Wolf-Alice

1. Carter introduces and describes ‘Wolf-Alice’ at the beginning of the story, then adds more detail as it progresses. Note the most striking descriptions of Wolf-Alice with page references:

(Page 140) "She howls because she is lonely"
- "panting tongue hangs out"
- "nose is sharper by night than our eyes are by day so it is the night she prefers"

(Page 141) "nothing about her is human except that she is not a wolf”
- "inhabits only the present tense" (animalistic instinct)
-"snapped at her would-be saviours with spiky canines"
- "always seemed wild impatient of restraint"

(Page 143) "beds are traps, she will not stay in one"
- "suckled as she was by wolves"
- "grew amongst things she could neither name or perceive"

(Page 144) “wolves had tended her because they knew she was an imperfect wolf"
- "then she began to bleed ... Bewildered her"

(Page 145) in the mirror she "tried to nuzzle her reflection" (self-awareness developing)
- "save the beast who came to bite her in the night" " verminous innocence"

(Page 146) "The world around her was assuming form"
- "examined her breasts with curiosity"

(Page 147) "White dress made her shine"

(Page 148) "White bride leapt out of the tombstones"
- "aborted transformations"

(Page 149) "Brought into being by her soft, moist, gentle tongue, finally in the face of the Duke"

2. From the description, what sort of a character does Carter create? Does the girl seem realistic to you?

Carter uses a feral child, completely isolated from life as we know it, to create an individual who has socialised herself, bringing an awareness of self to her animalistic nature. The plot, by no means, is realistic, the girl in the story is. This is because we can relate to her confusion of approaching womanhood - the things that happen to her body that she cannot control. Like many of carter's female characters we feel sympathy towards this “rugged" girl. Despite her primal mannerisms, her reaction to self-discovery is very human; "a little moisture leaked from the corners of her eyes, yet her relation with the mirror was now far more intimate science she knew she saw herself with it.” As any human would, she feels pain; she is by no means immune to the vulnerability of humanity, despite her wolfish ways.

3. What are the two elements to Wolf-Alice’s name and why are they important? How does this affect your feelings towards her and would your feelings change if only half her name was used? Examine the effects created by the two names.

The name 'Wolf-Alice' reflects the duality and liminal existence of this character. 'Wolf' holds connotations of wild and animalistic behaviour whilst 'Alice' is a popular name meaning ‘noble or kind’, a name that we mostly would associate to an –every-day-girl. Combining these two names allows readers to explore the idea of our own animalistic desires and repressed unconscious beastly ways that are within us all. By Carter creating a ‘beast-girl’ she explores the link between the primal instinct that we associate with animals and the beastly nature Carter explores is within us all. To lose either ‘Wolf’ or ‘Alice’ from this characters name would sever this tie.

4. Which other stories in this collection may be linked to this one because of the mixture of human and animal characters?

In ‘The Courtship of Mr Lyon’, Beauty becomes a beast and is referred to as “Mrs Lyon” showing her transformation from man to beast as well as the liminal state she is in before when she is falling for her future lover. ‘The Erl-King’ also represents a character in himself who possesses qualities of both man and beast (manifested through his wilderness ways). Inspired by the Green Man motif, the Erl King is a personification of nature, contaminating the natural with the corrupt human nature of man. This liminal state explores the concept of a werewolf which is a character common to the last three tales of Carter’s collection. Within ‘The Werewolf’, ‘The Company of Wolves’ and of course ‘Wolf-Alice’ there is contained in all a character of intense duality. Man by day, wolf by night, these characters represent a change in both self and ideology that Carter claims is possible. Such characters can shift between states of man and beast, and Carter leads us to infer that how we see in woman in the society we are in can, and should alter. Perhaps most significantly is the story of ‘The Tiger’s Bride’, as in this tale the female protagonist becomes a tigress, rejecting her father’s ownership of her as well as society’s norms by embracing her beastly side. This acceptance of one’s animalistic nature is reversed in ‘Wolf-Alice’, as whilst in the former story the woman becomes an animal, in the latter, she takes on such an identity from the beginning. Only by keeping her beastly nature can Wolf-Alice save the Duke, a similar ideal Carter applies in ‘The Tiger’s Bride’ which hints at the idea that; to be a truly effective heroine one must recognize and be in control of their own animalistic tendencies and sexuality.

5. How do you feel towards Wolf-Alice? Do you empathise with her or like her at all? Provide reasons for this based on parts of her description.

