Notably, the distortion and inversion of traditional family structures is a key theme within the narratives of Angela Carter’s collection of short stories ‘The Bloody Chamber’. At times these inversion fulfil the expectations of their gothic genre and portray sinister, almost horrific, family relationships. This can clearly be seen to be the case within the tale of ‘The Snow Child’ in which sexual desire and family bonds are distorted and merged together. Indeed, the sinister nature of family relationships can also be seen to be reflected within ‘The Tiger’s Bride’ in which family bonds are reduced to monetary values that can easily be gambled. On the other hand, ‘The Courtship of Mr Lyon’ appears to suggest a more conventional family structure due to there being a strong sense of paternal love and loyalty by the daughter. However, it may be argued that the daughter within the tale is manipulated by male figures and is also used as an assist rather than an individual, thus clearly symbolising a sinister family paradigm. It may be said that this sinister inversion of family relations stems from Carter’s own feminist intentions for the collection, in which she may have wished to empathise the shallow and manipulative nature of traditional patriarchal family relationships.

Arguably Carter’s most graphically horrifying tale within the collection, ‘The Snow Child’ clearly presents a sinister inversion of a traditional family structure. The tale, which is a transposition of the traditional Brothers Grim tale of ‘Snow White’, may be seen as an exploration of sexual jealousy and as an allegory of the familial tensions between parents and children. The Countess within the tale is portrayed as striking due to her ‘shining…pelts of black foxes’, an anthropometric association that creates the image of her sly and cunning sexuality. Although, the Count appears to be unaware of this sexual desirability and is instead focused upon the ‘child of his desire’ which he appears to wish into existence. This child can be seen as a literal representation of the Count’s own child, or as a younger women that usurps his affections from his older wife. The Countess becomes envious of the girl, thus attempt to abandon her and to drown her, but both of which are thwarted by the Count. As a result the symbols of the Count’s affection, the jewellery and clothing, are transposed across to the girl. This can be seen as metaphorical for the shifting of paternal attention away from the wife towards the daughter. The Countess’s third act which she employs against the girl can be seen as placing her within the conventional fairy tale role of the evil step mother from ‘Snow White’ and other tales. This is due to her seemingly harmless offer of a rose, symbolic of natural love, is in fact a guise for more sinister motives. As a result the girl is pricked and subsequently dies. The scene of graphic necrophilia that follows in which the Count ‘thrusts his virile member into the girl’ is one of the most extreme images in the collection. Hence, this horrific image can be seen as epitomising the way in which Carter distorts the traditional family structure, where paternal love is that of base sexual desire and the relationship between mother and daughter is that of a competition for male attention. Carter, who was a member of the feminist movement in the 1970s, may have intended to create this image within the tale for the purpose of reflecting the sinister nature of paternal lead family relationships.

In contrast, the tale of ‘The Courtship of Mr Lyon’ can be seen as promoting convention family relationships of loyalty and love. The tale is an inversion, albeit a minimal one, of the French fairy tale of ‘Beauty and the Beast’. In the tale Beauty, who is ‘possessed by a sense of obligation to an unusual degree’, is obedient to her father and to the Beast throughout the tale. Indeed, when she neglects her duty as daughter, she becomes ‘a spoiled child’ and she is no longer the perfect women ‘made all of snow’ that she was before. Therefore, it may be seen that this tale promotes conventional family relationships due to it warning that daughters should be loyal and caring to their fathers. However, it may be seen that Carter is in fact being ironic within this tale and emphases the manipulative aspect of the parental role within such relationships. Mr Lyon, the Beast in the tale, is a clear manipulator. His courtship of Beauty is not draw out of a direct love but through negotiations with her father, as would be expected in the traditional patriarchal manner. However, he does so by persuading her father through economic blackmail and ensures that she returns to him through the emotional equivalent. Therefore, it may be seen that the daughter within the tale is dutiful, but her father is far from so, thus prescribing his role as the absent father, who fails to provide for and then abandons his child: a common archetype within both fairy tale narrative structures and gothic ones. Thus, the tale presents a sinister family relationship where the daughter is unaware of ways in which the parental figures she trust abuse and manipulate her.

Similarly, in Carter’s other retelling of the ‘Beauty and the Beast’ tale, ‘The Tiger’s Bride’, the reader is presented with an equally inadequate father figure. Although, this story is in complete contrast to the previous tale, as if Carter is somehow acknowledging the unsatisfactory nature of her own attempt at reworking the myth. In this relationship the narration is given to Beauty who attempts to cope with an inadequate father not from a sense of obligation but from the perspective of protecting the remnants of her inheritance from his hopeless gambling. Indeed, in this tale the Beast appears to be the moral superior to the father due to his clear admonition of the neglected paternal duty to protect the child: ‘If you are so careless of your treasures, you should expect them to be taken from you’. Although, The Beast appears the moral superior he still refers to the girl, like her father, as a ‘treasure’ and a ‘pearl’. Thus, reflecting that both male characters subconsciously objectify the girl and see her as a mere prize to be won. This can be derived to show Carter’s presentation of the sinister nature of the family relationships within the tale. This may also be seen as a social commentary by Carter against the perceived objectification of women within popular culture and the media. Although, girl does appear to gain a new family amongst the supernatural creatures due to her rejection of society and her own gothic metamorphosis into a beast. Carter may be suggesting here that for equal relationships to be able to form, women need to take hold of their own position within society and reject the conventions imposed upon them; that ‘the lamb must learn to run with the tigers’. Although, this can be contradicted by Carter’s setting of the narrative in the typical fairy tale tradition: long ago and in a far-off place. Therefore, by there being spatial and temporal distance to the narrative it reduces the reality of its events and presents a pessimistic context for the climax: that this resolution of family tensions is in itself a fairy tale, an unattainable dream. Hence, not only does Carter present a sinister quality to family relations within ‘The Tiger’s Bride’, but also presents a defeatist premonition of the possibility of the formation of a truly equal family paradigm.

Clearly, Carter presents are wide range of familial relationships within her collection, most of which hold some sinister aspects. Although, typically distorted they appear to all highlight that the source of the corrupted relationships lies in the inadequacies and selfishness of the male figures. This is reinforced by the lack of strong maternal roles within these tales, which suggests that the lack of feminine influence results in the horrific and supernatural events of the tales, thus harmonising with Carter’s own feminist views.