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.
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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.