I haven't read alot of fairy tale stories that are 'twisted' like Carter's, the only other instance is when I read Neil Gaiman's books where he usually uses Norse and Greek gods to create a wholly different story (usually deriving away from the original stories and putting the gods into his stories as characters with different personalities based on their lore). The common thing that I noticed in the two is the use of sexual intimacy to describe some part of their story.
Well, it would be interesting and smart if I pulled up sources of studies regarding the implications of sex in literature, but I'm a lazy guy so I'll just come up with my own theory regarding to the use of sex in these stories.
Fairy tales are about innocence; all the Grimm fairy tales describe in one way or another of an instance where an innocence of a character is glorified and triumphs over the evil 'crone' of the story (sometimes in really brutal manners), even more modern 'myths' like "Count Dracula" shows the innocence of the wife of the main character and in the end the evil who tries to corrupt such innocence is defeated.
Carter strips away this idea, she wants to depict the bare-bone society that she saw in her time by emphasizing the pure idiocy in the concept of innocence, she gave the fairy tales... 'reality' by implementing sex. Sex is, well, impure and wrong in many eyes, so Carter puts it in every one of her stories to show the true colors of what-it-would-have-been-like-if-it-happened-today. The biggest shocker and most weird instance where sex is used is probably in "The Company of Wolves" where the little red riding hood seduces the pinnacle of masculine object (in the story), the wolf, and survives her consumation. Carter uses the 'consumation' in different term (instead of literally devouring) by using the wolf (the male figure) consuming the woman (the feminine) by taking away her virgin innocence. Is carter saying that womens today can only survive by offering their innocence? by seducing? Personally I believe Carter is trying to say how ridiculous the women's survival mechanic in the society was; Carter uses fairy tales, a world also portrayed with innocence, and stains it with blood, violence, ambiguity, and other extreme methods to show her message.
On a side note: I also think Carter wasn't exactly an avid Christian, as I mentioned in class, the parallism between the original bloody chamber story and the eve story is broken by the rationality of the woman's decision, and in the case of "the company of wolves" the grandmother who gets consumed is seen as a very very devout christian (I laughed abit when the red riding hood finds it surprising the grandmother/wolf-in-disguise didn't have the bible in his hands).
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