"Suckled as she was by wolves", it is very hard not to sympathise for Wolf-Alice as "nothing about her is human except that she is not a wolf”. Carter intends readers to empathise with her coming of awareness of self and her confusion in identity. Women raised in a patriarchal society may repress behaviour which is seen to be masculine or ‘beastly’ because we are conditioned to be beautiful, weak and passive. Without such listed qualities, we are told our worth is lessened. And yet we all have within us this ‘beast’ that we are told is ugly. But when we see Wolf-Alice, it is not ugly that we see. We feel sorrow at her bewilderment, knowing she has "grew amongst things she could neither name or perceive". Empathy for Wolf-Alice is inevitable (as Carter intended) because we all possess qualia of confusion.

6. How does the character of Wolf-Alice compare with the characters in the two stories?

In ‘The Werewolf’ the Grandmother (too our surprise) is the werewolf, undermining the expectations we held of who is and is not the ‘villain’ of the story. Traditionally, we root for Little Red Riding Hood, hate the wolf, and what the Grandmother to be saved. Carter’s retelling of this tale is confusing as we no longer have clear guidance in who to hate and who to love. Similarly in ‘The Company of Wolves’ we learn that “the beasts would love to be less beastly if they only knew how.” They kill, they destroy; the werewolves are ‘evil’ and yet we sympathise with their loneliness, we feel sorry that they are trapped in a place of which there seems to be no escape, because they have not been show the way out of entrapment.

The goal of fairytales is to present a child with a clear method to overcoming evil with good.  By repressing the animalistic desires of our ‘id’ we do not learn how to overcome our irrational fears but instead feel as if we are alone in our ‘monster-like’ ways. By Carters use of the werewolves in her last three stories of ‘The Bloody Chamber’, we are enabled to identify and explore the beast within us all, and more specifically, as ‘Wolf-Alice’ makes clear, the beast inside every woman. Carter’s characters are the key to this exploration as we can identify and relate to them.

7. How is the Duke described? How is his character drawn and how does Carter make the reader feel about him?

(Page 141) - “unsanctified household of the Duke”
(Page 142) - “The Duke is sere as old paper; his dry skin rustles against the bedsheets... thin legs scabbed with old scars where thorns scored his pelt”
- “he ceased to cast an image in the mirror” – “the governess of transformation”
- “his eyes see only appetite” – “half a juicy torso slung across his back”
- “cast in the role of the corpse-eater, the body snatcher”
(Page 146) – “believes himself to be both less and more than man”
(Page 149) – “brought into being by her soft, moist, gentle tongue, finally the face of the Duke”

With the moons appearance, the lonely and invincible Duke becomes ravenous, devouring humans and human corpses. He is abhorred by the townspeople and seen as an ally of the devil. He is unable to recognise the symbols that humans easily do; attempts to scare him off with garlic or Christian symbols fail. Even the wolves will not accept him because he eats his own kind. Wolf-Alice, however, he will not devour. Presumably because she is ‘inhuman’ also – the Duke does not harm her. She lives in his castle, serving him as a primitive maid and is the only one who allows him to achieve some form of identity. This occurs when she enables him to finally see his own reflection in the mirror (something previously he was unable to do); symbolizing, that true identity cannot be achieved without the acceptance of one’s own beastly nature, aided by others accepting us for who we are. Humans fear and deny their animalistic tendencies, as shown by how the nuns hide Wolf-Alice away from the world: “we secluded her in animal privacy ... because it showed us what we might have been.” Similarly, society fails to understand the Duke, and therefore abhor him. Carter creates sympathy for the Duke despite his grotesque behaviour, as due to our own confusion in identity (due to repressed unconscious desires, which conflict with how society has conditioned us to be.), we can relate to his character.

8. Which character do you feel the most empathy for? Do you think the author intended this? How and why has Carter achieved this?

Whilst empathy can be felt for both the Duke and Wolf-Alice; I would say I can relate to the latter more, and therefore am enabled to empathise most with. This is because, we hear of the horrific acts the Duke has committed and learn that “his eyes see only appetite.” This means that although we may feel sorry for him due to how cruelly he is treated by the townspeople, he is also a villain in the eyes of readers as his sexual greed is implied by the above quote and the consumption of flesh, both for nourishment and sexual gratification. On the contrary, for Wolf-Alice, we see only her pain. Although her violence is evident when she "snapped at her would-be saviours with spiky canines", we understand her isolation was not chosen and therefore the animalistic behaviour she has been brought up with is all that she knows. Unconscious desires and an animalistic nature, Carter believes, we are all prone to. In our case we have been conditioned to suppress these, whereas Wolf-Alice has not. Consequently, we are enabled to sympathise for Wolf-Alice, as we can relate to her animalistic tendencies because they are within us all, she, however, lacks the ability to repress them.

