Tigers bride

Exposition

56-60

The exposition in the short story ”The Tiger’s Bride” starts when the story begins. The story is presented
with a foreshadowing in the first sentence (“My father lost me to The Beast at cards”), because although it is
not known how or in what context this happens, it can be concluded that the protagonist’s father is not totally
responsible when gambling. This sentence also makes a strong effect on the reader, one of disgust? towards
the father, since it is shown not only that he has the power to decide over other person’s life, but that he uses
that power irresponsibly.
The next paragraph
Exposition (p. 51-54):
The exposition of the short story “The Tiger's Bride” starts when the story begins. It is pre-
sented with a foreshadowing in the first sentence (“My father lost me to the Beast at
cards,” p.51) because although it is not yet known how or in what context this happens, it
can be concluded that the narrator’s father is not totally responsible when gambling. This
sentence also makes a strong effect on the reader, one of disgust or indignation towards
the father, since it is shown not only that he has the power to decide over the narrator ’s
life, but that he usas that power irresponsibly, losing the bet and her daughter with it.
The fact the protagonist’s father is irresponsible when gambling can also be seen in the
quote of page 54: “Gambling is a sickness. My father said he loved me yet he staked his
daughter on a hand of cards.” Here, the protagonist makes it clear that her father is “sick,”
although she says that he staked “his daughter” (not the narrator herself), so we can un-
derstand that once her father betted her and lost her she doesn’t consider him as his fa-
ther (because he is not worthy of ir anymore).
The next paragraphs reflect the theme of objectification applied to our protagonist. She is
treated as an object to gamble and is then lost. Here, she has no voice or opinion on her
father’s actions, which affect her directly, so it could be considered that her “humanity” is
taken away from her to the point that she cannot even fight for it. Nevertheless, she still
has a purpose or is useful in some way (for her father), and that’s why we consider her an
“object” and not a “thing.”
The paragraph in page 53 that begins with “This is a melancholy, introspective region…”
contributes to the construction of the atmosphere of the story: a “cruel”, “sombre” one. The
fact that there’s “poor food” makes us understand that it is a poor village in contrast with
the wealthy Beast.
The exposition of the story ends when the father discovers he has lost the bet (“The Beast
bayed; laid down all three remaining aces” p.54). Here, the theme of objectification is pre-
sented too, since the protagonist is not able to decide if going with the Beast is what she
really wants: she just has to accept the circumstances created by her father gambling her
away.

Rising actions (p.54-67):

The first rising action that we found is when the protagonist goes to the Beast’s castle.
Here, tension is built up, since there’s a change in the routine: something unusual is going
to happen to her (apart from the fact, obviously, that she has just been bet by her father
and lost to a total stranger in a new country).
quote?

- when the beast asks to see her naked

65: “The valet did not return me to my cell but, instead, to an elegant, if old-fashioned
boudoir with sofas of faded pink brocade, a jinn's treasury of Oriental carpets, tintinnabula-
tion of cut-glass chandeliers.”
This is a rising action since at this point in the story, the valet taking the protagonist to a
place which wasn’t usual to her in the castle means something is going to happen, the
change in routine for her lets the reader know something is going to change.

65: “‘Leave me alone,' I said to the valet. He did not need to lock the door, now. I fixed the
earrings in my ears”
This is a rising action because by putting on the earrings she previously had thrown away
in the cell, she is demonstrating she wants to stay with the Beast (since in this story, we
can analyze that the earrings are a symbol of the protagonist in the castle. At first, she just
threw them away in her room, first one of them, then the other, symbolizing she did not
want to stay with the Beast at all. Now, she “fixed [them] in [her] ears,” showing that some-
thing has changed in her and she wants to continue in the castle). Her wanting to stay in
the castle is also shown in the previous paragraph, referring to her maid: “I will dress her in
my own clothes, wind her up, send her back to perform the part of my father’s daughter.”
(p.65)

66: “The valet bowed me inside The Beast's room.”

When she enters the Beast’s room, the reader knows something important will happen
since this room is unfamiliar to her. Also, her knocking on his door and not entering without
any knocking shows that her entering the room was unusual. In addition, This room is the
“bloody chamber” of this story, where the heroine undergoes her metamorphosis of both
pain and enlightenment. As the heroine prepares to embrace her own wildness the whole
household has removed its “mask.”

Simile 73: “I felt as much atrocious pain as if I was stripping off my own underpelt”
This simile is a comparison of the pain she had to stripping her own skin. But also, strip-
ping off her underpelt could make reference to when she strips naked, which she finds to
be an excruciating task. Both show a type of pain the heroine is suffering although one of
them is strictly physical and the other is from something she has done.

