The Courtship of Mr Lyon

This is a mainly Marxist story which slight elements of feminism within it, it is the most modernized text within "The Bloody Chamber". Carter has wrote this based on the tale of Beauty and the Beast, Alice in Wonderland and other various fairy tales. The story has an extremely masculine narrative voice which links to the story being mainly based on a Marxist perspective. Unlike Carter's other stories it presents the male character as sweet and innocent as Mr Lyon has a nervous and caring nature, even though he is animalistic. It is also odd for this short story to be part of a collection in The Bloody Chamber because the men are always portrayed as being cruel, superior and incapable of truly loving someone, however in The Courtship of Mr Lyon the male character has his weakness shown within the text- this is shown by Mr Lyon being unable to carry on living without Beauty with him. Also, the woman in this story, Beauty, loses her natural beauty as the wealth corrupts her as she transforms, in contrast to this Beast transforms into a sweet and loving man; this is odd for a woman in Angela Carter's not to be presented as a victim. In the short story Beauty only ever saw herself in the Beast's eyes which suggests to the reader that she is a vain character and cruel as she never saw Beast as a person purely because of his physical traits- which makes Beauty's character appear shallow by concentrating to firmly on looks and wealth.