Word: carterized
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Carter loves to recreate old stories. That is her hallmark, despite the fact that she is often marketed as a feminist. A previous collection of her short stories, The Bloody Chamber, includes Carter's elaborate versions of Little Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard, Beauty and the Beast, and Puss in Boots...
Vampires, werewolves and other monsters, the stuff of legends, fascinate her. That is because these creatures represent an already well-developed mythology. Carter's references to these symbols accomplish what fairy tales usually accomplish--a disturbance of the unconscious through manipulation of imagery with which readers already have strong associations...
...stories in Saints and Strangers--like the ones in The Bloody Chamber and her other collection, Fireworks--cannot really be considered short stories, either structurally or psychologically. They are vignettish in quality, always descriptive, poetically introspective, featuring lots of big words. Carter, like Jorge Luis Borges, whom she has claimed as her major influence, has an exhausting vocabulary--more unknown words per story than in most other collections of short fiction in English...
...CARTER'S fiction is far funnier than any fairy tale or erudite vignette. The first story in Saints and Strangers, "The Fall River Axe Murders," recreates some of the events and personalities involved in Lizzie Borden's murder of her parents. Since the events of the story are already preordained--as they are in fairy tales--Carter's weapons are atmosphere, humor and meticulous research...
...story like "Our Lady of the Massacre" shows why some people like to call Carter a feminist. The story traces the life of another Moll Flanders, but focuses on her career in the New World as an indentured servant, rather than on her bawdy past. Carter avoids the literal picaresque by making the protagonist ironically self-aware of the conventions of 18th century narrative: "...my name is no clue as to my person nor my life as to my nature." Stripped of a name, the voice could be that of any period picaresque character, Moll Flanders or--Tom Jones...