Essay on the 'The Bloody Chamber' (Title Story)

To what extent is the titular story of ‘The Bloody Chamber’ shocking?

The short story, “The Bloody Chamber”, sees the exploration of many Gothic elements. However, one of the most resonant ones throughout the story is that of ‘shock’. There are many instances in the story that support the statement.

The marriage between a young, virginal girl, to a recently widowed old rich man comes as a shocking surprise. More interesting is the fact that they share almost no common interest – whilst the girl loves music and takes to playing at the piano whenever time permits, the Marquis amuses himself by collecting paintings and novels that deal with ritualistic eroticism. The Marquis catches his new wife peering into The Immolation of the wives of the Sultan, and we see him patronise her by saying, “My little nun has found the prayerbooks, has she?” The young girl’s ‘painful, furious bewilderment’ can be supported by Bertens’ commentary on gender stereotypes: she resembles the woman who is “cute, but essentially helpless” under the dominating nature of the ancestrally rich Marquis that she has married. The shock that reader receives to see the husband refer to his wife as “baby” or “little one” frequently differentiates the fine line between the “monster” and the humane part of the Marquis.

Secondly, the treatment of females is widely covered in “The Bloody Chamber”, and most of the time, the reader is appalled by the way in which Carter goes about the description of these scenes in the story. When the Marquis strips the young girl for the first time, we see the narrator’s ambivalent reaction to the consummation of her marriage. “Enough! No; more!” The constant references to fairytales throughout the story remind us of the helpless heroine who must succumb to the sexual wants of the man to survive in the end. The language makes many subtle references to religious and cultural beliefs (Adam and Eve, aristocratic behaviour in the eighteenth century) and the 'representations of characters' that Botting refers to make the reader wonder if it is morally right for a recently-turned widower to remarry a girl almost half his age simply because she has a "potential for corruption".  Perhaps what shocks the reader more is Carter’s bold portrayal of ‘pornographic confrontation’ in 1979 when feminism was only just being accepted; the embodiment of woman as an independent being is a theme that not only shocks but goes beyond shock in that it educates the society and those that read the story.

Most importantly, the chamber and its contents itself are one of the most shocking elements throughout “The Bloody Chamber” – the blood, corpses and immolation that Carter depicts not only induces fear in the reader, but more so blurs the boundaries between the Marquis’ constant psychological trauma between pain and pleasure. Whilst sadism (depicted in the Marquis) and the blurring of boundaries shocks the reader into believing the Marquis really is the “atrocious monster”, Carter succeeds at repulsing yet at the very same time attracting the reader to the story.

Nevertheless, some readers would go as far to say that, given “The Bloody Chamber” is based on the fairytale “Bluebeard”, it is too predictable to be shocking. The twists and turns are not that surprising, as they are likely to be expected to one who is contextually familiar with fairytales. Carter replaces the conventional male hero with the heroine’s mother, who herself is the embodiment of masculine femininity and whose “maternal telepathy” avers the tragedy. In addition to this, many feminists would argue that the purpose of “The Bloody Chamber” is not to shock, but rather to educate; educate both women and the rest of society about the dangers of the world, and what the result of naivety and desire for material wealth leads to.

Elements of the Gothic - Notes from 'The Company of Wolves' from 'The Bloody Chamber'

THE COMPANY OF WOLVES

Blurring Boundaries

Innocence and Corruption:

1.       “the ominous if brilliant look of blood on snow” – the purity of snow is tainted with blood

2.       “[the scarlet shawl] was as red as the blood she must spill” – the symbol of childhood innocence (the shawl) in the original stories now is connected to the blood that she must ‘spill’ after she consummates her relationship with the wolf

3.       “her hair looked white as the snow outside”

Man and Beast:

1.       “his torso is a man’s but his legs and genitals are a wolf’s” – transformation of the man into  a beast, where the unknown is finally revealed

Setting

Carter immediately defamiliarises the reader from the setting as it a region of “mountain and forest” and it is typically Gothic as she deals with “contemporary locations” (Smith, 2009). We can see that there is isolation, as there is “one beast and only one” which also could be interpreted as that ‘beast’ being the commander of the God-equivalent of the forest.

