41 pages • 1 hour read
Angela CarterThe Bloody Chamber and Other Stories
Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1979A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Beta“The Courtship of Mr Lyon”-“The Tiger’s Bride”Chapter Summaries & Analyses
“The Courtship of Mr Lyon” Summary
A young woman waits for her father’s return, fearing he’s been caught in a snowstorm. Elsewhere, her father’s car has stalled. He goes to find help and comes to a manor. He goes inside and finds it empty aside from a dog, so he makes himself at home. Food and drink appear to have been left for him. After he eats, he finds a phone and a business card for a mechanic, whom he speaks to about his vehicle. However, he’s not able to call his daughter, Beauty. The dog then shows him out. On his way out, the father sees a perfect single rose and picks it for Beauty. Suddenly, his previously unseen host arrives: a “leonine apparition” (45) who attacks him and calls himself “the Beast.” The man protests that the rose was for his daughter, and shows him a photograph. The Beast studies it, then demands the man invite her to dinner. Beauty joins them soon after. She is repulsed by him, but agrees to stay while her father is away on business. During her stay, she lives in luxury but does not see the Beast. Her food is stealthily delivered; after she eats, the dog leads her to the Beast in his study. They are suddenly shy around each other. He goes to her feet and kisses her hands before running away. They repeat this scene nightly until Beauty’s father returns and she goes to join him. She promises to return before the end of winter.
Once Beauty is with her father in London, her memories become hazy and she thinks of the Beast as a distant benefactor. She often sends him flowers from the florist, which look the same all year round. Beauty becomes spoiled and transfixed by her looks. One day she is looking at herself in the mirror when the Beast’s dog appears at her door, and she remembers everything. Together they return to the Beast’s manor. Inside the house, everything is dusty and abandoned. The dog leads Beauty to the Beast’s bedroom, where the Beast is dying. Beauty kisses his hands and tells him she’ll stay with him always. The Beast transforms into a man and gets his strength back. Beauty marries him, and they live as Mr. and Mrs. Lyon.
“The Tiger’s Bride” Summary
An unnamed narrator is visiting a southern country with her father, where he is forced to play cards with a nobleman called The Beast. When he arrives, The Beast gives the woman a white rose from his lapel. The narrator observes that he seems “two-dimensional,” as if he were a caricature. Her father continues to gamble, eventually losing all his money and betting his daughter instead. The Beast wins everything, including the woman. Instead of talking, The Beast makes animal sounds to communicate, which his valet translates. He and the narrator go to his home. When the woman’s father leaves, he asks for a rose to show forgiveness; the woman pricks her finger on a thorn and smears it with blood. As they ride, the narrator remembers her nurse once telling her about a tiger-man who was on display in London. They arrive at a dilapidated house and settle in, though the narrator finds the valet unnerving. The valet tells her that his master’s only wish is to see her naked. Once he does, she’ll be returned to her father and paid richly. The woman declines, saying instead she’ll allow him to have sex with her once with her face covered. The Beast is ashamed, and the valet leads her away. The valet reveals the woman’s maid, an automaton made to look like herself. Soon the maid winds down and the narrator goes to sleep.
The next time the narrator goes to see The Beast, he repeats his request. The narrator understands his interest is because she is virginal, and she wishes she was more experienced so she wouldn’t interest him. As The Beast moves, the narrator sees he has hairy arms that end in paws. The next day, the valet asks the narrator to go riding. The maid procures the narrator’s riding outfit from home, which the narrator believed she’d left behind. She goes riding beside The Beast, and is much more at ease on a horse than he is. When they stop to rest, the valet tells her that if she will not undress, she has to see The Beast himself undress instead. The Beast removes his clothes and reveals that he is a tiger. The narrator is awed by him, and undresses herself. When they arrive home, the narrator uses a magic mirror given to her by the maid to spy on her father; his fortunes have considerably improved. She goes to see The Beast, and initially they are afraid of each other. He goes to her, purring loudly, and begins to lick off her skin. Soon, all of her skin is gone to reveal the wild animal inside.
