.
Im going to make a cup of tea.
Right. Hot caffeiny goodness.
The characters in The Bloody Chamber basically make up the whole story. Firstly, the narrator's character is developed throughout. She starts off, as i have explained, seeming naive and possibly slightly shallow. However she starts to gain a bit of strength from the moment she realizes what she has done in marrying the marquis. Her mixed disgust and desire at the marquis shows a slight growth in her character from the start: 'the old monocled lecher who examined her, limb by limb... Most pornographic of all confrontations. And so my purchaser unwrapped his bargain.' The language here portrays the situation she is in as cheap and dirty, prostitution even.
This leads me to the character of the marquis. Never literally hopefully. He is primarily characterised by his title of marquis, 'the richest man in France' as he is described. This makes us automatically judge him. He is never named which separates him from the narrator and hence from the reader. He is said to be wearing a 'mask', which gives him a sinister sense of mystery. This mysteriousness is enhanced by his past. We are told about his past wives who have all tragically died. Oh. Wow. What could that possibly mean? All we seem to know about him for a very long time is that he is rich, has a lot of dead wives, and is a bit of a perv. It's not looking great so far is it really marqy? I think Carter immediately tries to make the reader dislike him, and so throughout the whole story there is a dramatic irony where we can tell what is going to happen to the narrator, and she only realizes when she finds the bloody chamber. Fool.

Ok guys the cybervibes are telling me you're bored so im gonna stop.
Peace Out.

dracattack....what's this? oh yeah supereligion

That's supernatural and religion combined.
I can't believe I've resorted to English to avoid Chemistry. Epic fail.

Ummmmmm
well
We had how the novel portrays reiligion and superstition as separate things, whilst today we might view them as one in the same. Because of how we see it, it was hard to judge what was what in the story.
There's the obvious things like using garlic to ward off Dracula, and the blue flames supposing to signify the site of hidden gold. They're supernatural/stitious things.
And the obvious religious stuff like gender roles in men protecting the defenceless women, and holy commissions, also Quincey Morris sacrificing himself to save the world from evil, like our man Jesus.
But then, other stuff , apparently, was a bit more blurred. Like the use of the crucifix. Jonathan Harker originally dismisses the crucifix (or more specifically the rosary) as superstition. But then later on it becomes his only weapon and protection against the Count. Then, that also might be a distinction being made between the Anglican and Catholic Churches. The typically Anglican resort to Catholicism to save themselves.

Ok that's all. Back to...logical straightforward science.

Draco vs. Van the man

Van Helsing would totally kick Drac's ass.
Ummmmmm well we looked at how they contrast each other, and also how they are reflected in each other. Because, really, they aren't total opposites. They're all one big happy family really.

Firstly, their contrasts. Dracula is seen to be evil: 'the evil smile as quickly passed into a cold stare'. And Van Helsing opposes this in his goodness: 'Van Hesling would, I know, do anything for me'. Also the Count puts on a facade of friendliness: 'Nay, Sir, you are my guest.' Whereas, Van Helsing's good will is real: 'all embracing sympathy', 'with such an infinate geniality'. In actual character they are each other's antithesis.
However, in their portrayal they are actually quite similar. They are both defined by their actions more than their words, as gothic heroes often are. For example Dracula never actually tells us he's a vampo, but Jonathan Harker sees him climb down the wall of the castle, and Mina sees a man we assume to Dracula bend over Lucy, presumably drinking her blood. Van Helsing is often shown to us through his actions for other characters. He performs all the operations for Lucy, even giving her his own blood, and the other characters come to see him, as we do, as a selfless man. They are both also foreign to the other characters as well as the contempory reader, though that comes to mean different things for the two characters. Their use of archaic language highlights their difference to the other characters. They are both intellectual and quick minded, and certainly both determined.

So we see that it is not just that their contrasts define Dracula and Van Helsing as antagonists, but their similar portrayals are what lead us to make comparisons between the two.

You're welcome x

Lucy is sooo gonna die now

So...a few lessons ago we looked at chapter 11 and thought about the ways in which the beginning foreshadows Lucy's death.

Lucy herself writes things in her diary which relate to death for example she wishes it upon herself when she cannot sleep, comparing herself to Ophelia who, obviously kills herself: 'hoping for sleep, and lying like Ophelia in the play'. That's a bit stupid to be honest...to wish for death when you're already ill, like tempting fate right?
Also, Lucy's mother's action of removing the garlic from Lucy makes it clear to us she will have become worse overnight. The mother thinks she has helped Lucy which is sad because the dramatic irony for us is knowing it probably killed her.
Another presage of Lucy's death is the breakdown of Van Helsing: 'Then, for the first time in my life, I saw Van Helsing break down.' His composure throughout the book showed him to be a strong character, so to see him lose it now implies there is no hope for Lucy.
The repetition used in the writing seems to suggest hopelessness too: 'Again the operation; again the narcotic; again some return of colour to the ashy cheeks, and the regular breathing of healthy sleep.' This seems to be repeating something that they know hasn't worked in the past, and it is really just prolonging the inevitable.

Gutted for Lucy.

Verisimiliwhat?

This was very confusing.
Verisimilitude seemed to be the varying degrees of truth in a novel or play etc.
As a concept I can understand this, but when we applied it to Dracula I found it quite hard to judge what the author used to portray fact and why he was doing it.
Looking at the extracts showed me that it was used to sort of lull the reader into a false sense of security of reality. Then Stoker gradually alters his style so fantasy takes over.
This is very interesting as I hadn't really thought about that as a writing technique but now that I think about it, quite a lot of writers do it. I hate to mention Twilight and seem obssessed (cos I am) but it happens in that, and Harry Potter etc.

