Angela Carter, 1940 - 1992

Biography of Angela Carter

Angela Carter, a British novelist, was born as Angela Olive Stalker in the town of Eastbourne in the
year 1940. While still young, Angela and her maternal grandmother were evacuated to Yorkshire,
where she suffered from anorexia for the majority of her teenage years.

Her first writing position was with the Croydon Advertiser where she worked as a journalist. She
went on to attend the University of Bristol and obtain a degree in English literature.

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Her first husband was Paul Carter, who she married in 1960. After nine years of marriage, Angela
left her husband using the money which she had won through the Somerset Maugham Award and
she moved to Tokyo for two years. Her experience in Japan was immortalized in 1974 in Fireworks:
Nine Profane Pieces, a series of short stories, as well as in her book, The Infernal Desire Machines of
Doctor Hoffman which was written in 1972.
After leaving Japan, Angela Carter spent many years writing at different universities in Europe and
the United States such as Brown University in the U.S. the University of Adelaide in Australia, and
the University of East Anglia in England. She married again in 1977 to a man named Mark Pearce.
Their marriage resulted in the birth of one son.

Carter wrote many novels, works of nonfiction, anthologies, as well as several articles. These
articles include The Independent, The Guardian, and New Statesman. Many of her famous short
stories were released on the radio and a couple of her fictional works were made into films. In
addition to completing her own works, she also attempted to write a sequel to the famous book,
Jane Eyre, which was written by Charlotte Bronte. However, she passed away before it could be
completed.

Her novels include Shadow Dance, The Magic Toyshop, Heroes and Villains, Several Perceptions,
The Donkey Prince, Miss Z in 1970, Love, The Music People, Moonshadow, Nights at the Circus
which was a winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Artificial Fire, Wise Children, and Sea-
Cat & Dragon King which was released posthumously in 2000.
Her anthologies include Expletives Deleted in 1974, The Bloody Chamber, Comic and Curious Cats,
American Ghosts and Old World Wonders, Black Venus, and Burning Your Boats in 1995.

Angela Carter also published three works of nonfiction including The Sadeian Woman & the
Ideology of Pornography in 1978, Nothing Sacred in 1982, and Images of Frida Kahlo in 1989.