Narrative

In “The Company of Wolves” by Angela Carter, it is the woman who tempts the man and the man can be seen as a victim in the relationship: thereby every hint of rape as a criminal act is eliminated from the text. The story is a fable about rape. While Perrault’s girl is helplessly naive, gullible and defenceless, the Grimms added the sin of disobedience to the girl. Carter’s girl, on the other hand,
“has just started her women’s bleeding”, and this Little Red Riding Hood is fully conscious of her femininity and sexual desires. When asked for a kiss, she understands the meaning and blushes.

Violence and Fear

Lycanthropy is the belief that wolves and men have the ability to transform into one another and Carter deals with this. Wolves as “threatening figures” (Botting) are introduced as “carnivore incarnate”; they are “cunning” and “ferocious” predators; “forest assassins”. The idea of using quotes such as “so a wolf he instantly became”, and “and then no wolf at all lay in front of the hunter but the bloody trunk of a man” would instantly chill the hearts of traditional readers who lived in the “northern country” at the time in which the story is set – however, to the modern reader, this violence and fear becomes a parody and fails to affect the reader in the intended way.

 

Male/Female Roles

The Dominant Female – Little Red Riding Hood

Though the text emphasises the protagonist’s virginity, the girl seems to know how to make her virginity interrelate with the hunter’s masculinity. When the hunter transforms into a werewolf, the girl bursts out laughing. To her, he is nothing but a “handsome young one”. It is the grandmother who sees the beastliness in the werewolf, whereas to the girl, the wolf’s manliness is emphasised by his “huge genitals”.

The girl in Carter’s version voluntarily undresses herself, and tames the wolf. She successfully gains control over both their sexual desires. The image of the werewolf laying his head on the girl’s lap and her picking lice from his pelt paints the apparently in-control werewolf as a pet cat, and the image objectifies the man rather than the woman. In Perrault, virginity is to be consumed by masculinity while in Grimms, femininity is to be managed by patriarchy. However, in Carter, femininity and masculinity learn to co-exist in peace. Carter changes the role of the female from a mere victim of rape to a self-assertive being who sexually matures in this confrontation. In so doing, Carter allows the transformation of woman as a virgin to femme fatale, who tempts men into sexual intercourse.

The Passive Male – The Werewolf (Hunter)

In “The Company of Wolves”, the werewolf lets his eyes shine, slavers his desires and utters some menacing words, but he stands motionless as if at a loss for how to express his urges. In striking contrast, Little Red takes the sexual initiative herself and thus the story justifies “male myths of rape” where men can be helpless victims of temptation, too. In this, Carter perhaps goes against her initial aim, where she strengthens the negative image of womanhood, where woman as Eve the Temptress is the primary cause of original sin.

Elements of the Gothic - Notes from 'The Lady of the House of Love' from 'The Bloody Chamber'

THE LADY OF THE HOUSE OF LOVE

Confinement

The central question which lies behind the process of transformation is brought up by Carter in her short story “The Lady of the House of Love”. “Can a bird only sing the song it knows or can it learn a new song?” This is a powerful metaphor for the question of whether it is possible for women to break free of their old, rusty roles and reinvent themselves. This question is essential for Carter and her fiction.

Justice and Injustice

Gothic writers reintroduce the injustice perpetrated by a previous generation on the current generation, until the injustice is righted. Thus, sin in doubled and doubled until it is corrected.

Setting

Here the castle is the manifestation of a seemingly masculine power, but this flaunted power is shown to be illusory. Thus the castle, can act as a challenge, a test of resolve that women can triumphantly pass.

The castle represents a threatening, sexually rapacious masculine world. If the images of locked and unlocked doors within the Gothic castle often signify the sexual vulnerability of women, gender roles are reversed.

The castle seems to represent both physically and metaphorically the darkness at the heart of the Gothic. The lower regions of the castle represent fear and entrapment. The darkness of the cavern becomes a metaphor for the darkness of the mind.