9. What is the function of the Duke? What does he contribute to the plot, and what would be missing if his character was not in the story?

The Duke contributes to the plot of the story because it is his home that Wolf-Alice is sent to. When the nuns fail to cope with her animalistic behaviour, she is sent to the Duke’s castle. Only here does she reach womanhood and discover and embrace her sexuality as she goes from beast to human, symbolized by her developed ability to recognise herself when she looks in the mirror. If the Duke was not in Carter’s story of ‘Wolf-Alice’ then there would be no place for metamorphosis of the female protagonist.

10. Why is there a mirror in the story? Explain it’s symbolic as well as actual function. What does the mirror tell you about Wolf-Alice?

Humans recognize their reflections in a mirror, beasts cannot do this, and half-beasts cast no reflection. Wolf-Alice at first "tried to nuzzle her reflection" in the mirror. She cannot see her reflection, nor reflect upon herself, just as an animal cannot do these things. However, later as "the world around her” begins to “assume form" she is able to see herself in the mirror, demonstrating her development in self-awareness. The mirror symbolises the journey women take through adolescence whereby they are able to acknowledge and moreover, accept womanhood and their sexuality. Furthermore, the Duke’s reflection is "brought into being by her soft, moist, gentle tongue”. This suggests that not only women, but men also, will be transformed by the discovery of self.  

11. A mirror is an important item elsewhere in ‘The Bloody Chamber’. In which other stories is this object used? Is it used in the same way in every tale? What are the similarities and differences of the functions of the mirror in different stories?

In ‘The Bloody Chamber’ the Marquis’ bed is “surrounded by so many mirrors!” They present his bride as a living, breathing pornographic image, as they reflect the Marquis’ young and vulnerable wife – who “become(s) that multitude of girls.” In this short story, a mirror is used to symbolise that the fait destined for the narrator to be “stripped” of dignity and “unwrapped” by her “purchaser,” is reflected in society where every woman is subject to be objectified by men.
In ‘The Tiger’s Bride’ the narrator says, “my father lost me to The Beast at cards”, this presents the theme of the objectification of women. Later when handed a mirror by her “clockwork twin”, the narrator “saw within it not my own face but that of my father.” Historically when a woman is given away in marriage, often a father will pay a dowry to her husband. This produces a flawed ideology of women as they are perceived to be a burden a family must bear, until she is paid for like any other material possession. The mirror in this short story reflects the sorrow-filled face of a girl who feels she is only a possession of men, to be given away and a “discharge of his (her father’s) debts.” The mirror in ‘Wolf-Alice’ arguably could present a similar idea as the narrator of ‘The Tiger’s Bride’ does not see herself in the mirror and neither does Wolf-Alice, implying their identity is clouded by what others have made them out to be.   

12. Think about stories you have heard or read elsewhere which include references to mirrors, and consider which genre Carter uses to help her write this story.

“Mirror Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?” The evil queen in ‘Snow White’ continually demands to know not if she is pretty but if she is the prettiest, not beautiful but the most beautiful. Conditioned from infancy, girls desire to be like the princesses they see in movies; teenagers plaster their face in makeup to appear to have clear skin and a perfect face and women flock to plastic surgeons to be made ‘beautiful’ in the eyes of society. Call it vanity, or a need for admiration, but the truth is that we all desire acceptance; acceptance of our physical appearance and of who we are inside.

Carter explores that woman are “cuts of meat” in the eyes of men and the idealised version of a woman is simply not a possible achievement for anyone. And yet if we are beautiful we are told our prince will come; if we are submissive and lovely there will be a happy ending. Carter confronts our false beliefs, she explores through fairytales what we fail to acknowledge in reality. There is no such thing as perfection in humanity, to try and achieve it is to ignore what makes us human. In ‘The Lady of the House of Love’, the Countess’ “beauty is her abnormality, a deformity.” Only in death when she looks older and less beautiful is she “fully human” and more herself than ever before. Bettelheim explains that when a child reads a fairytale they are enabled to experience confrontations with evil and discover how good can triumph. By relating to the heroes of these tales, children may learn that the confrontations they experience between their ‘id’ and ‘superego’ are not monstrous, ghastly things all others are immune to, but that, instead, their unconscious internal conflicts are quite normal. We generally associate vanity and self-discovery with mirrors. Carter undermines this, however, as she explores that mirrors (and the way we see ourselves) can be distorted by how others perceive us to be. Only by acknowledging our beastly side may we truly prosper.