She was diagnosed with lung cancer in the year 1991, the same year she published her novel Wise
Children, and passed away the year after at the age of 52. She was named one of the most examined
of English writers fifteen years after her premature death.
ANGELA CARTER - BIOGRAPHY
Angela Carter was an English fiction writer and journalist. She was born on May 17, 1940 and died
in 1992. She was ranked number ten in The Times list of “The 50 Greatest British Writers Since 1945.”
Carter was a fiction writer and journalist whose writings embody a commitment to feminism and
magical realism.
Angela Carter was born Angela Olive Stalker on May 7, 1940 in Eastbourne. Her father was a
journalist, which would later inspire Angela Carter. Because of the impending German aerial
attacks of World War II, Carter was moved to stay with her grandmother in Yorkshire. Throughout
her teens, Angela Carter struggled with the eating disorder anorexia. The Croydon Advertiser hired
Carter as a journalist. This employment offered Carter some of her first experiences with writing on
a professional level.
Angela Carter studied English literature at the University of Bristol. Angela Carter became fluent in
German and French. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Angela Carter would hold residencies at
many institutions of higher education including the University of Adelaide, Brown University, the
University of East Anglia and the University of Sheffield.
In 1960, she married her first husband Paul Carter. Nine years later, Angela Carter won the
Somerset Maugham Award. She used the awards purse to travel to Japan and distance herself from
her husband. She stayed in Japan for two years. This experience would fuel her novel The Infernal
Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman, published in 1972, and her short story collection Fireworks: Nine
Profane Pieces, published in 1974. In the 1982 text Nothing Sacred, Carter would claim the experience
of gender relations in Japan forced her to become radicalized. Angela Carter would also travel
through Asia, Europe and North America.
Angela Carter divorced Paul Carter in 1972. Five years later, Carter married her second husband
Mark Pearce. Angela Carter and Mark Pearce would have one son.
In 1978, Angela Carter took a controversial step for a feminist by embracing the works of the
Marquis de Sade. Carter offered a generally positive interpretation of this work in her study The
Sadeian Woman the Ideology of Pornography. Although some feminists might find such a position
counter-intuitive, Carter argued that the Marquis de Sade was one of the first writers who viewed
the function of women as something that transcended the function of producing babies. Carter
views those female Sadeian characters that embrace their libertarianism as successful; however,
those female characters who embrace traditional roles are thwarted and tortured for their short
sightedness.
In 1979, Angela Carter published one of her most renowned collections of short fiction, The Bloody
Chamber. The collection received much critical praise when it was released. Many critics felt that
this collection was the first work in which Carter had fully established her literary voice. The Bloody
Chamber was also awarded the Cheltenham Festival Literary Prize in the year of its publication. In
this work, Carter retold many well known and the occasionally obscure folk and fairy tale. She
reinterpreted these stories with her own particular and sometimes dark vision of feminist
empowerment. Carter explores the idea of female identifications in the context of the sometimes
horrible mechanisms of male fantasies. Carter’s goal in approaching these stories was not to create
adult stories from children’s stories. Instead, she tried to “extract” the implied content from the
original folk material.
The eponymous story in The Bloody Chamber focuses on extracting the implied content from the tale
of Bluebeard. In Carter’s version of this story, a teenage girl is wed to a rich but much older
Marquis. This union is without love. The Marquis moves the girl to his estate where he delights in
forcing his young wife to view pornographic and sadistic materials. During this time the young
bride’s talent at the piano captures the heart of blind piano tuner. The young woman discovers her
husband has murdered all of his other wives. Her husband returns and plans to kill her. The piano
tuner remains, faithfully but futilely at her side. At the end of the work, the girl’s mother rescues
her and shoots the Marquis in the moment before he murders his wife. This ending places the
heroic authority not only with a woman but with an older woman, inverting the typical heroic
authority of young men.
In “The Snow Child”, Angela Carter draws the inspiration from the story “Snow White”. In this
reinterpretation a countess and count ride through a winter landscape. The count imagines and
hopes for a child whose features are inspired by the aspects of the landscape: the white of snow, the
red of a pool of blood, the black of a raven. The count’s wish becomes embodied by a young
woman. The countess becomes tired of her husband’s doting on the girl. She instructs the young
woman to pick a rose. A thorn scratches the young woman and she melts leaving only a raven’s
feather and some blood. The countess reveals her desires to be the equivalent of her husbands.
In this collection, Angela Carter has also included “The Erl-King”. Angela Carter recounts the tale
of a treacherous woodland spirit. In Carter’s story, a young woman travels through the forest. As
she journeys, the Erl-King seduces her. He appears as the spirit who embodies the woods. The girl
realizes that the Erl-King will transform her into a bird and capture her if she does not murder him.
In killing the Erl King, the young girl rescues herself instead of waiting passively for a male figure
to act for her.
Angela Carter interprets many tales in the The Bloody Chamber. Carter returns repeatedly to the
story of “Little Red Riding Hood”. She reinterprets this tale in “The Werewolf”, “Wolf-Alice”, and
“The Company of Wolves”. In “The Werewolf”, a young girl is assaulted by a wolf on her way to
visit her grandmother. The girl chops of the beast’s paw and it later transforms into her
grandmother’s hand. The girl leads the community into stoning her grandmother. The girl inherits
the grandmother’s property. In “Wolf Alice”, Angela Carter conflates elements of “Little Red
Riding Hood” with those of “Through the Looking Glass”, and What Alice Found There to produce a
story about a wild child who nuns have tried to domesticate. The wild child comes under the
charge of a Duke, both monster and vampire. The Duke does not nurture her social graces, yet she
becomes aware of identity and offers the Duke compassion.
The Company of Wolves is the best-known story in Angela Carter’s collection. It has been adapted for
radio and film. In this reinterpreted tale, Angela Carter presents a young woman travels through
the woods to her grandmother and meets a young man. The young man arrives at the
grandmother’s house first and kills the old woman. The story closely follows the traditional story,
but it ends with the young woman and man in the grandmother’s bed together.
Besides the film version of The Company of Wolves that was released in 1984, Angela Carter had one
other story made into a film The Magic Toyshop. This second film version was released in 1987.
Angela Carter continued working with radio plays, and she also wrote a libretto based on
the Virginia Woolf’s novel, Orlando. Angela Carter’s work continued to be both prolific and varied
throughout the 1980s.
In 1992, Angela Carter died of lung cancer. Angela Carter passed away in her London home.