![]() ![]() In the way it uses fairy tale motifs and subverts them to feminist ends it recalls Angela Carter’s contemporary deconstructions of the form in The Bloody Chamber (1979). In its juxtaposition of its marginalised characters eking out an existence on the side-lines of American patriarchal society with humanity’s cruelty to those it deems less than human, it anticipates Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar winning film The Shape Of Water (2017). The novella tells the story of the romance between depressed suburban housewife Dorothy and escaped fish monster Larry, in an oddly erotic mash-up of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid (1837) and B-movies like Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954). A dark feminist fairy tale that marries the domestic with the Weird, Ingall’s writings shows how the fantastic can enrich the literary and vice versa. Rachel Ingalls’ Mrs Caliban (1982) is a gloriously strange novella. ![]() But to know that it’s for ever, that I’ll always be here where I’m not able to belong, and that I’ll never be able to get back home, never…” If I had known I was only going to stay a short while, this would have been the most exciting thing I could imagine – a marvel in my life. You couldn’t have dreamed it up yourself, but somehow it all seems to work, and each tiny part is related. It’s entirely unlike anything that has ever come to your thoughts. ![]() “You know it’s wonderful to see another world. ![]()
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