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juushikaCarrying on in search of more Red Riding Hood retellings, and thoughts thereon:
Blessedly, this book is providing a healthy amount of both recommendations and food for thought. I won't pretend that it's exhaustive, but it is at least broadly introductive, and various moments in the fairy tale's history laid out one after another sketches a wide, visible landscape that can hold other retellings, other deconstructions. It's also quick and smooth without becoming slick and gimmicky—something not all books of its sort achieve, and so it's a pleasure to read.
It also helps explain why I always have such a hard time discussing Carter's work. Her stories, in particular her short fiction (and the media based on/inspired by them) are a maze of contradiction, as Orenstein summarizes above. Describing that contradiction makes me feel that I'm mired in an exploration of the story rather than making a coherent argument about it (which discourages me enough to stop trying), when in many cases the coherent argument is that that the story keeps you mired there: in the liminal state that contains the contradictions of bright and dark, innocent and evil, human and beast—because that state itself is an achievement and a destination, not just a journey. The contradiction is complexity. The complexity is the point.
I feel Carter's short fiction in my heart, not with my brain; I'm still struck dumb by the beauty of her language and her grotesque, sensual imagery; but this helps me at least learn to speak on her more coherently than attempted reviews that amounted to little more than "lush irreverent intelligent haunting feminist gruesome powerful *wibble*." That's an improvement.
Unrelatedly (or only tangentially so), I feel betrayed to discover that Kiernan's To Charles Fort, With Love is out of print. I shouldn't be surprised—I know that this happens with some of her books—but betrayal isn't a rational emotion (what emotion is?). After all that I've recommended it, after wanting so badly to reread it, I thought I'd buy it this time instead of borrowing it from the library again—but even library discards start at $50, and I don't have $50 (or, rather, I do—but it was $50 I was planning to spread over five books, not one). I'm heartbroken. And I finally understand why assholes steal from libraries, because I want that book.
In Carter's "Red Riding Hood"-related tales, and in the film, the heroine's wolf is not her oppressor, nor her opponent, nor her ravisher. Rather than besting the beast, the heroine incorporates it. The protagonists—both heroine and villain—move back and forth between the form of human and beast, and each is by turns tender and aggressive. Their parallel transformation suggest their interrelated identities that encompass darkness and brightness, innocence and evil at once. Her heroine's bestial side is an acknowledgement not only of her natural sex drive but also of her sexual complexity.
—Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: Sex, Morality, and the Evolution of a Fairy Tale, Catherine Orenstein, page 168
Blessedly, this book is providing a healthy amount of both recommendations and food for thought. I won't pretend that it's exhaustive, but it is at least broadly introductive, and various moments in the fairy tale's history laid out one after another sketches a wide, visible landscape that can hold other retellings, other deconstructions. It's also quick and smooth without becoming slick and gimmicky—something not all books of its sort achieve, and so it's a pleasure to read.
It also helps explain why I always have such a hard time discussing Carter's work. Her stories, in particular her short fiction (and the media based on/inspired by them) are a maze of contradiction, as Orenstein summarizes above. Describing that contradiction makes me feel that I'm mired in an exploration of the story rather than making a coherent argument about it (which discourages me enough to stop trying), when in many cases the coherent argument is that that the story keeps you mired there: in the liminal state that contains the contradictions of bright and dark, innocent and evil, human and beast—because that state itself is an achievement and a destination, not just a journey. The contradiction is complexity. The complexity is the point.
I feel Carter's short fiction in my heart, not with my brain; I'm still struck dumb by the beauty of her language and her grotesque, sensual imagery; but this helps me at least learn to speak on her more coherently than attempted reviews that amounted to little more than "lush irreverent intelligent haunting feminist gruesome powerful *wibble*." That's an improvement.
Unrelatedly (or only tangentially so), I feel betrayed to discover that Kiernan's To Charles Fort, With Love is out of print. I shouldn't be surprised—I know that this happens with some of her books—but betrayal isn't a rational emotion (what emotion is?). After all that I've recommended it, after wanting so badly to reread it, I thought I'd buy it this time instead of borrowing it from the library again—but even library discards start at $50, and I don't have $50 (or, rather, I do—but it was $50 I was planning to spread over five books, not one). I'm heartbroken. And I finally understand why assholes steal from libraries, because I want that book.