13. Think about stories you have heard or read previously which refer to wolves. Using your answers to questions 11 and 12, say which genres are used in this tale.

Mystical creatures are common to any fairytale. Wolves and werewolves alike are beasts used in thousands of tales to depict animalistic pack-like behaviour, as well as the liminal state humans often exist in. Carter incorporates the Gothic into ‘The Bloody Chamber’ and specifically ‘Wolf-Alice’ by her dark descriptions and eerie and unsettling plots and settings. A feral child; a being humanity fails to understand. Numerous case studies attempt to explore what it is like to lack the conditioning of society; the socialisation most humans could not escape if they wished.  When told the gory details of how the Duke has “half a juicy torso slung across his back”, haunting the graveyards by night and even devouring his own kind, the horror so common in the Gothic is never more evident.

14. Wolf-Alice tries on the ‘white dress’ which the Duke had ‘tucked away behind the mirror’, and she saw that it ‘made her shine’. Why do you think the dress is ‘white’? And why does Wolf-Alice wears the dress now, rather than at the beginning of the story? What has happened to her during the story which creates her interest in the dress? And what does the conclusion of the story mean?

White is worn by brides to show their purity; we associate the colour with innocence and vulnerability. Doves are a sign of peace and snow is fresh and pure, each flake individual and unique. Wolf-Alice, like any girl, is human, she innately desires good, yet unfortunately does not understand it "suckled as she was by wolves.”  Whereas in most tales, the plot revolves around the corruption of innocence, in ‘Wolf-Alice’, she is beast from the beginning. Her journey is to discover what purity means. Her upbringing means that she is unaware of her nakedness as it is all she has ever known. Only when she gains an awareness of self, when she finally can recognise her reflection in the mirror, does she feel it necessary to dress. Moreover, only after she crosses over into womanhood is an interest in the wedding dress developed, portraying a desire to be beautiful and pure.

An alternative interpretation to this may reference the fallen state that Adam and Eve found themselves in when tempted to eat fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Previously oblivious to their nudity, when they are cast out from the Garden of Eden clothes are desired and required to hide their nakedness. It could be argued then, that Wolf-Alice is most natural when she indulges in her innately beastly ways, before the corruption that knowledge of the world brings. When exposed to a structured world which contrasts everything she has ever known, and her foster-parent wolves forbid her of, she becomes vain and transgresses from how she is able to identify with nature, her “transformation” a mere “parody.”

However, with the line the "white bride leapt out of the tombstones" the first interpretation is more coherent. Implied, is that, whilst previously held in a death-like state where her animalistic instinct means she “inhabits only the present tense,” Wolf-Alice is now enabled to emerge from her “cell” with the knowledge of her purity and therefore her sexuality.

15. How has Wolf-Alice changed and how have our feelings in association with her altered? What are the reasons for this?

Whilst Wolf-Alice has transformed from girl to woman due to the beginnings of her menstruation where she “woke to feel the trickle between her thighs,” her transformation from beast to human is only apparent, as from the beginning we learn "nothing about her is human except that she is not a wolf.” Whilst all of her behaviour implies that she is beast, her essential existence is not of this species. Our feelings towards her alter very little. This is because, before we empathised with her confusion over her own identity. We sympathised with the conditions she was brought up in, the lack of understanding and even cruelty of the nuns and the fear of her dwelling place with the Duke. However, at the end of the tale, we mourn the loss of her natural animalistic state which seemed to be more true to who she is then what she has become. We consequently are sympathetic still for her development which alternatively could be viewed as her transgression, due to the reality that she “could not run so fast on two legs in petticoats”. It would seem the Wolf-Alice readers have become fond of is now more than ever subject to “impatient restraint.”One thing that has changed is the admiration readers have developed for her as a woman, as she is empowered by saving a man.

The Lady of the House of Love - Extract H (reading around the topic)

1. (A) Fresh knowledge/information that’s useful in reading the story

The Countess is the role of the ‘master’ and the ‘predator’ because of her vampire heritage and her thirst for blood. This is unusual due to the fact the stereotypical ‘lion and lamb’ mentioned in the article conforms to the natural order of patriarchy. De Sade thinks that your ‘nature’ is who you are; good or evil, you cannot change that, whereas Carter focuses on ‘nurture’ and the ability to morph between good and bad, acting on the duality of the Gothic genre. The Countess is trying to change what she was ‘born’ as, however, she cannot do this easily – proving de Sade has a valid point, yet this can be seen as biological only, as she tries to stop harming others.

