Below is an analyitic piece of “The Snow Child” by Angela Carter, please read the piece first.

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            Angela Carter’s micro story, The Snow Child, is perhaps most known for its sexually aggressive ending. Yes, the necrophilia of a child is an intense subject, even if only presented in a matter of two sentences, as Carter does. However, this paper intends to show all the ways, both subtle and blunt, that Carter has created a brutal mirror into the beauty standards set in modern American society, particularly as it relates to older versus younger women.

            From the very first word, the reader is thrust into a sense of age. “Midwinter- invincible, immaculate,” she writes. Readers of classical literature will pick up quickly on the cycle of life mirrored by the four seasons, winter meaning the last phase of a person’s life. However, it is the “invincible, immaculate” that strikes as a paradoxical foreshadowing of the Countess herself.  Quickly following the winter/late-in-life stage set, the Count is set riding a “grey mare, and she on a black one.” Grey reinforces the ode to age. Yet is the black that gives the reader their first inkling of the beauty standards women are subjected to. The Countess has a black horse, black fox coat, and black boots (with red heels, a perhaps subtle tribute to the classic red bottom stilettos – Louboutin, which many successful women use to flaunt her wealth and success without saying a word). Black is so significant because of its ability to hide the grey. Coloring your grey hair, for example. Where the Count embraces his age, as any man is allowed to do, the Countess is dripping in black adornments to symbolize the youth she is holding on to.

            Speaking of colors; “I wish I had a girl as white as snow…as red as blood…as black as that bird’s feathers.” The Count rattles on to his wife. Thus summons the “child of his desire and the Countess hated her.” Here we turn to classical Hollywood beauty. Specially honed in the era of black and white films, and continuing even now. The girl of the Count’s dreams is Snow White, or Elizabeth Taylor, as described to a tee; young, black-haired, red-lipped, unimaginably white skin, youthful female. Let’s not forget the racism of it, of course. Skin bleaching is a historic treatment, made prolific by Queens like Elizabeth, though it is older even than she. But the beauty standard set here is pristine white youth. Snow White is also a particularly interesting image, primarily because she is the paradoxical beautiful thing that is both virgin-esque and vixen (red lips). The virginity of this magically summoned girl is solidified in The Count’s need to protect and claim her; “The Count lifted her up and sat her in front of him, on his saddle…” Innuendos of the saddle is not quite subtle, just as the call for the Count’s protective male ego is not either. 

            Returning to the Countess, who declares her hate for this girl and her need to “be rid of her” within the short second paragraph. In only two sentences, the Count is given a protective masculine persona, while his wife is pinned as jealous and conniving.

            In the third paragraph, we see how lowly the Countess can stoop. Which is another vilification of not just women, but older women, and experienced women. She puts on classic trickster moves and tries to get rid of the girl, if not outright kill her. The line “The Countess dropped her glove in the snow…” dropping a glove is a classic line meaning “Hey, do you want to fight?”. But having her drop it in the snow is perhaps the Countess challenging the notion of aging and not only the magically summoned girl.

            Next, the Countess’s black furs magically lift from her body to drape on the beautiful girl. Perhaps as a symbol of the girl molding into the place the Countess used to be; at the side of the Count, as the object of his affections. Or a young woman molding into the place an aging ex-wife used to be, traded in for a newer model as the cliché goes. In reaction, the Countess “…threw her diamond brooch…” perhaps a symbol of trying to buy the girl off, in order to get the youth away from her husband and out of her life. To which the Count takes the Countess’s boots (the Louboutin homage, don’t forget) and puts them onto the girl.

            Finally, the Countess asks the girl to pick a rose from the bush, a single flower. “So the girl picks a rose; pricks her finger on the thorn; bleeds; screams; falls.” Yet another Disney reference, but this time to Sleeping Beauty and her demise at the hands of an older woman. There is more than one metaphor possibility jammed into this sentence. One is the possibility of the girl’s first bleed, the first menstruation, reaffirming her youth. The second is the girl’s first sexual encounter, where she bleeds and her virginity is taken.  There is perhaps a third metaphor possible here, and it is one of the Countess’s aggression and wickedness once more. Her continued desire to harm the girl. Furthermore, there is always a biblical sense when a plant is involved in a betrayal, but that needs not to be addressed at length here.

            Here comes the most notable part of the micro-story. Where the Count jumps down to her, crying, and has sex with the girl’s dead body. The Countess watches, seemingly equally bored and assessing (where Handmaid’s Talesubservience and rage may come to mind). The Countess does not win here with the girl’s death, but instead loses the game by concession, for a lack of better terms. She has fought to keep her husband, to keep him from this girl, and yet even in the girl’s death, the Countess loses. The man will always win, and the Countess has to allow it, fight or not. This is not the first time such an encounter has occurred for the couple if you look back to the first paragraph where Carter mentions colors. The red is inspired by a hole filled with blood. Returning once again to the Count’s request, “I wish I had a girl as red as blood,” one must think of virginity and first-time sexual encounters yet again.

            The last line of the text, “The Count picked up the rose, bowed and handed it to his wife; when she touched it, she dropped it, ‘It bites!’ she said.” Nailing into the reader’s head for the last time that the Countess is no longer youthful, no longer associated with her first blood as the girl was. And as the next girl will be. Her time is past. Yet she will continue to fight in her own way, “Midwinter- invincible, immaculate.”