“The Courtship of Mr Lyon”-“The Tiger’s Bride” Analysis
“The Courtship of Mr Lyon” and “The Tiger’s Bride” are two contrasting retellings of “Beauty and the Beast.” “Beauty and the Beast” is unusual in the fairy tale canon because it deals directly with the evolution of a romantic relationship. In most cases, the story’s romantic relationship is a sudden reward at the end of a hero’s journey. Beauty and the Beast, by contrast, is a true love story. Like many stories in Carter’s collection—and like the fairy tale that forms their source material—these stories deal with transformation and with The Suppression of Wildness, exploring how love and sexuality can reveal the wildness that is hidden behind the façade of civilization.
“The Courtship of Mr Lyon” transposes the story of “Beauty and the Beast” into a contemporary setting in which the heroine’s father is stranded by a broken down car (a mainstay of a generation of horror films) and finds himself in need of charitable assistance. This assistance comes in the form of a “garage that advertised a twenty-four-hour rescue service” (44), language that roots the story firmly in the here and now rather than “once upon a time.” In spite of this, the dialogue between the Beast and the man remains old fashioned and formal, maintaining the fairy tale sense of a world outside of history.
The deal between Beauty’s father and Mr. Lyon serves as an especially overt example of Marriage as an Economic Exchange, as Beauty’s father literally offers his daughter as a commodity in exchange for his freedom. She is objectified by both her new companion and her father, a recurring theme throughout several of the stories. Beauty herself takes part in this objectification, allowing herself to fill the role she has been given: “Yet she stayed, and smiled, because her father wanted her to do so” (46). This attitude is a sharp contrast to that of her counterpart in “The Tiger’s Bride.” The sexual elements of “Mr. Lyon” are also drastically pared down; instead of desire, the Beast expresses a need for companionship and affection. Instead of demanding her body, the way so many other men in these stories do, he throws himself at her feet in a gesture of subservience and kisses her hands. The dynamic between them shifts; it becomes clear that neither one of them is completely in control of the situation and that they are both exploring something strange and new. By the end of their story, each has recognized the potential for humanity within themselves.
“The Tiger’s Bride” takes the opposite approach to the same story, with narrative choices that depart more radically from the source material. Carter sets this story in Italy and gives it a darker atmosphere, opening with a gambling den in which the heroine’s father loses his entire fortune. While both the father figures in these stories make foolish choices that put their daughters at risk, this version of him is more selfish, avaricious, and irresponsible—his situation is entirely of his own making. The heroine, likewise, is harder and more experienced, though she remains a virgin still. The Beast of “Mr. Lyon” was part way between animal and man, and in some way embodied the best of both; The Beast of “The Tiger’s Bride” is more dreamlike and surreal: “He is a carnival figure made of papier mâché and crêpe hair; and yet he has the Devil’s knack at cards” (56). The objectification of the female protagonist is initially so complete that she is given no voice, instead being packed away with the rest of her father’s valuables. Yet she does not remain passive within her constraints—she does not love her father unconditionally the way the previous heroine did, instead valuing her own identity and agency above familial duty. She demonstrates this when The Beast’s valet conveys the Beast request to see the heroine naked. The heroine pushes back against this request by offering to give her body over completely, but only on her own terms.
In the final scenes of the story, The Beast undergoes a metamorphosis that is the inverse of the one undergone by Mr. Lyon. Here, The Beast removes his human accouterments and presents to his companion his most authentic, animal self. Although this is a transformation from man to beast, it is also a moment of intense vulnerability: The transformation suggests that all people hide their true selves from the world, and to reveal them is an act of great courage. It’s this vulnerability that finally makes the heroine feel for him: “I felt my breast ripped apart as if I suffered a marvellous wound” (68). In response, the heroine sheds the social constructs from which she was built and becomes something more. She rises to meet him as an act of love and respect, understanding once and for all that she doesn’t need to fill the role that her father, and by extension the wider patriarchal world, has assigned to her.
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By Angela Carter