B) Confirms your interpretation:

In De Sade’s work ‘Juliette’ is born evil and ‘Justine’ is good, showing the audience there are set roles within our nature; something Carter disagrees with, as the Countess displays both qualities within her actions, showing the common gothic themes of duality and liminality; juxtaposing with De Sade’s very basic idea, that adheres to the fairytale structure.

‘The nature of men is not fixed by Carter as inevitably predatory’ – this quote, although contrary to her other texts, fits the male character within the Lady of the house of Love, as instead of causing her grievous harm, he wishes her to get better because he loves her. However, even though he cares for her, it is his love that eventually kills her, because it is one thing she cannot have. His lack of violence shows that Carter has not deemed all men to be violent and powerful, as in this story, her death is out of kindness and can be seen as him setting her free and releasing her from the life she was not happy with. Although this gives the impression females can only be set free with the help of a man, we see that the gender roles do not dictate that man is predator; woman is prey, within this story.

C) Adds to or develops your interpretation

De Sade constructs a mould for individuals who are good or bad, predator or prey, something which Carter challenges by developing her characters from those conventional to fairy tales. She creates liminal characters, consequently acknowledging the ‘complexity of human relations’ in that male and females are both masculine and feminine. The Countess is described as “a girl who is both death and the maiden”, exploring that she is an example of both morbid mortality and innocence co-existing together. This links to Bettelheim’s interpretation of fairy tales as a means for a child to experience ways to overcome ‘evil’ within his own unconscious by seeing how good characters triumph over evil ones.  Carter explores in the form of the Gothic that we all have both good and bad within us, highlighting the duality of Gothic characters.

D) Challenges your interpretation

‘Carter celebrates relativity and metamorphosis’ shows us that Carter reinforces ideas of change within her characters. However, in this story, the protagonist doesn’t undergo a physical change, her life ends. Even though she is not given the ability to ‘try and resurrect her rose’, future generations have been given the chance to learn from this story so that they can encompass aspects of both good and evil. The Countess’ death is crucial to the story, as it allows the metamorphosis to occur within society, despite the fact she herself does not change for the better.

2. Highlighted phrases to use in an essay:

‘Predator and Prey’

‘Pleasure belongs to the eater, not the eaten’

‘The Bloody Chamber can be seen as writing against De Sade’

‘The nature of men is not fixed by Carter as being inevitably predatory’

‘Carter celebrates metamorphosis and ‘the complexity of human relations’

3. Incorporating quotations to explore an aspect of the story

‘The Lady of the House of Love’ by Angela Carter is about a virginal man traveling by bicycle across a deserted village where he comes upon a mysterious mansion. The mansion is home to a beautiful vampire woman who feeds upon the blood of young men who enter her room. She is both ‘predator and prey’ as despite her life depending on the death of others, she is victimised by the men who she has drank blood from, as to fall into her trap they are enticed only by her beauty, focusing solely on this alone and not what else she is i.e. a woman desiring love. This contradicts de Sade’s view that ‘pleasure belongs to the eater, not the eaten’ because whilst the Countess must drink the blood of the doomed men who visit her in order to survive, she does not long for this. Her obsession with what destiny has made her fate is manifested in the constant attention she pays to her “Tarot cards” as she “ceaselessly (is) construing a constellation of possibilities”.  When a prediction for love is made she desires only to no longer make other prey but refute this as her only identity.

The young soldier is pure and innocent; the effect of this on the Countess is very queer. After the Countess accidently cuts herself, the soldier kisses this better and when he wakes up, finds her to be dead with a blossoming rose in her place. He tries and fails to “resurrect” this flower. In death the Countess is “far older, less beautiful”, only then is she “fully human” as her ‘perfection’ is tainted. This portrays ‘the complexity of human relations’ as the Countess is made to be both the hunter and the hunted. Men lust over her due to her beauty, desiring to be taken to her room, and yet, she will drink their blood, ultimately killing them. In her death, however, she is made subject to the ultimate act of victimisation. This explores that the nature of both women and ‘men is not fixed by Carter as being inevitably predatory’ or prey. Individuals are subjects of duality; Carter explores that we have the power to morph into what we want to be, the capacity for good and evil, masculine and feminine traits.

From The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettelheim, 1977.