Male/Female Roles

The Female Victim/Monster – Countess Nosferatu
The protagonist in “The Lady of the House of Love” has an ambiguous role: on one hand, she is a blood-thirsty vampire who murders and devours her victims, yet on the other hand, she is a typically passive and unconfident illustration of the vampire who has a “horrible reluctance for [her] role”. She is completely controlled by the expectations of her “atrocious ancestors”. She does not kill the young virgin soldier, which would have been the expected course of action by her ancestors, but decides to let him live. This is a brave decision, as it entails her own death. Countess Nosferatu manages to free herself from her puppet-status and is successful in taking an important decision for herself, symbolic of her freedom from the bird-cage by “singing a new song”. Nevertheless, she cannot make much use of her newly-won freedom, because “the end of exile is the end of being”, where the reward for freedom is death.

Elements of the Gothic - Notes from 'The Tiger's Bride' from 'The Bloody Chamber'

THE TIGER’S BRIDE

Confinement

The tiger’s purr is the sound of revolution, the sound of old conventions and traditions breaking apart: “It will all fall, everything will disintegrate.”

Diction

Carter’s Beauty is not afraid, only slightly sarcastic and analytical. Her cynicism and sarcasm responds to her father’s cynicism and folly at gambling his own daughter.

Narrative

Angela Carter’s ‘Beauty’ in ‘The Tiger’s Bride’ reveals that being a woman involves a degree of passivity and dependency on a man (in this case, the father). And although it could be argued that this dependency is almost natural, considering the man they depend on is their parent, the way the women react to the new masculine figure (the Beast) does speak about the author’s professed understanding of the relationship between genders.

Male/Female Roles

Male Role – The Beast
The beastliness of the Beast is mirrored in ‘The Tiger’s Bride’. The Beast is a tiger with “fur, paws and claws”, ferocious, ready to hunt and kill among the “gnawed and bloody bones”. But, his beastliness can also be understood as his sexuality: his desire to see Beauty naked, and the “rich, thick, wild scent” that the Beast drenches himself in (and continues to do so) after Beauty arrives at the castle are symbols of the Beast’s sexuality. He is active, independent and under control.

The Female – Beauty
Angela Carter’s Beauty does not act as a civilising agent on the Beast. She is aware of “the exact nature of his beastliness” as she aptly remembers her childhood tales of old wives’ and gossip about servants getting pregnant out of wedlock. Whilst she acknowledges her sexuality, she gradually and boldly adopts it, and allows herself to be attracted to the “beastliness” of the Beast. From the beginning, Beauty feels contempt for his appearance and demeanour “in spite of the quaint elegance of the Beast”. He also wins her at cards, is wealthy and is always with a valet, in contrast to the apparently passive and dependent Beauty. Nevertheless, it is important to note that Beauty does not tremble in front of the Beast, and rather is enraged at being traded around and literally objectified as a woman. When asked to present herself naked, she produces a “raucous guffaw” and offers to have sex with him in the manner of prostitutes; although she does it to shame the Beast, it shows that females in Carter’s world can be active, in control of their own body and expose their openness to sexuality. Whilst the Beast does not turn to human form in this version of the fairytale, Beauty is turned into a beast, where she embraces and explores her own sexuality, full of desire and sexual passion, all the attributes that Beast (and men) have had all along.

In “The Tiger’s Bride”, the female protagonist has typical puppet-type femininity. She is initially controlled by the male world – first, her father and later the Beast, the latter of which she was warned would “gobble her up”. The sight of the Beast’s “beastliness” shocks her, but only in a negative way: “I felt my breast ripped apart as I suffered a marvellous wound”. She is, nevertheless, impressed by the monster’s openness, that she shows him her naked body freely, which triggers a host of extreme feelings in her where she feels “at liberty for the first time” in her life.

