The presence of masks in the world is often dismissed as people tend to not think much of them. However, if we pay more attention to masks and their purpose, a considerable amount of information can be obtained. These masks are surrounded by mystique, leaving us wanting to see and understand what hides under it. Masks can hide one’s true nature and also give power to the wearer of the mask as they can portray to the world only what they want to be seen.
Masks are used to cover the face for a number of reasons. They can be used to protect or disguise oneself, and also for entertainment or ritual purposes. In many cultures, those with masks are often depicted as evil. Masked characters, however, are not always evil and evil does not always wear a visible mask. In “The Tiger’s Bride”, an adaptation of The Beauty and the Beast story, a secluded, wealthy land owner is feared by the common-folk. He wears a literal mask when interacting with the outside world in order to fit in with the humans around him and possibly to conceal his true nature. Is the Beast forced to wear this mask due to the society he is in, or does he wear a mask due to his own will? The mysteriousness of the Beast that hides behind the mask associates him with a sense of fear, as no one truly knows the monster that hides underneath. In the end of the story, Beauty realizes that despite his bestial appearance, the Beast is not a violent creature. In “The Bloody Chamber” , The Bluebeard Marquis true nature is that of a violent murderer with trust issues, however no one would suspect it since he wears a mask of aristocracy and composure. The Bluebeard Marquis is able to hide who he really is behind his money and status. He seems like a regal man from a distant land and even though his newfound fiancee senses something sinister underneath his stern personality, his true nature is too well hidden to be exposed. Angela Carter’s use of masks throughout her stories truly show that judgements based on appearance can in fact be false.
Masks can be used to cover one’s true self and simultaneously exhibit their alter persona. Masks are, in a sense, an alter ego. Not all masks are the same, nor they have the same purpose. They differ in materials, workmanship and look and they represent different things. In the short story, “The Bloody Chamber” by Angela Carter, when describing the Bluebeard Marquis, the heroine of the story states, “And sometimes that face, in stillness when he listened to me playing, with the heavy eyelids folded over eyes that always disturbed me by their absolute absence of light, seemed to me like a mask, as if his real face… lay underneath that mask” ( The Bloody Chamber 9 ). The heroine’s description of the Bluebeard Marquis helps create the image of the Marquis as a half sophisticated aristocrat, half barbaric murderer, which as the story progresses proves to be true. The Bluebeard Marquis wears the mask of an aristocrat in order to hide his true self. After being entrusted with all the keys in the castle, the heroine describes what she saw in the the Bluebeard Marquis’s secret chamber as, “The opera singer lay…he had embalmed her. On her throat I could see the blue imprint of his strangler’s fingers” ( The Bloody Chamber 28 ). In the secret chamber, the heroine discovers her newly wed husband’s nature and the depths of his sadism. The Bluebeard Marquis hides his sadistic murderous ways under his mask of wealth and royalty.
Similar to the Bluebeard Marquis, The Beast in Angela Carter’s short story, “The Tiger’s Bride”, also hides his true self under a mask. Upon her first meeting with The Beast, Christmas Rose, the heroine of the short story, claims, “… He wears a mask with a man’s face painted most beautifully on it. Oh yes a beautiful face ; but one with too much formal symmetry of feature to be entirely human” ( The Tiger’s Bride 53 ).
