Zaeema Fatima

223558638

Dr Naila Sahar

ENGL 615

15 December 2020

Text: The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

An Analysis of the Main Features of the Short Story The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

● ANGELA CARTER AND HER WORK

Carter was a feminist of the 20th Century. Magical realism and picaresque genre were her domains. She

approached the “happily-ever-after” type fairytales in a different way. “What Angela Carter did with fairy tales

was to take the stories that we all know like Bluebeard or Beauty and the Beast and turn them inside out. Take

the components that were familiar and make them into something that gave women back the power.”

(Winterson) She put women as the leading roles in her stories and made them the owners of their fate. The

Bloody Chamber is a collection of short stories by Carter, in which she caters the same idea and lets the

heroine's mother help her daughter in changing her fate that would otherwise be ruined, had she been left in the

hands of her husband. Angela was a feminist and in no way was she against men. All that she was against was

“misogyny”. “She was interested in a balance of scales. Not that women were more powerful than men, but in

order to actually have anything that is not just dependency or sucking up or controlling, you have to have

equality.”(Atwood) Salman Rushdie compares the monstrous men of Carter’s fairy tales to the modern day

allegations against the sexual predators. She was ahead of her time, since she discussed the image of men that is

now very much visible to us in the modern world.

● PLOT

The story of The Bloody Chamber revolves around a 17 years old unnamed narrator who is a girl

from Paris. She meets a guy, Marquis, quite older than her and plans on marrying him. The young girl’s

mother shows her reservations regarding her daughter’s decision of marrying him but the girl marries

Marquis somehow. She and Marquis travel to Marquis’ castle through a train. The girl, in the very
 beginning of her physical journey away from her mother and her maternal home, starts feelings off. On

reaching the castle, she finds it to be very secluded. Her husband does not consummate their marriage

on the first night and comes back to his wife only after getting done with his business. One day, he tells

his young wife, the narrator, that is going to some other country for his business related work and hands

over the keys of the castle to her. He tells her to not open the lock of one room only, because it is his

personal space and he does not want it to be invaded by her. He goes off. The young girl, out of

curiosity, opens the lock of the said room and finds out the dark secret of her husband’s past life; she

finds the bloody dead bodies of his previous wives, all drenched in blood. On arriving back at the castle,

her husband finds out about the disobeyance of his wife and tells her that he will punish her by cutting

her head off. Here, the maternal telepathy works and the mother of the young girl comes running to the

castle and saves the life of her daughter by shooting and killing Marquis with her revolver.

● THEME

➢ Femme Fatale

The unnammed narrator of The Bloody Chamber can be called “femme fatale”. Carter's

description of this young girl tells that she is “slender, delicate and sexually naive” (Margaret Atwood)

Now, femme fatale is a woman who is mysterious, beautiful and seductive and her lover is seduced and

lured by her into deadly situations. Here, the young girl is of seventeen and she is sexually naive and

untouched. This point of being young and virgin is the reason for Marquis' attraction towards her. No

matter what, men are always attracted to virgin, young girls and same is the case with Marquis here. It is

this young girl’s virginity that lures Marquis into trapping her.

➢ Sexuality and Violence

“The relationships between sexuality and violence go beyond the interpersonal actions of the

sexual perpetrators themselves.” (Barak, Sexuality and Violence) Sexuality and violence have

accompanied each other since the old times. The violence increases when the victim is innocent and

sexually naive. As far as The Bloody Chamber is concerned, Carter was influenced by the writings of

Marquis de Sade, a French nobleman, philosopher and writer, while writing it. Mind that the word
“sadism” was sourced through Marquis sade’s name. His writings were full of eroticism in which he

talked about sadistic attitudes and sexual violence. Carter picked these themes from Marquis and

inculcated them into The Bloody Chamber.

“The virginal heroine allows herself to be corrupted and loses her sexual innocence,

demonstrating oneof Carter’s more controversial ideas –that women can take part in the sexual violence

that oppresses them–and in the bloody chamber the heroine gains the knowledge that her new sexual

freedom will lead to her violent death.” (Barak, Sexuality and Violence) In The Bloody Chamber, the

husband of the young narrator, after building a sexual relation with her, targets her with verbal and

nonverbal violence.

