Angela Carter being a feminist, she decided to rewrite several classic fairytales into feminist tales. However, these are not made for children. They may be based on fairytales, but there’s nothing childish about them. Disclaimer made, I cannot be hold accountable for any traumatized child. I told you.

The Bloody Chamber

This one is based on Blue Beard but is set in the early 20th century. A young girl marries a mysterious aristocrat who’s been widowed several times in the past few years. But he seems a nice guy and she marries him anyway. After the wedding, he announces to his young bride that he’ll go away in a business trip and gives her a bunch of keys, telling her not to open the door that is opened by the smallest key. Of course, we all know how that story ends. Carter’s plot twist is that it is not the brothers (she has none) who save the girl. Instead, her mother is alerted by mom’s sixth sense and rides to save her daughter from the horrible man she’s married. And the mom is bad-ass. Seriously. At some point, her daughter mentions several adventures her mother had and they involve pirates. Who needs brothers when you have such a cool mom?

The Courtship of Mr Lyon

This one is based on Beauty and the Beast. The story is basically the same as the typical fairytale and the Disney film, but Beauty here seems to have more agency than in other versions. And the relationship between Mr Lyon and Beauty has a lot more depth than other versions of this story. So, pretty cool. And it’s my favorite fairytale ever, so this feminist version was perfect.

The Tiger's Bride

This is another retelling of Beauty and the Beast, but it has a more radical plot twist in the end: Beauty changes into a tiger to be with the man she loves. While you can argue that she “is changing for a man”, the way in which Carter shows it, it becomes very clear that it’s her choice to transform, she is not doing it because he tells her so.

Puss-in-Boots

This one is really funny. It’s a retelling the fairytale of the same title, but narrated by the eponymous cat (and he’s sassy). Here, the young man falls in love with a married woman. The cat doesn’t really like this, but decides to help him anyway, thinking that having the affair with the woman will remove her from his master’s mind (and he argues that in order to get to her, the young man has to play “the bad boy”, saying that all women love that). But in the end he also falls in love with the woman’s cat and the two cats plan to kill the woman’s husband so that they can be together ever after (and their masters as well). They do. If you don’t like cats because they seem treacherous, this story will confirm your worst fears.

The Erl-King

In this story, a young girl walks into the forest and finds the eponymus Erl-King, who acts very nicely towards her. He seduces her and they engage in a sexual relationship, which she seems rather content with. However, she soon realizes that he’s planning to trap her forever transforming her into a bird, as he’s done with other girls, who are put in cages all over his house. There’s no dashing brave knight in this version, and it’s the girl the one who saves all the other girls, returning them to their own form, after killing the Erl-king and using his hair to cord a fiddle. Bad-ass.

The Snow Child

This is probably the saddest story in the book. If you’ve ever read The Snow Girl, you’ll probably crashed by how this story ends. As in the original story (with a bit of Snow White in it, as well), there’s a couple who can’t have children. Seeing the combination of colours red, white and black, the woman says that she wished to have a daughter with that coloring. As they keep walking, they encounter a young girl that is exactly what the woman has wished for. However, the woman quickly orders her to pick a rose, and a thorn kills the girl.

And then, the husband RAPES THE BODY, crying all the time.

In the end, it’s all weird and depressing. And it’s the shortest story!

The Lady of the House of Love

The protagonist here is a young soldier (who’s a virgin) who gets to an abandoned castle that’s inhabited by a vampire version of Sleeping Beauty (or at least, that’s how it sounds to me). The vampire lady takes an interest to the man, and tries to seduce him. When they are in the bedroom, she cuts herself, which the soldier kisses to cure. In the end, the soldier wakes to find the woman dead in the end. It’s an interesting reversal of Sleeping Beauty, I think.

The Werewolf

In this story, when Little Red Riding Hood is on the way to her grandmothers, she meets a wolf. Because she’s not a little scared girl, she fights it and ends up cutting one of its legs. When she gets to her grandmother’s house, she finds out that one of the old lady’s hands has been cut recently. She accuses her grandmother of being a witch and the people from the village kill her. I think that the girl is very creepy, especially because in the end, she lives in her grandmother’s house, as heir of all her possessions.

The Company of Wolves

In this story, we get into a town where wolves and werewolves seem to be part of life. And when a young girl meets a handsome stranger in the woods, she decides to race him towards her grandmother’s house. He gets there first, and reveals himself to the grandmother as a werewolf, and proceeds to kill her. When the woman gets to the house, he’s waiting for her. She instantly realizes that the guy killed her grandmother, and seduces him to save her life. Again, it’s all very creepy and disturbing.

Wolf-Alice

This story takes on the idea of kids who are raised by beasts, but instead of showing it from the outsiders’ perspective, it’s narrated from the girl’s. The story focuses in the ideas of identity and self-definition, as the girl struggles to find her own self. At first, some nuns try to teach her to behave properly, and then is sent to a weird Duke’s house. In the end, the girl seems to come to terms with her identity.

There’s nothing simple about Carter’s stories. She attempts to create a counterpart to the traditional male-driven fairytales and succeeds in her attempt. And I also love the dark nature of all these stories, because a little part of me enjoys horror stories. If you want to give Carter's work a try, I think you should start with this.