Reviews tagging 'Sexual content'

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

77 reviews

sleepy_stardust's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

The Bloody Chamber is good, but you really need to stick with it. It's very slow, but if you're willing to sift through the (almost) unbearably dense prose, it has some very meaningful takes about the power struggle of women in a patriarchal society.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, and Blood

francescaastraea's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

DO NOT accidentally give this to a child to read as a bedtime story

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content and Sexual violence

Moderate: Animal death and Violence

peasandpancakes's review against another edition

Did not finish - Not my thing. I did not enjoy the writing style. All the sentences were so long that I couldn’t remember the beginning of it when I got to the end. Couldn’t make myself read further than “the Tiger’s Bride”.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Death, and Sexual content

Moderate: Torture and Murder

rowanelisa's review against another edition

dark mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Animal death, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gore, Incest, Mental illness, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Torture, Violence, Blood, Kidnapping, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Gaslighting, and Abandonment

rgiulia96's review against another edition

I really wanted to like this book. I love retellings of fairy tales and I thought this feminist collection would be top tier. But when did feminism start to mean that every male character is after virginal women who they wish to exploit. The first story, The Bloody Chamber ,was graphic but I thought it was the best out of all that I read (and I gave it a good go before I gave up).  I think the first story felt the most feminist due to

the strength of the mother, particularly at the end of the story

but every other story was filled with flimsy female characters and sex driven men (even in puss and boots the cats are the same). I actually had to stop because the back to back graphic nature of violence in sex was turning my stomach and making me feel like I wanted to vomit.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Rape, Sexual content, Sexual violence, and Violence

oirving44's review against another edition

challenging dark fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

1.0

Note to self: don't read anything else by Angela Carter

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Cursing, Death, Sexual content, Violence, Blood, Excrement, Cannibalism, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

katie0528's review against another edition

dark mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.5

This is a collection of classic fairy tale retellings, from Beauty and the Beast, to Bluebeard, to Snow White, and Red Riding Hood. The retellings are a blend of classic and modern retellings, taking a darker edge and exploring the sexual undertones of many classic tales.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Body horror, Death, Sexual content, and Blood

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Animal death, and Confinement

glitterhobbit's review against another edition

dark mysterious medium-paced

2.5

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Body horror, Child abuse, Death, Sexual content, and Cannibalism

soniajoy98's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Death, Gore, Sexual content, Violence, and Blood

Moderate: Ableism, Adult/minor relationship, Confinement, Cursing, Domestic abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexual violence, and Murder

Minor: Gun violence, Infidelity, Rape, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Excrement, and Sexual harassment

steveatwaywords's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Some have called Carter's works re-envisioning, but this suggests that she somehow sees something new or other in our fairy tale "classics," that she is updating them for modern mores. I don't think so. Carter's magic is more a re-discovering or an uncovering, an exposing of what we have always known but perhaps were anxious about saying quite so baldly. And she does more, still.

Voluptuous, sensual, misogynistic, violent, Carter's tale nevertheless offer a powerfully feminine opening of traditional sublimation. Now, the historical and developmental order of how we understand this may largely depend upon the angle of your glance. Was Little Red Riding Hood once an older adult tale that had over time been reduced to a children's admonition? Then Carter helps us see again what it always has been, no matter how well censored?  Did Beauty and the Beast always have Jungian resonance, aspects of our psychological unconscious lying beneath, from which Carter tears the cloaking skin? And is the seductive power of these enduring tales only in their hinted allure, their enticing suggestibility, and not their lewd exposure?  

However you reason it, the "suggestions" beneath are primally sensuous, physical, and self-absorbed. And Carter not only draws these meanings up to visibility, she also re-cloaks them in new story, themselves lush with ambiguity and suggestive in their own right. Most powerful of all, these indulgences, just as the reader's in immersing, push against our modern mentality, revise our framing, demand we question.

There is so little space between beauty and vulgarity in Carter's work: the labyrinthian style poses questions all its own. For whom are these stories? Always for us.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content

Moderate: Sexual violence and Violence