From Fairy Tale Conventions to Feminism: Comparing Labyrinth and The Bloody Chamber Darcey Victoria 12th Grade

Jim Henson’s Labyrinth and Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber were the product of similar time periods that, although are presented as very different mediums, emphasize similar messages that are structured in non traditional ways. This defiance of archetypal story telling results in similar undertones and atypical structures that causes the two works to be more similar than what originally meets the eye. In particular, the trio of wolf stories in the final section of The Bloody Chamber that contain a mixture of typical and modern adventure tales, which is another comparison that can be made between Carter’s text and Henson’s 1986 film. The first comparison that can be made between the two works, is that they are both non traditional fairytales. Labyrinth demonstrates typical features of an archetypal fairytale, such as adventure, a young naive protagonist, a villain, a naive character in need of rescue, a castle, magic and several other tropes, many of which are also evident in most of Carter’s narratives in the Bloody Chamber. Furthermore, both Henson’s and Carter’s work subverts typical gender narratives in a variety of ways.

In Labyrinth, Jareth is portrayed as a dominant villain who possesses both charm and power, a typical...