Elements of the Gothic - Notes on 'The Bloody Chamber' (Title Story)

THE BLOODY CHAMBER

Blurring Boundaries

Life vs. Death:

1.       The Marquis reminds the narrator of “cobra-headed, funereal lilies” which we usually associate with death

2.       “dark, motionless eyes” that seem dead yet alive – the Marquis is a timeless man, who can control women yet cannot control his own urges

3.       “The heavy sword, sharp as childbirth, mortal” – the start and end of life are connected in this one phrase

Husband vs. Father:

1.       “fragrance that made me think of my father, how he would hug me in a warm fug of Havana”

2.       “Have the nasty pictures scared Baby?” – although this is a patronising comment from the Marquis, it could also be interpreted as his stepping into the role of a father for the narrator, which blurs boundaries between being a husband and a father

Nature and Confinement:

1.       “Sea; sand; a sky that melts into the sea – a landscape of misty pastels with a look about it of being continuously on the point of melting” – land and sea fuse together to complete block the narrator from getting away from the desolate island on which the castle is placed, i.e. she is confined

2.       “that castle, at home neither on the land nor on the water, a mysterious, amphibious place”

Past and Present:

1.       “the walls on which his ancestors in the stern regalia” – blurs boundaries between the ancestors who have given birth to this “atrocious monster”

Religion and Sex:

1.       “Off comes the skirt; and, next, the blouse of apricot which cost more than the dress I had for first communion.” Not only sheds light on narrator’s materialism, but also on her instant connection between communion and consummation of her marriage

2.       Intonation that sounds like a religious chant: “Of her apparel she retains/Only her sonorous jewellery”

3.       “My little nun has found the prayerbooks, has she?” There is a clear connection between the pious ‘nun’ and he discovery of pornography

4.       “There is a striking resemblance between the act of love and the ministrations of a torturer” – love is a predominantly Christian ideal whilst torture is against God, and diabolic

 

Appearance and Reality

“The Bloody Chamber” is the retelling of the Bluebeard story and is filled with quite a few hints making the reader question whether the young maiden bride is purely naive or not. Carter “subverts the establishment” between the Marquis and the bride in terms of gender, intention and free will. The protagonist emphasises boldly, “I’m sure I want to marry him”. She accepts it as her fortunate “destiny” and even hopes to bear an heir to that “legendary habitation”. She most definitely does not portray herself to be intimidated, shy and ignorant in the initial stages of the story. In fact, her own evil starts to compete with the evil of the Marquis when she describes the ruby choker: “A choker of rubies ... like an extraordinary precious slit throat.”

Setting

The castle seems to represent both physically and metaphorically the darkness at the heart of the Gothic. The lower regions of the castle represent fear and entrapment. The darkness of the cavern becomes a metaphor for the darkness of the mind.

The castle represents a threatening, sexually rapacious masculine world. If the images of locked and unlocked doors within the Gothic castle often signify the sexual vulnerability of women, gender roles are reversed. The castle becomes the Marquis when the narrator describes, “the dolphin taps winked at me derisively; they knew my husband had been too clever for me!”

The narrator’s mother, ‘a very magnificent horsewoman in widow’s weeds’, bursts through the gates of the castle and saves her daughter from the horror of her husband’s torture chamber. Here the castle is the manifestation of a seemingly masculine power, but this flaunted power is shown to be illusory. Thus the castle, can act as a challenge, a test of resolve that women can triumphantly pass. 

Narrative

The ending of Carter’s story is quite suggestive. The Marquis leaves a mark on her forehead and she is glad the piano-tuner cannot see it for it “spares her shame”. What it is it she is ashamed of –adultery, curiosity or tendency for corruption?

Male/Female Roles

The Mother Figure
‘The Bloody Chamber’ provides a rather different perspective on the mother figure. The female narrator’s mother is introduced to us early as ‘eagle-featured, indomitable’ and she reappears at the end of the story in the manner of the knight-errant as the saviour of her daughter.

Sex, guilt and immorality

The problematical issue in the story is not focused on the young woman’s sexual arousal, but rather that women can be as inclined as men to evil. Carter builds this idea by the introduction of pornography as a potential for corruption. Pornography, in fact, deconstructs the plight of women for Carter where the creation of female characters with evil and cunning intentions leaves no alibi for women as the victims in her collection. Another hint of evil in the story is the female potentiality for being bad. “I was not afraid of him, but of myself.” Her “rare talent for corruption” terrorises both herself and the readers as we realise that this could very well happen to any of us.