Who Is The Marquis's Beastliness In 'The Bloody Chamber'

In this line, “He was in the bedroom pushing clothes into a suitcase when she came to the door”. The husband was anxious from his wife’s complex attitude. He had already decided to leave the house. This scene gave

His blue beard causes people to fear him as an unnatural color for a beard or most things in the natural world. Another significant symbol in this story is the ‘key’. The key in this tale has many symbolic meanings. Firstly, a key represents power and/or wealth. They are used to lock away something precious. In folktales, a key symbolizes a mystery yet to be solved “on the road to enlightenment and revelation” (Chevalier 1982). In this case, it represents a mystery to the bride which must be solved; Bluebeard gave his bride the key to give her admission and power in her new home. This privilege comes with a warning for he forbids her entry into one of the rooms showing his lack of trust in her. Basically, the key is a trap in this story because the use of the banned key comes with a death sentence but he did not tell her this— he only told her that she may expect his “just anger and resentment” (Perrault, 2). Another point worth nothing is that, the wife will use the key to open the forbidden room and therefore she will be given a disclosure about the true nature of her husband.

One literary device that he chose to used in order to capture the woman’s situation was Irony. The Irony is created by the woman’s house. One would expect that if she wanted to leave her house and explore the world beyond the one she knew, she would be

The bedroom can be substituted for the female body, and thereby represents "the enigma and threat generated by the concept of female sexuality in patriarchal culture" ("Pandora" 63). Concealing sexuality but also reifying the female body as and in the forbidden space of the bedroom, John invokes spatial and bodily associations of enclosure and mystery.

“Later that night when Thomas roller over and lurched into her, she would open her eyes and think of the place that was hers” this proves the point that she cannot even express herself sexually because she does not feel as if she has control in the situation.  Her mind wanders elsewhere, in a place where she is her own master, instead of what is reality. Additionally, the main character’s husband shows some selfish tendencies in the fact that he may not notice his wife’s discontentment with his affection.  However, this may also present the lack of communication between man and wife and therefore may cause a sense of isolation from her husband.

Richard, afraid that it might scare away Claude, did not tell him anything about the strange goings-on in the mansion. However, Claude too had a similar experience. As Claude was lying on his back and painting the celling in the dining room, he also couldn’t help feeling the presence of someone watching him at work. He thought that there was someone in the hallway outside the room but he couldn’t find out for sure through the frosted glass doors.

Elizabeth: Her voice rising; her composure falling away. Do you doubt my ladyship? Why should I welcome a reaper into my home? You have left the court, have you not? Well I have left the presence of the town. I will no longer allow myself to exchange pleasantries with those who have laid blood upon my husband’s name! You haven’t a clue of the hardship I have endured. No. I will stay in this house until my skin withers. I will stay until my bones dissolve and my tears leak from my fingertips. I will stay until the world falls away and I am left to myself alone. Leave now. Please. While I still have a grasp on the last of my dignity. I cannot bear to see you. Perhaps that is unfair. Her voice shakes and hushes. But so was John’s downfall. You will bother me no longer. Close the door on your way out. Elizabeth sits back down, and turns her chair away. She goes still. She is

In Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, the theme of transformation appears throughout the short story cycle. The hero/heroine’s virginity acts as a source of strength that protects them from harm. Their lack of fear also saves them from death. Virginity acts as power of potentia, either literally or symbolically and results in a release of an observed transformative power. The bloody chamber serves a different symbolic purpose of transformation for Beauty in “The Courtship of Mr Lyon”, the heroine in “The Tiger’s Bride” and the Countess in “The Lady of the House of Love”. Each of these characters will embark on a journey that questions their selfhood in circumstances that are presented to them and ultimately each will go through a

All the men notice is clutter. The men do not look deeper behind the meanings of this disarray. However, the women do. The women understand that the reason that things such as the towels are not clean is because she more than likely was busy doing her many other chores of the household. They also considered how much trouble Mrs. Wright went to fix the preserves. The women reason that the uncaring concern John had for Minnie and the attention he paid to the house perhaps forced Minnie to resort to killing. Even the County Attorney, Sheriff, and Mr. Hale could not understand all the difficulties women go through. They criticize Mrs. Wright as well as insult all women. Mr. Hale says, "Well, women are used to worrying over trifles." The actions of just these men show how women were taken for granted in this era. Inevitably, the men are unable to prove that Mrs. Wright murdered her husband but are going to convict her anyway. However, the women have solved the case. They come to the conclusion that Mrs. Wright was not treated very well by her husband and was not able to withstand the mistreatment anymore. They could tell the lack of attention he paid to his wife. The men still have a hard time accepting this concept because they do not believe that men treat women badly.

