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Title: Themes in The Bloody Chamber
Description: A Level notes detailing the themes present in the short story collection as a whole. With reference to several of the stories, including: The Bloody Chamber, The Courtship of Mr Lyon, The Company of Wolves, The Erl-King, The Lady of the House of Love and The Snow Child. These themes can easily be linked with the Gothic genre.
Description: A Level notes detailing the themes present in the short story collection as a whole. With reference to several of the stories, including: The Bloody Chamber, The Courtship of Mr Lyon, The Company of Wolves, The Erl-King, The Lady of the House of Love and The Snow Child. These themes can easily be linked with the Gothic genre.
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THE BLOODY
CHAMBER COLLECTION
THEMES
MARRIAGE
Marriage in The Bloody Chamber collection is interlinked with the past social
order; with corruption and deception
...
Similarly, The Courtship of Mr Lyon presents the
marriage contract as an economic exchange in which women are owned and
controlled by the father, passing into ownership over another man
...
Men no longer own and control women in marriage, as old laws
have changed, but Carter is suggesting that men still behave as if they have
the right to control women, and her stories challenge that expectation
...
The ‘parlour’ where the father gambles his daughter away to
‘La Bestia’ emphasises the role that chance plays in human relationships
...
Carter is highlighting the financial
arrangements that govern the actions of individuals as much as their own
beliefs
...
Her cooperation with the male-dominated
arrangements guarantees ‘the price of her father’s good fortune’
...
MARRIAGE
Beauty’s absence from the Beast’s home causes his domestic affairs to
fall into a state of neglect and ‘disillusion’
...
Wolf-Alice and The Company of Wolves portray different versions of
partnership between the sexes, which have little to do with conventional
marriage ceremonies
...
MARRIAGE
Wolf-Alice exists outside all norms of human civilisation (such as
marriage), which can be seen in how she leads the Duke into a realisation
of his identity beyond the traditional patriarchal values of society
...
This shows a recognition that the
idealisation of marriage as a binding contract is difficult to sustain
...
Carter’s ‘savage marriage
ceremony’ preludes a montage that conveys the idea of future peace, the
‘happily ever after’ promised in every fairytale yet rarely seen in reality
...
SEXUALITY
The collection as a whole offer an impression of sexuality as an equally
frightening and exciting aspect of adult behaviour
...
In The Bloody Chamber the risks involved in allowing another person to
define one’s sexuality (in being submissive and passive) are given an urgent
nature
...
Carter emphasises the appeal of the risk in marrying an older, more
experienced man in The Bloody Chamber
...
She, who knows ‘nothing of the world’ finds herself caught in conflicting
emotional responses that give ‘a kind of fear’ at the ‘strange, impersonal
arousal’ and ‘repugnance’ she feels when her husband delays consummation
...
The pianist has a moment of disturbing self-awareness when she states:
‘I sensed in myself the potentiality for corruption that took my breath
away’
...
As she is stripped in the ‘formal disrobing of the bride’, her responses
are ambiguous
...
The complex physical sensation is based on the fact
that she has ‘seen [her] flesh in his eyes’; her desire is aroused by his
voyeurism, suggesting exhibitionism on her part
...
This is a controversial sentiment for a feminist writer to
give to a female character in the 1970’s
...
She
recalls her loss of virginity with hints of the violence involved
...
Carter assembles constructs of images of domestic violence in the new
wife’s recount of ‘the orgasm’
...
Her
unfulfilled desire, after surviving the onslaught of the Marquis’s attentions,
is thwarted by his decision to abandon her
...
SEXUALITY
Human sexuality is conceived by Carter as something that is dangerous
and animalistic – as shown by the violent images in The Bloody Chamber;
the voyeurism and exhibitionism in The Tiger’s Bride; the comical contrast
of the cats and the exuberant coupling of the lovers in Puss-in-Boots; the
imprisonment of women in The Erl-King; the intimate moments of
transformation in The Tigers Bride, The Company of Wolves and WolfAlice – but desire is always contained within the boundaries of
heterosexual behaviour
...
Male sexuality is
shown to be aggressive and selfish
...
Mr Lyon, lying down with Miss
Lamb at the end of The Courtship of Mr Lyon, can depend on her selfsacrifice to sustain his existence
...
Puss-in-Boots is an
insensitive braggart: ‘what lady in all the world could say “no” to … a fine
marmalade cat?’
...
The soldier
in The Lady of the House of Love will not take ‘criminal advantage’ of the
vampire he believes needs medical treatment for ‘nervous hysteria’
...
SEXUALITY
Carter’s portrayal of female fear of sex reflect the long history for women
of sexual activity being a calculated risk with potentially fatal consequences
...
Sexuality is seen as a portal through which a woman passes towards
fulfillment, motherhood or even death
...
It is this thrill that underpins
the psychology of the reading experience in the Gothic; humans find fear a
pleasurable sensation
...
The thrill of risk-taking is enforced through all
experiences of young women in these tales who are confronted by strange
men who exert power over them
...
METAMORPHOSIS
Changing forms to reveal some idea of truth is a common theme of folk
and fairytales
...
Carter’s two takes on this offer something different
...
The
impression is that he is not so handsome after all
...
Carter inverts the symbolic form as she inverts the
tale; to be beast-like is to be virtuous, to become manly is to be vicious
...
It is worth considering how the Count’s wishes
become manifest in the world, and how the Countess’s wishes change her
situation
...