Foreshadowings:
55: “The Beast made a sudden, dreadful noise, halfway between a growl and a roar.”
We can understand this quote as a foreshadowing of the Beast’ bestiality, or at least that
he is somehow related to an animal (because humans don’t “roar”), although we do not yet
know too much about it. However, the name “Beast” itself already tells the reader that, al-
though he wears a mask and “apparents” it, he is not totally a human, so we could assume
that, for this “fantastical” creature, roaring corresponds to something normal for his species
(which is yet unknown for the reader).

55: “when I break off a stem, I prick my finger and so he gets his rose all smeared with
blood.”
This is an early foreshadowing in the story since the rose could represent her virginal self
because it is white and beautiful. When she pricks her finger on it and hands it to him "all
smeared with blood," she foreshadows her own loss of virginity later in the story.
+symbol of rose

Symbol:
ROSE: The rose in this story symbolizes her purity and virginity. However, in the foreshad-
owing of page 55 the rose is not just a symbol of the heroine’s purity and virginity, as it
also has thorns – showing the pain of her objectification, but also her own fierceness and
pride.

As she strips away the petals of the flower, it symbolizes her stripping away the outer lay-
ers of attachment and personality to find her true core. This image reflects the recurring
motif of nakedness.
quote?

68: “ I had a pair of diamond earrings of the finest water in the world;”
This quote is a Foreshadowing since the description of the diamonds as like water fore-
shadows the transformation at the end, when the heroine will become a “beast” and even
her jewelry will revert to wildness.

Climax (p.67):
“He dragged himself closer and closer to me, until I felt the harsh velvet of his head
against my hand, then a tongue, abrasive as sandpaper. 'He will lick the skin off me!'
And each stroke of his tongue ripped off skin after successive skin, all the skins of a life in
the world, and left behind a nascent patina of shining hairs”
This part is the climax because it's the highest point of tension in the story. This is when
the heroine is turning into a tiger herself. This part represent the heroine ’s transformation
into a tiger combines the acts of sex and birth into one. He rips off her skin by licking her,
which can be seen as a sexual act, but this gives way to the act of birth; the heroine is re-
born as a tigress with "a nascent patina of shining hairs,” and her new “wild side” is born.
The heroine here, in fact, is claiming herself. Carter makes it clear that coming into one's
selfhood is a painful and arduous act that calls for more than the wave of a wand. It re -
quires the heroine to endure the excruciating pain of giving birth (to herself) in order to at-
tain the relief and freshness of being reborn.

Denouement (p-67):
“My earrings turned back to water and trickled down my shoulders; I shrugged the drops
off my beautiful fur.”
This final quote is the denouement because the heroine is now a beast and from that mo-
ment on things will be different although it isn’t written in the story, the reader knows that
her turning into an animal is going to make things very different.
And not only she turns into an animal in the literal sense, but she also “finds her wild self”,
one that is not feminine and delicate as she was first seen at the beginning of the story
(where she couldn’t decide her destiny and could not stand up for herself).

Theme: feminism and woman stereotype

70: “That clockwork girl who powdered my cheeks for me; had I not been allotted only the
same kind of imitative life amongst men that the doll-maker had given her?”
In the story Carter compares the maid and the heroine. The maid is a doll who, in this
quote, is putting powder on the heroine's cheeks. Through this quote the reader is able to
understand the thought the heroine has. The doll is a "social creation of femininity” so her
being compared to a doll is also comparing the rolls each has. A doll needs someone to
wind her up in order to perform her maid tasks ,therefore, women are thought unable to
think and act for themselves. She realizes men will always treat her as “imitation” of a per-
son like the doll is, no matter what she does to equal them. However, once the heroine
starts claiming her own desires and doing whatever she wants to do, she no longer can be
compared to the doll because she no longer fits in the society’s female stereotypes and
she plans to send the maid home so that she could stay with the beast. Her being able to
decide for herself and not depending on anyone else, shows an empowering in her char-
acter.

71: “The tiger will never lie down with the lamb; he acknowledges no pact that is not recip -
rocal. The lamb must learn to run with the tigers.”
The heroine being compared to a lamb doesn’t imply that women are lambs and must
learn to be tigers; they are tigers who are made to think they are lambs. After all, the hero -
ine has been a tiger underneath her skin for all her life. Instead of Beauty and Beast being
opposites, they are wed into one stronger identity at the end of "The Tiger's Bride.”

??
Theme: objectification
64:” the artificial masterpiece of his face appals me”
The heroine is horrified by the Beast's mask. This may represent that the perfection of this
mask "appals" the narrator because it represents the model of perfection to which she is
bound. She does not want to be an object and therefore is disgusted that he looks like
one.
- she is betted and cannot stand up for herself (exposition)