THE HEROINE’S JOURNEY IN ANGELA CARTER’S THE BLOODY CHAMBER AND OTHER STORIES

Abstract

Over the past decades, cis-women have obtained opportunities to demonstrate their skills and voice their opinion in what had predominantly been male-dominated settings, estab- lishing that there is no such environment unbefitting of their presence. However, this develop- ment in gender equality carries the question whether people of all genders are conditioned to change their innermost self in order to feel welcomed in Western societies which are predicated on masculine principles. In The Heroine’s journey: Woman’s Quest for Wholeness Maureen Mur- dock utilizes Jungian archetypes to examine the methods in which collective and one’s individual femininity keeps being suppressed in favor of traditionally established masculine traits. Outlin- ing each stage of the heroine’s journey, a psychoanalytic model of her own making, Murdock asserts that each individual must strike the balance between masculinity and femininity within themselves in order to complete their own, and others’, quest for wholeness. Considering that in The Bloody Chamber Angela Carter transforms masculine-driven fairy-tales into those celebrat- ing the aforementioned quest for balance, the purpose of the paper is to provide a detailed exam- ination of how Carter’s anthology follows the heroine’s journey. The paper establishes that each story corresponds to a stage in the heroine’s mythic quest, and that Murdock’s interpretation of Jungian archetypes echoes the character arcs of Carter’s heroes and heroines.