The Lady of the House of Love, with its beautiful Romanian aristocratic
vampire being transformed into a ‘far older, less beautiful’ woman,
subverts Sleeping Beauty
...
The vampire cannot sleep (a euphemism for death) and is only able to find
peace after cutting her finger
...
METAMORPHOSIS
Carter makes the Countess become ‘less beautiful’ after her lover tries to
‘kiss it better’, inverting the original tale where Sleeping Beauty is restored
to health
...
The transformations of the wolf (the potent symbol of the ferocity of
nature and the dangers of the unknown and all-consuming desire) are
played out in the versions of Little Red Riding Hood
...
The threat of the
werewolf is tamed by his total transformation into a wolf
...
Carter draws on another strand of folk tale
which gives women credit for having the wit to outsmart the devil himself
...
In the original Beauty and the Beast, the creature is rescued
from brutality by the goodness of a true woman, who restores him to
virtue
...
Mr Lyon loses his attractive animal qualities and ends up looking
‘unkempt’, having ‘a broken nose, such as the noses of retired boxers’
...
The Tiger’s Bride passes
the transformation to Beauty, who – having dispatched her replica to the
world of her father – is free to shed ‘all the skins of a life in the world’ and
become a beast herself
...
BEAUTY AND WEALTH
A recurring theme within The Bloody Chamber collection is that beauty can
but should not be purchased or owned by the wealthy
...
The ‘tell-tale stain’ on the pianist’s forehead takes ‘the shape and
brilliance of the heart on a playing card’
...
Beauty in The Tiger’s Bride accepts her father’s cynical ideology that ‘if you
have enough money, anything is possible’
...
The pianist’s redistribution of her dead husband’s wealth is
an act of restorative class justice, reflecting Carter’s socialist principles
...
Carter is playing with the
reader’s expectations and understanding of the character, deliberately
keeping the real identity of The Beast hidden
...
Carter is influenced by Marxist analysis of capitalism and its effects
...
This is represented in the Marquis and
his private collections of art and literature
...
MAN, WOMAN AND NATURE
The use of the masculine noun ‘man’ to indicate humanity as a whole was
a common cliché being challenged at Carter’s time
...
The Erl-King shows the spirit of nature as a peculiarly isolated and
feminised man: ‘He is an excellent housewife’
...
Carter describes the Erl-King’s ‘cruel’ habit of keeping
‘singing birds’ in cages
...
The intertextual references to
Shakespeare’s Othello
...
MAN, WOMAN AND NATURE
The concept that a man hides his true nature behind a mask is also
presented in The Bloody Chamber and The Tiger’s Bride, where the Marquis
and The Beast are more dangerous when the mask is removed
...
For example, the
Beast in The Courtship of Mr Lyon or the werewolf in the last three revisions
of Little Red Riding Hood
...
By returning to this triangular relationship between
man, woman and nature, Carter challenges the idea that there is an
unchanging human nature or a ‘natural order’ in human society
...
Part of being human is the ability to
communicate in sophisticated language, visual and verbal
...
There is
no past or future for her, only a ‘continuous’ moment of the now
...
Carter is highlighting in these stories that our adaptation of nature has
created a society that does not allow our human needs to be adequately
fulfilled
...
MAN, WOMAN AND NATURE
While there are a few exceptions, nature in the collection is a cold and
unwelcoming place that only exists where human civilisation stops
...
Most tales are set in the coldest part of the world in the coldest season
...
The aristocrats fleeing from the Russian
winter in The Tiger’s Bride find no comfort in the ‘treacherous South’ where
parlours are ‘cold as hell’
...
The depressive effect of the cold weather
in each tale in succession is contrasted by other light-hearted stories
...
MAN, WOMAN AND NATURE
Human behaviour is consistently shaped by a harsh and bleak
environment
...
The equation of ‘cold weather’
and ‘cold hearts’ in The Werewolf is related to the fear of hungry wolves,
‘grey as famine’, made more dangerous in wintertime
...
The ‘amphibious’ isolation of the
Marquis’s castle in The Bloody Chamber is echoed in the ‘bereft landscape’
that is provided by the Beast’s palace in The Tiger’s Bride, ‘a burned-out
planet’ dominated by the ‘sad browns and sepias of winter’
...
The narrator describes the ‘amniotic salinity of the
ocean’ as the first sensation on her arrival
...
The watery connection between mother and child is followed through the
‘melting’ landscape and formed in the tears that flow over ‘gold bath taps’
while they talk on the telephone
...
The forest
is a paradoxical symbol in the stories that feature the forest setting or
employ a variation on that image of a world that is not within human
control
...
MAN, WOMAN AND NATURE
The fairy-tale forest is physically unwelcoming and alluring at the same
time
...
There is something pagan in Carter’s reiteration of themes and images of
the forest as a place of discovery, sacrifice and redemption
...
Title: Themes in The Bloody Chamber
Description: A Level notes detailing the themes present in the short story collection as a whole. With reference to several of the stories, including: The Bloody Chamber, The Courtship of Mr Lyon, The Company of Wolves, The Erl-King, The Lady of the House of Love and The Snow Child. These themes can easily be linked with the Gothic genre.
Description: A Level notes detailing the themes present in the short story collection as a whole. With reference to several of the stories, including: The Bloody Chamber, The Courtship of Mr Lyon, The Company of Wolves, The Erl-King, The Lady of the House of Love and The Snow Child. These themes can easily be linked with the Gothic genre.