1. How Might Bettelheim’s ideas help us to understand the purpose of fairytales?

Fairytales enable enlightenment of the unconscious mind. Consequently, inner battles can be explored through the clarity of characters that are either good or bad. Characters which are stereotypically good or bad allow readers to gain personal development by identifying with the ‘goody’ and therefore acting upon moral obligations learnt by such observations. Fairytales accomplish this clear division between a ‘good-guy’ who wins in the end and a ‘bad-guy’ who loses out eventually because “crime doesn't pay”.

2. How do Bettelheim’s ideas help us to understand the purpose of the Gothic?
Unlike fairytales where good and evil are clearly two divided forces and characters can clearly be divided into being good or bad; the Gothic blurs these boundaries. In texts of the Gothic genre it is less obvious which character you are meant to relate to. Werewolves, for example, we at first may observe to be perfectly human; loveable characters that have emotions and feelings as all humans do. However, as plot development occurs, we learn of the transformation of a human into a wolf and the liminal beast/man lurking behind the external makeup of this character. And so, the purpose of the Gothic is to be more true to life, as nobody is all good or all evil. In life there are no Prince Charmings through and through, instead, the Gothic creates Byronic heroes who are far more complex than ever was our heroes from fairytales. It is this duality, within the characters themselves, which poses the moral problem, and requires the struggle to solve it. As opposed to in fairytales where the struggle is between two people, one good and one bad; In the Gothic, a battle rages within an individual. Discovery of moral truths for readers have more applicability in the Gothic as they are faced with an internal struggle similar to characters within the Gothic plots.

3. Why do you think Angela Carter mixes the fairytale and gothic genres in ‘The Bloody Chamber’?

Carter seeks to expose false messages about men and women (and the good and the bad), that have developed through fairytales, in order to reinvent our ideologies about these things. She is challenging essentialism by exploring that how we stereotypically view a woman to be is not true to how she is. Sexual difference perhaps is not crucial to male and female distinctions but instead both characters and readers may exist with elements both feminine and masculine. By using a fairytale style to her texts Carter seeks to take us back to a genre we have known in infancy, reinventing our ideologies with how she believes stories should be told. The Gothic elements to her texts identify duality within human beings. As the narrator in ‘The Bloody Chamber’ is excited by her “potential for corruption”, Bettelheim explores that whilst all parents want their children to believe that “all men are good” really, children should acknowledge that “the source of much that goes wrong in life is due to our very own natures”. Carter mixes the fairytale and gothic genres in ‘The Bloody Chamber’ to allow for the building blocks readers need to construct a new viewpoint of life. We are all both good and bad, both masculine and feminine, to deny this truth (as fairytales for centuries have done), would be to deny the very intention of this genre. This is, to “master the psychological problems of growing up”. Children perceive gender roles they are assigned to. Like Sleeping Beauty, a girl must passively wait for her prince to come. Like all Princes, boys must seek the love of a woman they may rescue and call their own. Carter refutes these stereotypes by exposing the duality of human nature.

5. Structural Choices: Choose one aspect of Carter’s structure, explain its significance and discuss how she has put the story together and why has she made particular choices?

The Bloody Chamber

One interesting structural choice Carter makes is that of setting. Beginning and ending in Paris at the turn of the 20^th Century, ‘The Bloody Chamber’ commences in a time where Modernism was beginning to flourish. Hopes and fears of change create a significant and powerful setting for this story which highlights the desires and anxious thoughts of a young bride, fearing the unknown. The tale of Bluebeard (of which ‘The Bloody Chamber’ is inspired by) has its roots in France, and Paris holds connotations of romance and luxury which parallel the initial attraction the narrator has for the Marquis, longing to “banish the spectre of poverty”. Upon her marriage, the Narrator moves to The Marquis’ Castle in Brittany – a country of unique identity with Celtic origins and its own language.

    Perhaps the most explicit feature of the Gothic genre is indeed a castle setting. In Gothic texts as early as “The Castle of Otranto”, by Horace Walpole, the dark or hidden staircases, trap doors and secret passages and rooms create an eerie, mysterious and claustrophobic atmosphere. Entrapment is a major theme within ‘The Bloody Chamber’ and "his castle. The faery solitude of the place; with its turrets of misty blue, its courtyard, its spiked gate" creates a setting where the narrator becomes trapped and isolated. Surrounded by the sea in a “mysterious, amphibious place, contravening the materiality of both earth and the waves", Carter explores the vulnerability of the narrator as her existence is now entirely controlled by her restricting husband. In such a prison-like environment the gothic theme of entrapment is incredibly explicit and the feminist message also is explored as the narrator is expected to remain always at home whilst the Marquis is enabled to travel away from the castle as and when he pleases.