The other thing about this was the seeming conflict in the novel Dracula, between the progression of technology in society, and the regression of turning to the supernatural.
I found this interesting because the Victorian times were a period of great change and triumph in things like science and technology. But Bram Stoker chooses to portray the use of supernatural as power. Van Helsing reverts to superstitions like garlic to ward off vampires, which works better than other methods.

Ta.

Two lessons ago we did an essay in groups.
I found this an interesting excercise and it really broadened my way of approaching essays I think.
I found that the getting of ideas for the essay was much improved, obviously, due to the excess thinking power at the table.
But writing them down was hard because we all had different writing styles and often argued over words. This slowed us down and I think our essay would have been better if this problem hadn't arisen.
The result of the group task was something like a hybrid of all our styles. When I read it through after I could see evidence of my own input but other parts seemed completely unfamiliar. This essay was better than my own effort though, because some people had points that I didn't remember, and other people were also able to communicate the points more fluently.
Oh well...

Dracularity

I finished the book in the holidays and actually really enjoyed it. I think the beginning dragged for me a bit but I really started to like when Stoker started to use many different perspectives to write from.

This lesson we talked about vampires. I think the traditional side of this topic is very interesting. We looked at early beliefs on vampires and their development to modern times. What really interested me was how the early image of the vampire is completely different from the modern one. It was traditionally bloated looking and dark, but now we think of them as pale, thin and ghostly looking. It made me wonder what caused that change.
I just looked at the traditional stuff and it looks like vampire myths date back as far as humans have recorded, and are present all across the world. Although different, all the myths stem from the idea of someone dead coming back to life and living off blood.
Our notion of the vampire is influenced strongly by Stoker's Dracula and we looked at what society was like at the time he wrote that, and what may have inspired his tale. The gender role aspects were interesting here, especially the growing freedom for women in Victorian times. I think here, the sexual freedom is most important to see what may have influenced Stoker. Also the nationalist identity links as there is much evidence of xenophobia in Dracula, with the villain himself being Transylvanian.

lalalesson

I can't remember last lesson though I'm sure it was great.
SO I'm skipping it out and doing today instead.

That tangent thing happened again today; it's interesting I suppose but it means I forget what the lesson was about.

Today we looked at how Faustus is presented to the audience in the first scene. Many of the quotes I picked out were his own words being an example of one of his traits. For example "Coulds't thou make men to live eternally...Then this profession were to be esteemed", shows his ambition. Here he is disregarding medicine as a career because it doesn't give him enough potential for greatness ie. you can't raise the dead.

We also thought about the two characters introduced at the end of the first scene: Valdes and Cornelius. It seems that they regard themselves as inferior to Faustus in skill and knowledge. They say nothing about their own potential in magic, only his. They do not reappear after this introduction so it seems they are just devices created to teach Faustus magic. I don't know what I think about this. Marlowe could have done this in a different way, but perhaps he did it to show how Faustus betrayed people.

Very good.

Faust chorus and religious argument

Two interesting parts to this lesson.
First was looking at the chorus prologue of Dr. Faustus. It sets the play up to the audience to give them a vague idea of what they are about to see. It mentions Carthagens and Mars which give connotations of war and violence, suggesting the play will contain conflict. It also mentions Necromancy which shows the audience they will witness magic and evil. It gives us an impression of what Faustus himself will be like too. For example the mention of waxen wings refers to Icarus who flew to close to the sun and fell to his death, this suggests pride in him.

The other part to the lesson was the discussion on religion...too many tangents to analyse it all really. The general theme was Christianity's view on good and evil, spirits etc.
Well we never came to a conclusion so I can't comment on the actual beliefs.

Drac

I haven't finished this because quite honestly I'm bored of it.
It moves too slowly for me. Way too slowly.

However the gothic themes are very prominent here. The settings like castles, abbies, mental asylum etc. are very haunting with a lot of relation to religion which is interesting.
The protagonist, the count, is very typically gothic. Intelligent, physically strinking, non-human, powerful, foreign etc.
Female victim is also very typical: beautiful, young, naive, virgin. I have a feeling Mina will also become a victim too, but she isn't as typical as Lucy, more clever and experienced.

Bloody Chamber again

Hmmmmm......
I finished it a while ago really but I was on holiday so can't remember that far back.

Well. I remember liking all the wolf stories. They all seem to be linked in the way that the werewolves in them have all come from the same roots in legends and have the same rules etc. It seems like she's taken an interest in werewolves because she's explored them thoroughly in the last three stories.

God don't make me write more on this I really can't remember.

me on "The Bloody Chamber"

I'll admit I didn't do what Mr. F said to about posting something before i started reading it but I wasn't in a typing mood and then before I knew it I'd read three quarters of it...

Anyway, this book is strange to say the least.
So far I have read up to the end of The Lady of the House of Love (and there are definately things in that one which make me think a lot of the Twilight saga was based on it) and I'm enjoying it.
My favourite so far has been The Bloody Chamber and really I think this is the one with the most gothic elements in it as you get a feel from the beginning that something is already very wrong. Without attempting to spoil the end, I'd say that I think the conclusion to the story is quite controversial within the genre in that the hero is in fact a heroine in the end. The setting, use of foreshadowing and use of a virgin as the female victim make it all very typically gothic.

I wouldn't label all the stories in it as gothic, for example Puss in Boots is quite a mellow, fun story that just happens to end in death.

There are themes in the stories that don't immediately come to mind when you think of fairytales, as these are. Incest, intraspecies sex, necrophilia and other weird stuff like that.

My least favourite was The Snow Child because I think it's supposed to be Snow White or Sleeping Beauty or something and I just can't see it. Also IT'S REALLY ODD. Please read it now so you can be disturbed with me.

That's enough for now.