SOURCE: Langlois, Janet L. “Andrew Borden's Little Girl: Fairy-Tale Fragments in Angela Carter's ‘The Fall River Axe Murders’ and ‘Lizzie's Tiger.’ Marvels and Tales: Journal of Fairy Tale Studies 12, no. 1 (1998): 192-212.

In the following essay, Langlois discusses narrative similarities in Carter's stories about Lizzie Borden.

Introduction

Angela Carter's works are new to me.¹ Although I had seen the 1984 film, The Company of Wolves, I had not read her “Little Red Riding Hood” rewrite on which it was based until recently. Although I have used Robert Coover's and Ann Sexton's revisions of literary Märchen in my courses on “Folklore and Literature,” I had never assigned students any of Carter's tales until recently. I wonder now at my own resistance. Letting go and reading her short story collections has catapulted me, somewhat late, into Angela Carter fandom. I am particularly intrigued with her apparent move away from literary fairy...