The Bloody Chamber Key Ideas

The key ideas with in the short stories in The Bloody Chamber are as followed;

• virginity/purity this is a key focus through out The Bloody Chamber ( the young girl's loss of virginity could be a symbol of her corruption., The Lady of the House of Love ( the sodiers virginity over powers the countess and intrigues her) and The Snow Child ( created from all pure objects around her. 'White snow' she is initially pure and innocent.
• solitude seen in 'Wolf-Alice' (the duke and alice are both not fully human and therefore cannot connect with society) and in The Lady of the Hosue of Love ( she is lonely because she is a vampiress and can never love)
• fairytales the fairytales the stories used are; bluebeard, beauty and the beast, snow white, sleeping beauty and little red riding hood.
• betrayal
• death
• feminism & women women are seen to act in a certain way. women are usually seen as sexually deviant, an old wench or have no place in society.
• nature
• animals
• love
• deformity & transformation & anthropomorphism
• sexuality & violence The Bloody Chamber shows sexuala violence along with the Snow Child. The Bloody Chamber we see the Marquis is sexually deviant and has sexual books in his study which show violence during sex. Snow Child we see the child getting raped and necrophillia is also present.
• mirrors The Bloody Chamber story shows the use of mirrors because the main male character has mirrors all around the bedroom which gives the feeling that he is always watching, it also makes him feel that he has more then the one wife as her reflection is in every mirror.
• flowers (roses) Roses are used to with in the Snow Child (the rose kills the young girl at the end) and also in The Lady of the House of Love ( the rose survives)

'Drawing upon at least two stories from The Bloody Chamber explores the ways in which Carter might be considered to re-interpret gothic conventions'.

In this essay I will be discussing the ways in which author Angela Carter could be considered to re-interpret gothic conventions within her horror stories from The Bloody Chamber.

Firstly, Carter isn’t the usual typical gothic author as her book The Bloody Chamber stories are based around fairy tales. Her twist on the modern fairytales is very shocking as she doesn’t leave them with a happy ending but she focuses on the gritty parts of a story. She includes pornographic images, necrophilia, entrapment and the shock factor.

Also within her stories she has many gothic elements which actually make these ‘adult’ fairytales gothic literature.

In the story, ‘The Lady of the House of Love’, which is based on the fairytale Sleeping Beauty, we see a Vampiress who is unhappy with her life as she has to get her old house keeper to lure unexpecting men to her house for her survival.
Within this novel we see very subtle gothic elements:
Angela Carter has set her story in an old house. We see a castle/old house as a gothic element because they give an eerie feel to a story as they are linked to abandonment and hidden passageways etc. This links into how she has made the Vampiress as a lonely character who longs for commitment.
A second gothic element in this story is that of an ancient prophecy. Within this short story we see that the Vampiress’ prophecy is to kill to survive (this could also be seen as a curse as she doesn’t actually like to do this she has to). This links in with other gothic literature such as Macbeth; whose prophecy is to become King and goes about making this prophecy a reality.
An unexpecting gothic element in this story is that it contains a woman in distress. It is unexpecting because the Vampiress isn’t the typical damsel in distress as you would expect, the distress that she endures is psychological as she doesn’t want to be who she is.

In the story of ‘The Snow Child’ Carter uses death and necrophilia to make a reinterpretation of the fairy tale Snow White. Carter uses these as it gives the very simple and straight story a gothic twist. She doesn’t do it in a in your face way as she doesn’t set the story in a dingy ancient castle or a dark dank woods but in a beautiful setting with freshly laid snow which then leads to the subtle way in which she shocks the reader. The subtle twist of the Count raping the young girls dead body after eh had created her, gives the story the dark twist.

Angela Carters story of ‘The Bloody Chamber’ focuses on the sexuality and desire. The story talks about a young naïve girl who marries a wealthy Count who has several past wives which have disappeared.
The story is set in a huge house on the sea which the girl has full reign of but is forbidden to go into the Counts chamber which gives an atmosphere of mystery and suspense. The girl goes against his wishes and enters the chamber where she comes across a gruesome sight of all his past wives who he had murdered in cold blood.


In her descriptions of the main protagonist in ‘‘Wolf Alice’ she uses words which make the protagonist animalistic. For example howls, trots, gallops and paws. All of these words are used to describe the way in which animals move or what animals own. This makes the character almost inhuman.

In conclusion, Angela Carter can be seen as a gothic writer as she uses many of the different elements are required to make a text gothic literature.

The Snow Child

I thought that The Snow Child was a very strange and to the point story, which i enjoyed. I liked the fact that Angela Carter got the point across very quickly without having to go into too much unrelevant detail. I thought the shock factor was very well done as it left alot to the imagination as the sex scene was described in very little detail. I wasnt expected necrophilia at all through out the story so the shock factor really affected me which i enjoyed. Another thing i liked was that the moral of the story was 'Be careful what you wish for' I think this because the thing the count wanted most was this perfect young girl, with no flaws in her appearance, eventhough he had a wife; Angela Carter has left it to the readers imagination of what the Countess looks like. I think that this young girl could have been what the Countess looked like when she was younger and the Count wanted to bring that spark back when he conjured her. I