i was telling yen about reading english authors in chinese translation when i was young - and one of these stories, i remember, was angela carter's the bloody chamber. i don't recall ever looking up the english after i made the connection - it seemed to me i knew - without having read - how it would be - from the translation alone - and confident in this judgment - because i have read a lot of english literature in chinese translation, because i do in fact read english, and because i have read some angela carter. angela carter is not someone i have learnt quite to enjoy - i was very taken by her novel, the magic toyshop, it is true - but i don't think i like her revisionist-feminist fairy tales - i somehow never like those very much, in any form by anyone - except for the bloody chamber, which made a big impression on me. i was fourteen then. i don't know about bluebeard stories being every young girl's secret terror, it isn't mine, and i don't know either that the fear of marrying the wrong man is so - real. i never worried about that. it seems to me i saw some movie on the plane a while back - about a woman running from her abusive husband - jennifer lopez was in it i don't know what it's called - i seem to remember she had to kill him in the end to be free. a modern bluebeard story. not that it wasn't frightening or disturbing when i was watching it - not that it wasn't also - believable - but i was not afraid for myself. it is true that i say to myself now - that i don't know that it wouldn't happen to me - and that if it did that i am strong enough to leave - or would be able to leave at all - although i think i should certainly try. and if i came on the bloody chamber now for the first time perhaps i would feel different about it - although then, clearly, i was excited by it - by the disparity of age and youth, aligned with experience and innocence, a memory of male sexual power and bloodstained sheets and submission, of the dizzy splintered images of a thousand older men entering a thousand virgin brides, of a book of pornographic photographs - a nude young girl covering her face with gloved hands against the lascivious gazes of men, and the shadow of her husband falling on the pages. the horror of the bloody chamber i do not remember clearly - nor was i afraid of it - the blind piano tuner i have some affection for, but also mild irritation - and the heroic mother who saves the day - i did not feel the slightest bit thankful for - i disliked her - i loathed the ending. i ask precisely the wrong question - what if she hadn't opened the chamber? of course i don't imagine that if she hadn't they would have lived happily ever after - of course we don't believe that her execution is the just punishment for breaking his prohibition - he was a monster and there was no question about it. but supposing she hadn't opened the chamber? i did not require a rescue - a rescue is redundant in that story - it spoilt it. if she hadn't then? then it was only a question of extended suspension in a state of heightened sexual revelation. and that can be a very exhilarating place to be, for a while at least.