The Erlking Angela Carter 1979
After first appearing in the periodical Bananas, Angela Carter's "The Erlking" was published in her 1979 collection of short stories The Bloody Chamber. Throughout this collection, Carter revises classic European fairy tales, exploring provocative variations on their underlying themes of the bestiality within human nature and the power dynamics of sexual desire. This was the first book that brought the lyrical and iconoclastic British writer's fiction to the attention of people in the United States. Controversial for its gender politics as well as its ornately descriptive writing style, the collection garnered mixed reviews. In the years since her 1992 death, Carter's reputation has soared, and The Bloody Chamber remains one of her most highly esteemed and frequently discussed works.
In "The Erlking," an innocent young woman walking through a deserted wood is seduced by a wild man who lives there. Like the animals that surround him, she falls subject to the Erlking's strange power. She learns that he is planning to transform her into a bird—many of which he keeps in cages in his cottage to sing for him—but she nevertheless remains compelled to submit to his will. However, an alternate fate for the woman is imagined when, at the story's close, it is conjectured that she will strangle him with his own hair and set free all the birds, which will then turn back into the form of other young virgins the Erlking has seduced. "The Erlking" is one of the collection's more experimental stories. Through a series of sudden and disorienting shifts in point of view, Carter creates an intimate sense of the protagonist's experience of losing herself. The story addresses contemporary issues of female psychology and sexuality, making the ancient literary form of the fairy tale freshly relevant.
Carter was born in Eastborne, England, in 1940, the daughter of Hugh and Olive Stalker. It was the beginning of World War II and, fearing Hitler's approach, the family soon moved to South Yorkshire, where Carter was raised by her mother and maternal grandmother. After the war the family returned to the London area. Carter reports a close relationship with her father, a journalist originally from Scotland, but also claims that he was overprotective of her. In adolescence she suffered from anorexia, which she attributes to her family's sexual conservatism. Nevertheless, writes Alison Lee in her study Angela Carter,' 'the picture she paints of her family life is generally affectionate and her depiction of her childhood home highlights its dreamlike aura." She hated school and, against her mother's wishes, did not apply to university. Her father helped Carter secure a job as a journalist. In 1960 she married Paul Carter, an industrial chemist, and moved to Bristol. Soon bored with life as a housewife, she began a degree in English at Bristol University.
She graduated in 1965 with a specialization in medieval literature. Over one summer vacation, she wrote her first novel, Shadow Dance, which was published in 1966. She quickly wrote several other novels that were very well received. In 1968, separating from her husband, she took the prize money from a literary award and moved to Japan. It was there, she wrote in Nothing Sacred, "I learned what it is to be a woman and became radicalized." For the rest of her career, Carter remained an outspoken, if iconoclastic, leftist and feminist. Carter returned to England and supported herself teaching and writing political commentary for several newspapers.
A small but highly literate and enthusiastic readership, including well-known authors such as Robert Coover and Salman Rushdie, embraced her fiction. But Carter's work was experimental and hard to categorize, and literary glory eluded her. Nevertheless, she wrote prolifically. In the 1970s, in addition to writing nonfiction, several
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