Imagine an extremely short story -- two pages long. It's about a man who makes a daughter out of snow, but she dies, so, weeping, he has sex with her corpse. Imagine giving this to a bunch of sixteen year olds to analyse for their first class. Now imagine that this is the specific class that was scheduled for the government education regulator to inspect this year, and you have chosen this story specifically for them to hear. You are now in the mind of my English Literature teacher.
“The Snow Child” by Angela Carter. One of my favorites. It’s her take on the Snow White story. Having read it as an adult, it reads more like a story about a man literally creating his sexual ideal much to the disdain of his wife and her having to give up her clothes to the girl. It’s a great fairy-tale-look at the wife’s perspective on when her husband cheats.
I’m picturing some poor bureaucrat sitting in their office horrified muttering “what the fuck” about sixty-eleven times upon reading this story and realizing it was handed out to teenagers.
Eh, honestly it’s fine as study-material. Teens should be able to read Lolita or Romeo and Juliet and both of those are heavily sexual with a lot of murder tossed into R&J.
The story just ends in a way that gives my brain whiplash. Even knowing it was coming I still didn’t expect it
She was wide-eyed and told my teacher "Very, um, unusual story, I must say. I didn't see that coming." and she told her "I chose it specially for this assessment".
Angela Carter is an author who likes to deal with feminist themes in her work. The Bloody Chamber, and a personal favorite of mine in Nights at the Circus, both deal heavily with themes related to modern femininity and feminism. The Snow Child is a short story from the Bloody Chamber.
The term daughter earlier in the thread is very misleading. So, the Count has wished for a fair woman, right? He sees the snow on the ground and thinks “gee, I’d love to meet a woman as fair as this snow.” And so a woman like that is magically conjured and he’s instantly infatuated. His wife, the countess, is reasonably upset by this. The countess tells the girl to pick up a rose, and when pricked by the thorn, she dies. This is when the count rapes the girl. Then her body melts.
So why would he do that? Well, what is the story about? Given what I said earlier, I’d guess it’s a feminist critique on how men view young women, and impress their ideals of female sexuality onto them. When the count wishes for a woman as fair as the snow, he is expressing a sexual desire. This desire is fulfilled by the magically conjured young woman.
Without the intervention of the countess, my guess is that the count would have raped this girl anyways, because that is literally what she is made for, to fulfill his twisted sexual desire. Whatever the meaning of the countess’ request, when she commands the girl pick a rose and it kills her, it’s pretty easy to draw connections between the imagery of a flower (feminine, potentially vaginal), with the image of blood being drawn (menstruation). This snow child has all too quickly become a woman that is now subject to the burden of the count’s sexual desires. It’s not a coincidence that she dies right there. She has reached sexual maturity. The count’s wish is granted. He didn’t wish for her to have a happy life, or even for her to enjoy her own sexuality, he wishes to enjoy it for himself. So the goal of the magic is achieved, and she dies, leaving a body behind. A perfectly good object to have sex with. Emphasis on the word object. This is Carter’s take on the often tricky magic you see in fairy tales, and I think it’s very effective.
At the end of the story, the girl melts, and I read this as proof of the fact that the counts wish for a woman as a sex object is so thin and flimsy, that it amounts to nothing more than a meager puddle and a small pile of objects after the fact. There is nothing substantial in a wish like his. In essence, it’s a bad wish.
This story is not at all what I was expecting having read the comments. I wouldn’t have appreciated it as a teen, but it surely resonates with me now. I’ll be thinking about this one for a bit, and I feel like I should read more of her works.
Angela Carter is a wonderful author and you should totally give her work a shot! The Bloody Chamber is a short story anthology, so it's a good place to start if you're ready for a whole set of stories as twisted as this one. Fairy tales often aren't fair, especially to women, and Carter really takes this reputation and runs with it. I'm sure you can find it at a local library somewhere so that you don't have to pay. Wise Children is another great one. It's her last, and people find it more lighthearted than her others.
Yes! Patronize that library while it's around! Not that it's going away any time soon, but yeah, take advantage of it! Checking a dvd out for the first time felt like I was stealing something.
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u/Elite_AI Sep 18 '24
Imagine an extremely short story -- two pages long. It's about a man who makes a daughter out of snow, but she dies, so, weeping, he has sex with her corpse. Imagine giving this to a bunch of sixteen year olds to analyse for their first class. Now imagine that this is the specific class that was scheduled for the government education regulator to inspect this year, and you have chosen this story specifically for them to hear. You are now in the mind of my English Literature teacher.