melancholy prose. "Not for her Hemingway's clean, well-lighted place, or Orwell's clear prose like a pane of glass. She prefers instead a dirty, badly-lit place, with gnawed bones in the corner and dusty mirrors you'd best not consult." It shows throughout these short stories, Carter's dedication to dark towers and dusky landscapes. Carter herself admits to being a fan of both Gothic horror and Edgar Allan Poe in particular, including in her stories such elements as incest and cannibalism in order to call upon the Gothic tradition. As such, her prose is also influenced by post-modern conventions, shown through her frank unorthodoxy and twisted proclivities towards sex and sexuality, such as the constant implications of virginity and deflowering in both "The Bloody Chamber" and "The Tiger's Bride". Oftentimes, her writing is also considered to be something similar to magical realism in relation to the insertion of inexplicable magical elements. This is shown in "The Bloody Chamber" when the narrator is unable to clean the blood from what seems to be a normal key in a semi-realistic setting. The time periods of the stories are early 20th century. For example, in "The Bloody Chamber" the existence of a transatlantic telephone implies a date of 1930 or later. On the other hand, the mention of painters such as Gustave Moreau and Odilon Redon, and of fashion designer Paul Poiret (who designs one of the heroine's gowns) all suggest a date before 1945. "The Lady of the House of Love" is clearly set on the eve of the First World War, and the young man's bicycle on which he arrives at the tradition-bound vampire's house is a symbol of the encroaching modernity which fundamentally altered European society after 1914. Feminism Angela Carter's short stories challenge the way women are represented in fairy tales, yet retain an air of tradition and convention through her voluptuously descriptive prose. For example, in the opening tale "The Bloody Chamber", which is a retelling of Bluebeard, Carter plays with the conventions of canonical fairy tales; instead of the heroine being rescued by the stereotypical male hero, she is rescued by her mother. Carter effectively draws out the theme of feminism by contrasting traditional elements of Gothic fiction – which usually depicted female characters as weak and helpless – with strong female protagonists. By contrasting the barren and horrific atmosphere found typically within the Gothic to the strong heroines