Explore Carter’s use of metamorphosis in The Bloody Chamber and comment on how it contributes to the Gothic element of the tale

The narrator’s feelings of inferiority and powerlessness parallels the female figure she sees trapped behind the pattern in the wall-paper adorning her room. She gradually withdraws from both John and reality by locking herself in the room and ultimately merging with the figure. Through the changing image of the pattern from a “fait figure” (Gilman 46) to a “woman stooping” (Gilman 46) behind the paper and “shaking the bars” (Gilman 46) as if she wanted “to get out” (Gilman 46), we can see her becoming one with the figure: “I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper.”(51) Her collapse into madness as reflected in her behavior with the “bedstead [that] is fairly gnawed” (Gilman 51) and her “creeping all around” (Gilman 50) is a direct result of her passive submissiveness to John’s control of her life.

As they approached the door, they realized that there was a watchdog off his chain already there waiting to get inside. What Marquise didn’t realize when he let the dog in was that he was also letting his own guilt in too. The watchdog being off his chain represents that Marquise’s guilt. The broken chain shows how he tried to hide his guilt but fail and the watchdog represents what is causing his guilt. When Marquise let the dog in, he also let his guilt in. As the couple sat down and “entertained one another as well as they could with conversation, the dog lay down, his head on his paws, in the middle of the room and slept” (). Therefore, when Marquise was entertained with his wife, his guilt was at ease and he was more relaxed. But when the clock hit midnight, he heard a horrible sound and the dog awakened. The dog suddenly raised and started to growl and bark. When this happened, Marquise’s guilt also began to rise. When the dog retreated towards the stove, that’s when Marquise new what was driving his guilt. He realizes that the old woman was haunting him since she died. When Marquise realized this, he was tired of his life because he could not live with this amount of guilt, therefore he took a candle and set his castle on fire. This fire ultimately ended his

For her, the entire day was a terrible day that will live in infamy forever. In lines 149-150 she says that she would be ten times happier now if she had never even seen Hampton Court. These first four lines introduce the mood of the passage, with Belinda implying that she regrets having lived life the way she has. By saying "Hampton-Court these Eyes had never seen!" (Pope IV. 150) she implies regret at having spent time at Hampton-Court and her actions there. This lock may symbolize her virginity, which indeed was of great pride and value to women of the day. Had she known that this opulent lifestyle would lead to the loss of her lock, or metaphorically, the loss of her virginity through rape, she may have lived a more modest life.

This means she knew that she was going to loose all the freedom she dreamt about as her husband strutted in through the doors, so she passed away. However,

Contrary to to traditional Mother roles in gothic literature, the Mother in ‘The Bloody Chamber’ embodies Strength and Courage. Through Carters feminist style of writing, the mother is seen as a knight in shining armour. The ‘indomitable’ (p1) woman is a figure of strength and courage; she has shot ‘a man – eating tiger with her own hand” (p2), and holding all the traits of a masculine hero. Traditionally, these traits symbolise her possession of the power traditionally possessed by men. Moreover, her overwhelming power is influential; she is in the position of true power, in no way passive or innocent. The passing down of her husband’s “antique service revolver” (p2) contradicts societies expectation of women. Traditionally, possessions are handed down to a fathers heir, however the mother receives this symbolic item instead. This item represents both the mothers strength and her physical power. Yet she is equipped with ‘maternal telepathy’(p41), which adds another dimension to her empowerment as it is a feminine strength, suggesting Carter is employing the notion that women may embrace their femininity whilst still retaining an advantage over men. However, her masculine qualities cannot be ignored. The windswept image is one of strength, portrayed towards the end of the novel, when she saves the damsel in distress, a role usually dominated by men. Her ‘white mane’ (p40) and “wild” appearance alludes to the image of a hunting lioness, a symbol of strength. She is the embodiment of “furious justice”. This