The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

“I saw how much that cruel necklace became me. And, for the first time in my innocent and confined life, I sensed in myself a potentiality for corruption that took my breath away.”

Beneath the atmospheric gothic horror, “The Bloody Chamber” is a coming-of-age story. This moment of awakening is a pivotal moment in this story archetype; the heroine not only emerges from a state of childhood innocence, but becomes self-aware enough to recognize the transition. While “corruption” is normally a negative quality, here it symbolizes the allure of the unknown.

“Then I realized, with a shock of surprise, how it must have been my innocence that captivated him—the silent music, he said, of my unknowingness, like La Terrasse des audiences au clair de lune played upon a piano with keys of ether.”

Innocence and virginity is a recurring motif throughout several of Carter’s stories, presented as both a protective force and a covetable prize. The narrator compares herself to a piece of classical music that is often used as a lullaby, suggesting a balance of comfort and security alongside the allure of the unknown. This moment also shows how the narrator often sees the world through a musical lens, a motif that forms an important part of her journey.

“A joke in the worst possible taste; for has he not been married to a Romanian countess? And then I remembered her pretty, witty face, and her name—Carmilla.”

This is a literary allusion to the 19th-century gothic novel Carmilla, one of the earliest works of vampire fiction. In this moment, Carter borrows from Le Fanu’s work and brings his most famous character into the periphery of her story. Later in the story, Carter’s narrator finds Carmilla “pierced, not by one but by a hundred spikes” (28), suggesting an end to a traditional vampire. In this way the author is creating a unifying thread and establishing her place in gothic literature.

“You are never at the mercy of the elements in London, where the huddled warmth of humanity melts the snow before it has time to settle.”

This moment juxtaposes the ordered world of civilization with the wildness of the natural world, a core theme of Beauty and the Beast tales. Here, the “warmth of humanity” is dual natured: It represents the security and camaraderie of urban living, while also “melting the snow”—in other words, creating a divide between humanity and the natural world.

“Her face was acquiring, instead of beauty, a lacquer of the invisible prettiness that characterizes certain pampered, exquisite, expensive cats.”

This quotation contrasts the seemingly synonymous concepts of “beauty” and “prettiness.” In this retelling the father figure does refer to his daughter as “Beauty,” which suggests that she is undergoing an internal change that manifests in her physical appearance. Here, beauty is implied to be more a state of being than solely an element of physical intrigue.

“How was it she had never noticed before that his agate eyes were equipped with lids, like those of a man? Was it because she had only looked at her own face, reflected there?”

This quotation highlights Beauty’s dynamic change over the course of the story. As indicated in the previous quote, she began as mildly shallow and self-absorbed, with an innocent trust in the world that they would acknowledge her beauty as power. Here, she acknowledges a world greater than herself, and, in doing so, learns to love.

“The treacherous South, where you think there is no winter but forget you take it with you.”

This line uses symbolism to express an observation about the human condition: that one carries their habits and personal weaknesses with them. The narrator reflects that she and her father have changed geographical locations—to the “South,” a place believed to be warmer and more hospitable than their home—expecting that this change of place would also change their fortunes. However, this line reminds us that their misfortune comes from within.

“For now my own skin was my sole capital in the world and today I’d make my first investment.”

This quotation highlights the narrator’s perception of Marriage as an Economic Exchange. She understands that her body is a commodity in the world she lives in, and refers to marriage as an “investment.” This shows that while she is offering or sacrificing a part of herself, she is expecting to receive something even greater in return. This line subtly enhances the story’s social and cultural worldbuilding and enhances empathy for the main character.

“The tiger will never lie down with the lamb; he acknowledges no pact that is not reciprocal. The lamb must learn to run with the tigers.”

Earlier in the story the narrator refers to herself as a “lamb” offered in sacrifice. This moment of internal allusion shows how far she has come since the moment of her offering. It also acts as a broader thematic statement for several of the stories in the collection: Women coming from positions of powerlessness or inferiority rise against the oppressors by embracing the wildness within.

“And each stroke of his tongue ripped off skin after successive skin, all the skins of a life in the world, and left behind a nascent patina of shining hairs. My earrings turned back to water and trickled down my shoulders; I shrugged the drops off my beautiful fur.”

This story presents a reversal of the classic fairy tale (an approach later echoed by retellings like the film Shrek). Rather than transforming the beast into a prince through the power of love, it is the woman, or “princess” figure, who transforms. It’s worth noting that in this moment the woman’s earrings also transform, showing that a manufactured symbol of human wealth is also being reclaimed by the natural world.

“For all cats have this particularity, each and every one, from the meanest alley sneaker to the proudest, whitest she that ever graced a pontiff’s pillow—we have our smiles, as it were, painted on.”

This line uses extensive poetic devices that characterize Angela Carter’s voice, which is particularly apparent in this story. The narrator’s reflection here exhibits strong consonance in the repeated P and S sounds. It reads like a line of poetry, enhancing the character’s trademark voice. This sets this narrator apart from the other characters across the stories, who approach the world in a different way.

“Accustomed as I am to the splendid, feline nakedness of my kind, the offers no concealment of that soul made manifest in the flesh of lovers, I am always a little moved by the poignant reticence with which humanity shyly hesitates to divest itself of its clutter of concealing rags in the presence of desire.”

