41 pages • 1 hour read
Angela CarterThe Bloody Chamber and Other Stories
Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1979A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
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BetaSymbols & Motifs
The Ruby Necklace
The ruby choker given to the protagonist of “The Bloody Chamber” by her new husband is one of the most vivid images in the collection. The woman compares it to a tradition in French aristocracy, reflecting, “the aristos who’d escaped the guillotine had an ironic fad of tying a red ribbon round their necks at just the place where the blade would have sliced it through, a red ribbon like the memory of a wound” (7). The murderous husband who gifted it to her would most likely have been aware of this trend; here, however, he has inverted it to symbolize not an escaped past but an inevitable future.
Initially, the woman is pleased with the gift and the attention it garners, and she wears it with pride. Later, however, it becomes a prison: “But he would not let me take off my ruby choker, although it was growing very uncomfortable, nor fasten up my descending hair” (16). Overall, the ruby necklace acts as a symbol for the gilded cage of Marriage as an Economic Exchange. Its immediate impression is one of wealth and security, while in truth it represents ownership and confinement. The necklace’s ties to the French Revolution also suggest the corrupting influence of luxury, and the way material wealth can mask danger.
Roses
Roses are a very traditional fairy tale motif that appear in several of the stories, most notably “The Courtship of Mr Lyon,” “The Lady of the House of Love,” and “The Snow Child.” In the first story, a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, the plot itself is set in motion by the act of picking a rose. In the parallel “The Tiger’s Bride,” the protagonist’s father asks her for a rose to symbolize her forgiveness: “When I break off a stem, I prick my finger, and so he gets his rose all smeared with blood” (58). There is a suggestion of menstruation here, as well as a resistance to the role that has been set out for her. In “The Lady of the House of Love,” the romantic male character encounters “a blast of rich, faintly corrupt sweetness strong enough, almost, to fell him. Too many roses” (107). He takes one of them with him; the petals “had regained all their former bloom and elasticity, their corrupt, brilliant, baleful splendour” (117). The roses act as a metaphor for the lady of the house—her inhuman beauty and the way she is poised between beauty and decay.
The Erl-King’s Birds
In “The Erl-King,” the title character has in his home a wall made up of “cage upon cage of singing birds, which he piles up one on another” (94). Their multiplicity robs them of their individuality, making them possessions to be collected and displayed in the way one might display a collection of books or art. The female narrator compares herself to these birds more than once, saying “all the birds would fall at the imperative of gravity, as I fall down for him” (95). It is clear that the narrator identifies with their captivity, even as both the woman and the birds try to please the Erl-King.
Later, the protagonist comes to understand that these birds aren’t natural-born animals at all; they’re the women who have gone before her and were ensnared by the Erl-King. At this point they come to embody a similar thematic idea to the ruby choker: the beauty and entrapment of love. When the narrator frees the birds from their captivity, she is truly taking control of her own fate and claiming her own freedom.
Music
Music plays a prominent role in both “The Bloody Chamber” and “The Erl-King.” In “The Bloody Chamber,” the central character is a pianist; she uses her musical talent to connect with the only named character of the narrative, the piano tuner Jean-Yves. When the woman first arrives at the castle, she reflects on her experiences with music as part of the world she left behind. When she discovers her new husband’s crimes, she goes to the only place in the castle that feels close to safe: the music room. There, she attempts to “create a pentacle out of music that would keep [her] from harm” (29). Music becomes a protective force that she invokes in her time of need.
In “The Erl-King,” the protagonist’s first encounter with music is through the singing birds whom the woodland creature holds captive. It’s open to interpretation whether the birds sing because of or in spite of their captivity; in either case, their music acts as a symbol of the wild outside world that they’d left behind, similar to the experience of the title story’s female narrator. Soon after, the narrator of “The Erl-King” discovers the silent violin hanging on the wall of the erl-king’s home—a direct inversion of the music of the birds. Unlike the birds, this instrument is made by human hands and has fallen so deep into disrepair that it can no longer fulfill its most inherent function. By the end of the story, the girl has restored the violin by overcoming her adversary.
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By Angela Carter
