Reviews tagging 'Sexual violence'

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

51 reviews

decepticons's review

adventurous challenging dark tense fast-paced

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

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexism, Toxic relationship, Violence, Sexual content, and Adult/minor relationship

Moderate: Sexual assault, Sexual harassment, Rape, Sexual violence, Misogyny, and Pedophilia

Minor: Slavery

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

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: Violence and Animal death

_rowan_'s review

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

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, Sexual content, Violence, Rape, and Sexual violence

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

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

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

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

mericat's review against another edition

dark mysterious sad tense fast-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Pedophilia, Misogyny, Child death, Confinement, Gaslighting, Gore, Body horror, Death, Blood, Rape, Sexual content, Sexual violence, and Adult/minor relationship

melles_gothic_reads's review against another edition

dark inspiring medium-paced

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

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Blood, Domestic abuse, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Sexual violence, Sexual content, and Violence

river_dithers's review against another edition

challenging dark reflective fast-paced

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

4.5

I read this book for the second time, and I love it just as much! Carter's command of words is incredible, and I had to reach for my phone to find meanings of certain words. That does not mean it wasn't beautiful. My favourite story was Lady of the House of Love, and I loved the tortured characters. The beastliness of this collection is surprising, but enticing. It forced me to confront my own preconceptions about femininity and humanity.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Misogyny

Moderate: Injury/Injury detail, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Cannibalism, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Death, Violence, Sexual content, Blood, and Child death