Told from the point of view of an animal rather than a human narrator, this story offers a unique perspective on The Oppression of Wildness in human society. The narrator not only accepts his most intimate self, but embraces it—however, he sees human self-consciousness as “poignant,” suggesting a beauty to the act of crossing this threshold as well.

“What big eyes you have. Eyes of an incomparable luminosity, the numinous phosphorescence of the eyes of lycanthropes. The gelid green of your eyes fixes my reflective face.”

This is another line that uses the author’s trademark poetic voice, using consonance, assonance, and alliteration to give the prose a strong rhythm. Although this particular tale is not directly related to the classic Red Riding Hood canon, there is an obvious allusion to the story in order to draw on its core theme: the divide between civilization and the wild. In particular, the reference to “lycanthropes” suggests a being that is split between these two conflicting worlds.

“Then it will play discordant music without a hand touching it. The bow will dance over the new strings of its own accord and they will cry out: ‘Mother, mother, you have murdered me!’”

This line is a reference to the fairy tale “The Juniper Tree,” in which a boy is killed by his mother (or stepmother, in some versions) and fed to his unwitting father; a bird implied to be the boy’s spirit repeats, “My mother she killed me, my father he ate me.” Additionally, the concept of spirits housed in musical instruments that then reveal the cause of their deaths is a recurring fairy tale trope, often collectively referred to as “singing bones stories.”

“Soon there was nothing left of her but a feather a bird might have dropped; a bloodstain, like the trace of a fox’s kill on the snow; and the rose she had pulled off the bush.”

In this moment, the wished-for snow child disassembles into her disparate parts. This gives her tragic story a sense of completion and of cyclicality, a concept inherent in the fairy-tale tradition. The rose remains behind as a symbol of the child’s sole impact on the world in the limited time that she was given.

“She is so beautiful she is unnatural; her beauty is an abnormality, a deformity, for none of her features exhibit any of those touching imperfections that reconcile us to the imperfection of the human condition.”

This line contradicts the common theme of classic fairy tales in which beauty represents internal goodness or innocence. Instead, it encourages the reader to value authenticity and humanity. In this instance, beauty becomes a symbol not for innocence but for manipulation and deception, leading the vampire’s victims into a trap.

“A single kiss woke up the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood.”

This line draws attention to the parallels between this story and the classic Sleeping Beauty tale type, as well as the parallels between catatonic sleep and undeath. Both are just slightly removed from a true state of death and represent an isolation from the waking world. In this context, “waking up” implies not a literal transition from sleep to waking but rather a transition from inhumanity to humanity.

“She has never seen her own blood before, not her own blood. It exercises upon her an awed fascination.”

At this moment, the central character is coming face to face with her inner humanity for the first time. Her blood represents her potential for mortality and for pain, physical and emotional. The very act of becoming “fascinated” by this moment suggests a deviation from the rigid rhythms of her stagnant life, in which she is forever changed.

“At midnight, especially on Walpurgisnacht, the Devil holds picnics in the graveyards and invites the witches; then they dig up fresh corpses, and eat them. Anyone will tell you that.”

Walpurgisnacht is a traditional feast day that takes place on April 30th, exactly six months away from and considered a reflection of Halloween. It is a day associated with ghosts, spirits, and the supernatural, and here is used to ground the scene in a folkloric tradition. The final phrase, “Anyone will tell you that,” highlights the way these traditions were buried deep into everyday consciousness and considered to be a fact of life.

“But the wolves have ways of arriving at your own hearth-side.”

A timeless theme surrounding Red Riding Hood stories is the way a “big bad wolf” can manifest in less obvious ways, particularly around young women. While this scene describes literal wolves entering the home, it acts as a metaphor for equally dangerous creatures that one may invite into the home—or may even pre-exist within them. The hearth, a traditional symbol of safety and security, is compromised by these everyday dangers.

“She stands and moves within the invisible pentacle of her own virginity.”

The allure and power of virginity and innocence is a recurring theme throughout the collection. In this moment, the narrator describes virginity as a “pentacle,” a traditional symbol of protection against malevolent forces. The implication is that purity of the body acts as a protective force, possibly through its associated ignorance of the world. Then, once it is lost and the mind opened to the realities of life’s dangers, that protection is stripped away.

“She closed the window on the wolves’ threnody and took off her scarlet shawl, the colour of poppies, the colour of sacrifices, the colour of her menses, and, since her fear did her no good, she ceased to be afraid.”

Red is a color with a long history of symbolism throughout world cultures. The narrator introduces some of those symbols as a way to communicate the protagonist’s passage from childhood to womanhood. The moment in which the character discards her fear signifies her willing choice to cross this threshold and embrace what lies beyond.

“She sleeps in the soft, warm ashes of the hearth; beds are traps, she will not stay in one.”

There is a symbolic irony to this moment that juxtaposes two symbols of humanity and the home: the hearth and the bed. Alice disdains the human bed and everything it represents, yet seeks the warmth and familial symbolism of the hearth. This highlights the way she is mentally caught between humanity and the natural world.