The Tiger's Bride and The courtship of Mr Lyon are based upon the traditional fairy tale The Beauty and the Beast which was originally written by Jeanne-Marie le Prince de Beaumont in 1756. The Courtship of Mr. Lyon is the more faithful of the two to its original. Beauty is initially depicted as the virtuous female and possession of the beast
“Miss Lamb, spotless, sacrificial” (Carter,197,P:52)
However, Carter adds a slight twist to the original in order to encompass contemporary issues surrounding ‘consumer culture’ and thus brings the tale up-to-date; Beauty’s purity is questioned when she leaves the Beast and becomes a slave to commodity in a spree of self-indulgence.
“Her face was acquiring, instead of beauty a lacquer of the invincible prettiness that characterizes certain pampered, exquisite, expensive cats” (Carter,1979,P:57)
The story quickly returns to its original plot however and ends with both Beauty and the Beast learning valuable lessons on a course of ‘true love’. The Beast is liberated from his beastliness when his affection for beauty is returned. This reciprocal love is a result of him relinquishing his power and granting Beauty free will. Beauty has learnt that true love cannot be found in material goods and returns to the Beast. Overall, the tale appears to liberate both men and women from the stereotypical shallow female and the ‘Beastly’ male.
Or so the story goes….
In my opinion ‘the end’ of this tale is far removed from the truth of reality, we fail to see the ‘happy ever after’ as is the case with all traditional fairy tales. The final paragraph is curiously self-conscious of its original that Carter contests so much in her Sadeian Woman and as such raises suspicion. The story is plagued by pleasure with no semiotic drives in sight. The whole text is excessively descriptive with adjectives overbearing its content.
“the house with is sweet, retiring , melancholy grace”
“a short, snowy drive” (1979,p:48)
The majority of the text is predictable and maintains prescriptive identities via its ideals of gender expression. There is no loss of the self only the correction of characters ‘faults’ which aim to reinforce gender binaries under the guise of magical ‘true love’. I interpret that this symbolic text attempts to conceal the truth that; Beauty is a lady of leisure and the Beast her provider whom becomes powerless without her and her powerless with him, she is an objectified possession for the Beast and her father whom compete for her affections with the power of wealth via commodities and luxury.
The final passage of the story reeks of false representation, a pictorial view of marriage is portrayed in what Barthes would deem “embarrassed figuration” (1975, p: 56)
“Mr and Mrs Lyon walk in the garden; the old spaniel drowses on the grass, in a drift of fallen petals” (Carter,1979,p:60).
Within the context of Carter’s other stories, it could be interpreted that the real ending is not the implied bed of roses but that of The Bloody chamber or The Erl King. The Bloody Chamber could well be Carter’s attempt to draw attention to the abuse of women that is concealed under the illusion presented in this symbolic tale yet revealed in de Sade’s work.
The Bloody chamber revises the tale of Charles Perrault’s Bluebeard (1697) whom murders his wives under the justification of impurity. Maybe Beauty will be punished as de Sade’s Justine behind the doors of the bloody chamber after entering into the contract of marriage? After all as Carter professes;
“Man proposes to a woman and a woman is disposed of” (Carter, 1979.p:6)
Furthermore, it could also be the case that Carter is providing the alternative destiny for Beauty in her adaption of The Erl King. The female of this tale is portrayed as de Sade’s Juliette whom is sexually liberated yet risks imprisonment as punishment for her submission. The Erl king transforms his former conquests into birds and keeps them caged. The heroine of this story murders the king to regain power and escape.
I interpret that The Courtship of Mr. Lyon is purposefully true to the original to provide the symbolic text of which its companion The Tyger’s Bride can contradict and evoke an experience of bliss as Kristeva and Barthes suggest.
“The more a story is told in a proper, well-spoken, straightforward way, in an even tone, the easier it is to reverse it, to blacken it, to read it inside out” (Barthes,1975,P:26).
The Tyger’s Bride allows liberation from both the false ideologies of the typical fairy tale and those of the extremes displayed in de Sade’s pornography. Figurative language tears away at the symbolic structures of the original to reveal semiotic drives of both Beauty and the Beast in an erotic passage;
“A tremendous throbbing […] filled the little room; he had begun to purr. The sweet thunder of this purr shook the old walls, made the shutters batter the windows until they burst apart and let in the white light of the snowy moon. Tiles came crashing down from the roof […]. The reverberations of his purring rocked the foundations of the house […]. I thought: ‘it will fall, everything will disintegrate’” (1979, P: 81).
This poetic passage ruptures the pleasurable text. The geno-text stimulates the physical senses of the reader and awakens reality. The Tyger’s purrs embody his primal drives and bring ideologies that oppress him crashing down around them. Barthes gap and Kristeva’s thetic break physically manifests. The Tyger and his bride come together without a contract, they write themselves in-between the lines as equals in their natural form and invite the reader to do the same. In a reversal of typical pornography the male is disrobed first. The Tyger abandons his gender constructs;
“He wears a mask with a man’s face painted beautifully on it”
“He must bathe himself in scent, what can he smell of that needs so much camouflage” (1979, p:63)
this male mask is removed along with it scent;
“the dressing gown, the mask, the wig, were laid out [‘’]the incense pot lay broken in pieces [..] there was a reek of piss and fur”
The bride’s skin is licked from her by his flesh that ‘lines the text’
“each stroke of his tongue ripped off skin,[..], all the skins of a life in the world”(1979,p:84)
Her true identity is revealed; a tigress.
In addition, Carter employs intertextuality to add depth and plurality to the original tale and empty sexual acts of pornography. She directly refers to tales of The Tyger and The Erl King to diminish representations of them as fierce animals that will “gobble you up” (1979, p:81) as punishment for misbehaviour. Reference to William Blake’s poem The Tyger prompts questioning of the true nature of the tiger. Again challenging readerly texts, the poem doesn’t depict through adjectives but embodies the Tyger and his ‘grain of the throat’ to release him to speak through his body to our own and feel his true nature rather than receive it. Both male and female become more human in their primal form as oppose to Mr. and Mrs Lyon whom transform and comply with the symbolic signified male and female. Carter teaches us to fear man not beast.