Angela Carter – ‘The Bloody Chamber’ – ‘The Erl-King’.
Sources
‘The Erl-King’ is an adaptation of a European tale which draws heavily on folkloric traditions of the Green Man. The Erl-King is the personification of nature, as traditions embark this in the Green Man, ‘when he combs his hair that is the colour of dead leaves’, emphasising as though he is a tree. Therefore this can be linked to Emily Bronte’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ as it too is associated with nature, in the sense of the wild and desolate moors, representing the wilderness and the isolation of nature. The folkloric traditions of the Green Man perceive him as peaceful as he does no harm, embodying him as the protector of nature, a Celtic symbol of creative fertility of nature. ‘He comes alive from the desires of the woods’ further relate the Erl-king and the Green Man as they’re both considered as a symbol of the woods. The perception of ‘The Erl-King’ as peaceful is represented in his lack of disruption to the forest, as the only wood he would chop was ‘the dead branches’. Angela Carter however emphasis the negatives of what the Green Man represents in ‘The Erl-King’ as being a reincarnation of the devil. This is shown through his desire to entrap young girls through the enchantment of the forest, which he abuses in his favour as the protector of nature. Erl-king is perceived as a serial rapist as the birds in cages represent the young girls he raped before and once they grew to love him he would then turn them into birds and trap them in cages.
Narrative Form
The narrative voice of ‘The Erl-King’ is constantly shifting, as with ‘Wuthering Heights’. The reader is positioned in a variety of ways through the changing perspectives of third, second, and first narrative, which has an unsettling effect in ‘The Erl-King’. This is not Carter’s first time shifting the narrative voice in ‘The Bloody Chamber’