Monstrous Beauty Read Online Free Page B

Barbara Creed, but the concept goes all the way back to Aristotle, who described the woman as “a failed and botched male.” It’s the idea of marked and unmarked categories, Self and Other. If male is the unmarked default, the Self—and that’s been the pattern in Western society—then female is the marked category, the Other. And the Other is scary .
    Remember, this set happened by accident. I didn’t plan to write seven stories, though after I had written two or three it became clear I was on some kind of roll. And I didn’t plan to write about the monstrous feminine. Some authors can say to themselves “I am going to explore this theme now” and have it turn out well, but I’m not one of them. I was five successful stories and one failed attempt in before I noticed what I’d been doing all along. Nor is there any kind of message I mean to send by writing about this concept—though of course there are all sorts of messages one could pull out of the result, whether I intended to put them there or not. The fact that the set has a theme does not mean I am attempting to preach anything. It is, however, the reason these form a set —the reason I didn’t decide to bundle them in with other short stories to make a larger collection. They belong together, and nothing else I’ve written belongs with them.
    That’s it for my general remarks. For commentary on the individual stories, turn the page.

Notes
Notes on “The Snow-White Heart”
    Short stories are small enough things that they can spring fully-formed from a single sentence, like Athena from the head of Zeus. This one—which was the fifth of the set to be written—arose from its opening line: “Cut out her heart and bring it to me,” the queen said, and so the huntsman did.
    The immediate question, of course, is how the story can continue when the central character is dead from the first line. I could have had it follow the queen from there, focusing on the consequences of her magical cannibalism, but the whole “flesh golem” thing caught my imagination and ran off with it on the spot. Like all the tales in this set, this one was written in a single go: the idea is either there or it isn’t.
    â€œThe Snow-White Heart” was originally published in issue #39 of Talebones , in 2009, and recorded in audio format by Pseudopod , Episode 218, 2010.
    ( Return to story — Read next story )

Notes on “The Wood, the Bridge, the House”
    This was the first story of the set to be written, and its starting concept was simple: what if the thing Little Red Riding Hood encountered was far worse than a wolf?
    As questions go, it isn’t very complicated, and I’m not the first author to ask it. But it opened a door in my head I hadn’t even known was there: a door to a much darker kind of story than I’d written before, and a different style of writing. I found myself structuring my sentences differently, incorporating more description, reaching for more ornate language. I was (and am) a fantasy writer, but I started selling stories to horror magazines.
    It didn’t change my writing forever in the sense of causing me to leave behind what I’d previously done. I still wrote all the same kinds of stories as before, in the same kinds of prose. Thanks to this story, though, I also started writing new kinds of things. It added another dimension to my craft.
    And so, though I cannot remember who I was talking to when this idea came into being, I would like to thank that person—whoever and wherever they are.
    â€œThe Wood, the Bridge, the House” was originally published in issue #9 of Dark Wisdom , in 2006. Prior to that, it won an Honorable Mention in the 2004 Chiaroscuro Short Story Contest.
    ( Return to story — Read next story )

Notes on “Waiting for Beauty”
    My first stab at writing a “Beauty and the Beast” story