    Her journey to the castle is by train; Carter uses this journey to represent the female narrator’s passivity and lack of control. Her heart mimics “the great pistons ceaselessly thrusting the train that bore me through the night, away from Paris, away from girlhood, away from the white... into the unguessable country of marriage.”The train’s noise holds sexual connotations, foreshadowing that with such acts will come the destruction of ‘whiteness’ and purity. Now leaving Paris, readers may infer marriage itself is merely an illusion of romance and luxury. The veil, once lifted, reveals the institution to result in the absence of these things as a husband is further empowered as his wife is consequently made object to him.

    The forbidden room the Narrator finds is completely in line with conventional Gothic setting; projecting the sublime effect of the Gothic onto the reader. Previously a mystery, discovery of this room’s content is truly terrifying. The room is made reference to in the title of both the novel and this story: ‘The Bloody Chamber’. The “Iron Maiden emitted a ghostly twang... I prised open the front part of the coffin... she was pierced by a hundred spikes.” The chamber fills with the blood of The Marquis ex-wife – The Romanian Countess. This gory and horror-filled setting is also a place where the narrator’s destiny is altered; she takes into her own hands her future and is transformed by her empowerment. ‘The Bloody Chamber’ may also be in reference to the womb of a woman, a place of menstruation and location of conception. With a new life comes new identity. Is Carter taking readers back to a untarnished state of infancy in order to alter or views of how woman are made out to be in a patriarchal society? The answer most definitely is yes. Within the story of ‘The Bloody Chamber’, this setting is an intensely articulated structural choice that Carter makes to represent a metamorphosis of ideology: women are powerful, they can defy patriarchal repression.

4. What is significant or interesting about the way in which Carter uses form in this story?

Bluebeard is a folktale in which the protagonist entices and then murders his wives. ‘The Bloody Chamber’ parallels this tale and indeed is inspired by it. With such fairytale form, Carter installs within her readers the childlike foundations of which to build further thought upon. She challenges the repressive nature of a patriarchal society, by refuting gender stereotypes - all within a form designed to take us back to ‘tabula rasa’, (the blank slate that we are in infancy), in order to construct a new ideology that all genders are equal. Fairytales validate the existence of supernatural experiences, providing them with a place in human life. Generally in tales like, 'Sleeping Beauty', 'The beauty and the Beast' and 'Little Red Riding Hood' the male is portrayed as a heroic character – a rescuer of a vulnerable and endangered woman. Carter challenges fixed ideas about men and women by manipulating the fairytale she tells in ‘The Bloody Chamber’. The narrators mother “nursed a village through a visitation of the plague”, demonstrating a loving and caring feminine nature. This also, however, inverts expectations of women by demonstrating her strength in accomplishing such a great task and taking a role of dominance and leadership. She also is said to have “shot a man-eating tiger”. This act of justified violence portrays a female character that is both dominant and aggressive for the pursuit of justice, to rescue vulnerable victims.

The Marquis, although domineering over the narrator, his breathing alone surpassing “the syncopated roar of the train”, is ultimately made the character most victimized in ‘The Bloody Chamber’. This is because he is killed by the narrator’s mother who “put a single, irreproachable bullet through my husband’s head.” By word of mouth or in written form, fairytales have been passed down from generation to generation for centuries. The intention is both to entertain and to teach life lessons. Carter refutes the lessons taught by most fairytales which result in reinforcing how women and men are stereotyped and perceived to be. By using the fairytale form for ‘The Bloody Chamber’, Carter desires to enlighten readers as to the power women should rightfully have access to and reject the view that they are passive victims requiring a prince or hero to be happy or rescued.

Though Carter disapproved labeling her work as such, ‘The Bloody Chamber’ clearly exhibits many elements of the Gothic genre. The Marquis represents a domineering man over his opposite gender and gender difference alike. With an “opulent male scent of leather and spices”, and “soles of velvet” the nature of humanity transgresses as a blurring of boundaries is made between man and beast. . The Marquis’ gift to the narrator (his wife) is “a choker of red rubies… an extraordinarily precious slit throat.” With imagery of a dog-like collar or chains of a prisoner, the narrator is made passive to the Marquis. The horror and terror of what this chocker means is incredibly gothic. Foreshadowing his planned death for her, it represents those who “escaped the guillotine”, and ironic twist of fate. This plot development is incredibly morbid, inducing both horror and fear in readers. . The Marquis himself is a character exhibiting duality, both making his wife a victim by enforcing dominance, and being victimized by her mother when he is killed. The Marquis believes in the “striking resemblance between the act of love and the ministrations of a torturer”; a manifestation of the liminal state that men are in where, Carter believes women both desire and are victimized by the sexual dominance of men. The Gothic form allows this message to be portrayed through the Marquis explicit, terrifying power.

