MOCK EXAM

The Bloody Chamber- Setting

Travels from civillised Paris to remote Brittany. Gothic idea of isolation.
'Its spiked gate' Also Gothic description/setting. She sees it as beautiful, a 'faery solitude', as she is unaware of whats to come.
The castle itself can represent a body with 'walls sweating with fright.' as if it is guilty that the protagonist has found the bloody chamber. Links to Freud's theory that people feel guilty at the discovery of dark secrets. The house is representing dark human desires and exploring the boundaries of right and wrong. Massively links to Frankenstein.
It is a hell. 'Like the door of Hell' He calls the bloody chamber his 'Enfer' meaning hell in French. Marquis embodies the Devil but protaganist sees him as her God.
Patriarchal symbol of the bed- where the male exerts dominance over the woman. 'the grand, hereditary matrimonial bed.'
Light and dark. 'Lights! More lights!' 'Absolute darkness.' Suffocating effect of darkness in the chamber is a Gothic tool of excessiveness.

1 of 5

'A Choker of rubies, two inches wide, like an extraordinarily precious slit throat.'
'Bright as arterial blood.' - These quotes foreshadow decapitation. Also objectifies her as the Marquis' possession like a dog's collar.
Makes her wear the choker during intercourse and 'kissed those blazing rubies' Vampire imagery of him drinking blood from her throat.
Sex linked to pain 'I had bled'
'as if he had been fighting with me.'
Her innocence is lost 'It must have been my innocence that captivated him.'
'If you love me, leave it well alone' This is the temptation and he is testing her love. It is how God tests Eve and she is lead to temptation.
Romanian Countess 'so newly dead, so full of blood.'
'Keep my hands clean'- So she can cleanse her hands of Sin, biblical reference.
telephone line 'Dead as his wives'
The blood stains. She is punished with the 'heart shaped stain' of the key. 'No paint, no powder[...] can mask that red mark.'
'Spares my shame.'

2 of 5

'Black, shining boots with scarlet heels.'
'This hole is filled with blood'
'I wish I had a girl as red as blood.' 'I wish I had a girl as white as snow.' 'I wish I had a girl as black as that bird's feather.'
'The child of his desire and the countess hated her.'
'I'll buy you new gloves.'
'Boots lept off the countess's feet and on to the girl's legs.'
'Bleeds; screams; falls.'
'The girl began to melt.'
'It bites!'
THE MALE GAZE.

3 of 5

'Beautiful queen of vampires.'
'Both death and the maiden.' - Gothic antithesis
'Her ancestral crimes.' - fascination with the past
'antique bridal gown.' - Weddings ar liminal, when one is getting married, they are in the stage between who they were before and who they will be when married.
'Fee fie fo fum / I smell the blood of an Englishman.' inter-textual reference to Jack and the beanstalk presents her as a predator which is contradicted as she is also presented as an innocent victim with the allusions to sleeping beauty 'A single kiss woke up the sleeping beauty.'
"a girl with the fragility of the skeleton of a moth" - Helpless
'All claws and teeth' 'the Countess will sniff the air and howl.'- Also beastly
'Closed circuit.' - self entrapment
'She is so beautiful it is unnatural.'
Keeps a bird trapped in a cage. She 'likes to hear it announce how it cannot escape.'
Story is fixed in time. During the first world war - modern horror.
Carter subverts gender roles. Male is 'Product of pure reason applied to motion.'
Bike 'Two-wheeled symbol of rationality.'

4 of 5

'Cards always fall in the same pattern.' Always the same destiny except when the male comes with rationality, intrusion of modernity with rationality breaks her self-loathing state.
Soldier 'has the special quality of virginity.'
'Too many roses.' 'heavy scent.'
'Red lips like the obese roses.'
Soldier kisses her wounds 'as her mother...would have done.' takes on a parental role but also tastes her blood when she was meant to taste his.
Tense changes as we hear her perspective 'the dark, fanged rose I plucked from between my thighs.'
'White lace negligee stained a little with blood.'
'Next day, his regiment embarked for France.'

5 of 5