Choose one setting Carter uses and discuss how it is significant in the telling of the story.

Choose one setting Carter uses and discuss how it is significant in the telling of the story.

In The Snow Child, Angela Carter sets the short story in 'midwinter', it is a cold time of year, and coldness is used a lot in the Gothic genre to create an uncomfortable atmosphere for the characters and it also disorientates the reader because the snowy barren landscape creates a feeling of isolation as there are no other things for the reader to focus on. Carter describes 'midwinter' as 'invincible. immaculate', these words can be put into the theme of the sublime and create a picture of an untouched powerful landscape covered in white snow, 'the whole world was white'. The white of the snow symbolises the purity and virginity of the girl that the Count creates, the reader knows that the girl is innocent and that the Count corrupts her.

The Count's three wishes, 'I wish I had a girl...', reflect his surroundings, 'as white as snow', it is the Count that is wishing for a child and not the Countess which is incongruous because it goes against what society would expect, normally it would be the woman wishing for a child. The Countess is riding next to the Count in this white frosty scenery, however she is wearing 'pelts of black foxes; and she wore high, black, shining boots with scarlet heels.' The Countess is a dark figure in this otherwise snow-covered countryside and it could show that because she has already been corrupted by the Count she has lost her purity and he no longer has any interest in her and that is why he longs for a new young girl to come along, and it is the reason why the Countess dresses provocatively to try and seduce him. 

In the middle of this 'immaculate' setting, in the snow there is a hole filled with blood, Carter could have used this to symbolise women and where children come from, where the snow child came from, it is a mark in the otherwise clear landscape. When the Count has taken the girl's virginity and she melts away, all that is left of her is 'a feather a bird might have dropped; a bloodstain...and the rose she had pulled off the bush.' The things left over from the snow child are the final symbols of her corruption, and Carter has shown how easily women can be corrupted by men, it is another blotch in the unmarred setting.