The Beast and The Bluebeard Marquis share a commonality as they both hide their actual selves behind a mask. However, unlike the Bluebeard Marquis in “The Bloody Chamber”, The Beast in “The Tiger’s Bride” hides under a literal mask compared to the Bluebeard Marquis’s figurative mask. The Beast tries to hide his true nature by covering himself with an old-fashioned tailcoat and wearing a wig and a human mask. Christmas rose also wears a mask but that of innocence and virginity. At the beginning of the story the heroine is also instantly correlated with a rose. As she strips away the petals of the flower, it symbolizes her stripping away her personality and attachment to the world she was in before to find her true self. In the end, Christmas Rose sheds her mask of innocence and virginity by giving herself to the beast which leads to her metamorphosis into a tiger. In another Beauty and the Beast adaptation similar to “The Tiger’s Bride”, called “The Courtship of Mr. Lyon” by Angela Carter, The Beast in this story also hides under a mask. Although, unlike in “The Tiger’s Bride”, The Beast in “The Courtship of Mr. Lyon” hides under the mask of a beast. After the heroine kisses the dying beast, the author describes, “When her lips touched the meat-hook claws, they drew back into their pads and she saw how he had always kept his fists clenched but now, painfully, tentatively, at last began to stretch his fingers. Her tears now fell on his face like snow and, under their soft transformation, the bones showed through the pelt, the flesh through the wide tawny brow. And then it was no longer a lion in her arms but a man, a man with an unkempt mane of hair…” ( The Courtship of Mr. Lyon 51). With the help of the heroine, The Beast is able to get rid of his beastly mask and express his human nature that has been hidden away his whole life.
Just like in the Beauty and the Beast tales of “The Courtship of Mr. Lyon” and “The Tiger’s Bride” , the Countess in “The Lady in The House of Love”, a short story by Angela Carter, also experiences a bridge between two different worlds. The Countess, being a vampire, lives in a world of magic and murder as she feeds on humans and the young man with whom she falls in love with inhabits a world of humanity and rationality. The encounter between the Countess and her love interest, which is associated with love and sexuality as the rest of Angela Carter’s tales, requires some sort of metamorphosis. The Countess has lived a long life of death and murder, as is her nature, however when she sits down with the young British soldier for coffee, she attempts to hide her true nature as she mumbles in French to keep her mind off of her bestial desires. In between the dialogue of the conversation between the Countess and the British soldier, the author states, “Her voice, issuing from those red lips like the obese roses in her garden, lips that do not move — her voice is curiously disembodied; she is like a doll… a ventriloquist’s doll, or, more, like a great, ingenious piece of clockwork” ( The Lady in The House of Love 102). The mask worn by the Countess is quite similar to the mask worn by the Beast in “The Tiger’s Bride” as they both try to hide their bestial nature behind a mask in front of humans. However, the mask used by the Countess has it’s differences from that of the Beast. The mask of the Countess is not as literal when compared to the Beast, the mask used by the Countess is more of a personality change as she tries to suppress her desire for blood and murder.
In the story “Wolf-Alice” by Angela Carter, a young girl raised by wolves encounters a Duke who is actually a werewolf. Angela Carter describes the young girl as, “Nothing about her is human except she is not a wolf; it is as if the fur she thought she had melted into her skin and became part of it, although it does not exist” ( Wolf-Alice 141). Wolf-Alice’s wolf nature is the innocence of a wild animal, while the Duke has an especially human brutality about him, even though he is the one with actual fur.
The Duke is half wolf, half human, similar to Alice, however besides that fact, him and Alice are almost complete opposites. While serving the Duke in his mansion, Alice begins to menstruate and although she has been used to being dirty her whole life, she cleans up her blood out of shame. Angela Carter associates Wolf-Alice’s menstruation with the development of her humanity, as if her wolf like nature had been a mask all this time, only to be uncovered as she progressively learns what it means to be human.
Masks hold importance in both the real world and in the world of fiction. Authors such as Angela Carter can implement the use of masks into their stories as a means of character development. The use of masks in fictional stories interest the reader as they grow progressively more curious as the story progresses as to what is underneath the mask. Angela Carter uses masks in her stories in order to conceal the true nature of the one wearing the mask, and as the story progresses, the mask comes off its wearer and the true nature of the character is revealed.
Works Cited
Carter, Angela, and Helen Simpson. The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories. Vintage Classics, Penguin Random House, 2016.
“History of Masks – Ancient Use of Masks.” History of Chinese Masks – Ancient Chinese Masks, www.historyofmasks.net/.