Quotes related to sexuality and Violence

● “No. I was not afraid of him; but of myself. I seemed reborn in his unreflective eyes,

reborn in unfamiliar shapes. I hardly recognized myself from his descriptions of me and

yet, and yet – might there not be a grain of beastly truth in them? And, in the red

firelight, I blushed again, unnoticed, to think he might have chosen me because, in my

innocence, he sensed a rare talent for corruption.”

● “There is a striking resemblance between the act of love and the ministrations of a

torturer,” opined my husband’s favourite poet; I had learned something of the nature of

that similarity on my marriage bed. And now my taper showed me the outlines of a rack.

There was also a great wheel… And – just one glimpse of it before my little flame caved

in and I was left in absolute darkness – a metal figure, hinged at the side, which I knew to

be spiked on the inside and to have the name: the Iron Maiden.

She flung herself upon him, so that the iron bedstead groaned, and covered his poor paws with

her kisses.”

● “Don’t die, Beast! If you’ll have me, I’ll never leave you.” 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

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…”

● “He stripped me, gourmand that he was, as if he were stripping the leaves off an

artichoke… And when nothing but my scarlet, palpitating core remained, I saw, in the

mirror, the living image of an etching by Rops… He in his London tailoring; she, bare as

a lamb chop. Most pornographic of all confrontations. And so my purchaser unwrapped

his bargain. And, as at the opera, when I had first seen my flesh in his eyes, I was aghast

to feel myself stirring.”

(narrator)

All these statements made by the young girl show that her husband was into sexual violence. He made

the best use of his sexuality and then did violence on the young girl in the name of love and authority.

● FAVOURITE CHARACTER

My favourite character from The Bloody Chamber has to be the mother of the young girl. From

the very beginning, I started getting positive vibes from her mother. The element of Maternal Telepathy

is present throughout the novel which is made dominant in the very end of the story. When the young

girl is planning to marry Marquis, the mother asks her daughter if she loves Marquis or not, to which the

girl replies that she wants to marry. She doesn't say anything about love whereas the mother is more

concerned about the element of love. Whenever the girl needs to let her burden out, she calls her mother

and the mother is always there to pacify her daughter. In the end, it’s the mother who comes to rescue

her daughter from the monstrous Marquis.

● FAVOURITE SCENE

My favourite scene is the ending scene of the story. The mother comes and rescues her daughter

and her fate from rotting. She comes as a saviour here. She is shown is a musculine and “wild thing”

who rides the horse and comes to save her daughter- just like heroes come and save their heroines in the
 typical “happy-ending” fairy tales. Here, Carter subverts masculinity when she replaces a manly figure

with the figure of a woman-a mother. The ending scene goes like,

“I can only bless the - what shall I call it? - the maternal telepathy that sent my mother running

headlong from the telephone to the station after I had called her , that night. I never heard you cry

before , she said, by way of explanation. Not when you were happy. And who ever cried because of

gold bath taps?”

THIS HAS TO BE MY FAVORITE SCENE from the story.

● QUOTATIONS FROM THE TEXT

1. “...my heart mimicking that of the great pistons ceaselessly thrusting the train that bore me

through the night, away from Paris, away from girlhood, away from the white, enclosed quietude

of my mother’s apartment, into the unguessable country of marriage.”

Explanation:

This scene is narrated by the young girl herself, when she is leaving her maternal home and travelling to

Marquis’ castle after marrying him. It sets a somber tone for the story.

2. “Are you sure you love him?”

“I’m sure I want to marry him,” I said

Here the mother inquires of her daughter if she loves Marquis or not, to which the daughter replies that

she wants to marry him. It shows that the mother knows that the presence of love is important for marrying

someone. The naive young girl is more concerned about marriage than love.

3. "I had played a game in which every move was governed by a destiny as oppressive and

omnipotent as himself... And I had lost"

Says the young narrator, when she gets to know the reality of her life at the castle.
 4. "I clung to him as though only the one who had inflicted the pain could comfort me for suffering

it"

This quotation shows the helplessness of the young naive girl. She was helpless and stuck with the beast

Marquis. This is one of my favourite quotes from the story.

5. “I can only bless the - what shall I call it? - the maternal telepathy that sent my mother running

headlong from the telephone to the station after I had called her , that night. I never heard you

cry before , she said, by way of explanation. Not when you were happy. And who ever cried

because of gold bath taps?”

Ahhh, the most favourite scene from the whole story! Need I say more!!?!?

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