The Castle is a typical Gothic setting which exhibits the Gothic theme of entrapment, enhancing the restrictions felt by the Marquis’ wife as she enters a place where all is to be feared. Her “inherited nerves”, however, are intensely shocking. Even more so than the corpses she stumbles upon in the Marquis’ forbidden room. The “dead lips smiled” and yet the narrator lingers – examining each and every body. The last body withheld in “the Iron Maiden” is “so recently dead” yet “so full of blood” and to encounter this gory image the narrator opens the machine with “trembling fingers”. Her behaviour is verging on being morbidly transgressive as her acceptance of death is terrifying. Carter explores the blurring of boundaries between what is and is not acceptable: the rational and irrational. Such gothic conventions are constantly used to explore themes of feminism and sexual difference by challenging stereotypical gender attributes and norms.

3. What is significant or interesting about the way in which Carter uses language in this story? Choose two aspects of language and explain their significance.

The Erl-King

     Carter describes what it is like to walk alone in late October in an isolated and eerie forest, stepping into a "darkening clearing" where the Erl-King touches the narrator with "his irrevocable hand". The love he makes to her is violent and she thinks to be consumed by him will bring enlightened: "I should like to grow enormously small, so that you could swallow me”. We are told he will do “you grievous harm” and the narrator discoveries she is to suffer the same fate as the birds he keeps in cages, wailing for their imprisoned bodies. They are young girls lured by the Erl-King into being trapped. To avoid inflicted male dominance, the narrator resorts to violence of her own in planning to murder the Erl-King, “"I shall take two huge handfuls of his rustling hair as he lies half dreaming, half waking ... I shall strangle him with them," and set the birds free.

     The significance of the birds is their anthropomorphist nature. They are indeed portrayed as people, because that is exactly what they are. Not birds, but women – trapped by men. Typically symbolic of freedom, their imprisonment in “little cages” shows the Erl-Kings control over nature and enhances themes of isolation. “The bird-haunted solitude of the Erl-King” shows the results of women’s entrapment. Not only is their capacity limited, but men are isolated also. The language Carter uses to describe the birds is beautiful and sinister. The story ends by the girl being forced to confront her darker side and ironically illuminating knowledge within readers in doing so. Linguistic experience of the third-person narration is powerful as we learn, “she will open the cages, and let the birds free”. They will change into young girls with “the crimson imprint of his love-bite on their throats”. This parallelism to the “pretty wedding ring” marks around the necks of “silly, fat, trusting woodies,” shows an identical nature in the bonds of marriage, and scars of male dominance. By blindly conforming to institutions controlled by a patriarchal society; Carter says women endanger themselves, and our daughters will say, “mother, mother, you have murdered me!”

     An interesting way Carter uses language, in terms of narration, is the shifts between first and third person. Sliding tenses and altering pronouns ensures a series of broken contracts between the author and readers. We are deliberately and firmly placed, as readers, within the woods by lines like “you step between the first trees”. Situated within the magical and entangled realms of the forest, readers become a part of the story. If we are in the story the implications are, it is still being written. We are empowered to direct the pen of the author, and make a change in the way life is lived.

     Of course, by the end we learn the beginning could be in retrospect. The Erl-King, perhaps, has already been killed. The narrator sets forth on a journey, inviting us to follow, to discover, the true position of women and access our rightful power. In this format we are able to empathize with the narrator - experiencing the same confusion and emotions as her. In Little Red Riding Hood, the girl never reaches her grandmother’s house; the reader, similarly, is refused everything from a fixed ending, to a clear differentiation of one narrator from another. From past, to present, to future, the confusing tense shifts contribute to the idea of mortality and time, reinforcing the ideal of renewal by the green man – a motif created by the Erl-King. We all must come to an end, within this story though; time is by no means an element of its essence. We are entering a place where laws of our world do not apply. In this way Carter’s language choice may explore a journey into the unconscious, where we are entering what is not yet understood. Is the narrative merely a pathway within the mind of the narrator, which we somehow have been allowed access to? Perhaps the story explores experiencing our own minds. Women are enabled to look deep within their unconscious in order to discover that, without the dominant influence of a patriarchal reality we inhabit in the conscious world, a woman’s true power can be found.