Carter's short story collection The Bloody Chamber was published in 1979, at the height of the women's movement, an era in which women sought greater political and social equity than they had been afforded in previous decades. In the realm of literature, many authors were concerned with creating strong female characters in their work, and Carter was on the forefront of this trend. Her adaptations of traditional fairy tales sought to subvert the patriarchal leanings of the stories by inserting strong women in the roles of Little Red Riding Hood and Sleeping Beauty, among others. Ellen Cronan Rose celebrates the "strong bond between mother and daughter " depicted in "The Bloody Chamber" as an example of what can happen when "a female fiction writer" takes on "male cultural myths." Indeed, the image of the mother, who knows by instinct that her daughter is in danger, riding in on...