'The Bloody Chamber' Quotations

'THE BLOODY CHAMBER' QUOTATIONS

Marquis, girl wife and her mother -  based on Perrault's 'Bluebeard' - transgression into adulthood (loss of ingenue) - te actual bloody chamber with 3 dead prior wives. 

Setting

Characters

Themes

Critics

Setting

• '...that castle, at home neither on the land nor on the water...' - liminal and surreal setting enhances the fantastical elements. Anthropomorphised to reflect the Marquis's mysterious character and Abhuman/Otherly qualities.
• 'The faery solitude of the place.' - fantastical; magical; isolation; adhering to Gothic; alludes to the digression from societal practises of marriage - proleptic.
• '...that magic place, the fairy castle whose walls were made of foam...' - connotes madness; fantasy; parodies marriage as a fairytale with the concept of it being a duty. Power of the sublime, thus power of the Marquis.
• '...a mysterious, amphibious place...' - Abhuman, Abject, Grotesque, The Other. The Marquis has power over nature. Anthropomorphisation.

Characters

Narrator:

• '...my pale face, the way the muscles in my neck stuck out like thin wire...' - anorexic representation = weak, vulnerable.Fantasy of Ana: only bones: Abject sense.
• 'I sensed in myself the potentiality for corruption that took my breath away.' - not ingenue, for she wants the temptation and 'tender, delicious ecstasy of excitement'.
• 'I was seventeen...' - was ingenue but is not longer. The story is analeptic.

Marquis:

• '...there were streaks of pure silver in his dark mane...' - age, experience. animalistic
• '...his...waxen face...the heavy eyelids over eyes that always disturbed me by their absolute absence of light...' - Abject and Otherly, also Abhuman. Liminal.
• 'He approached his familiar treat with a weary appetite.' - predatory and animalistic.
• 'His kiss, his kiss with tongue and teeth in it and a rasp of beard.' - dominance.

Characters Continued...

Mother:

• 'My eagle-featured, indomitable mother.' - inspiration, power, predator but elegant.
• '...her hair was her white mane...' - oppose Marquis. Femme Fatale. Perfection and safety.
• '...as if she had been Medusa...' - Femme Fatale - goddess - Monstrous Feminine. Power and dominance over men - control.
• 'the maternal telepathy' - uncanny: mother further empowered.

Piano Tuner:

• '...young, with a gentle mouth and grey eyes...' - young like her - innocence. Grey is calm. Also fact that he is blind = shielded from horrors of reality, so truly ingenue characteristics.

Themes

• 'I remember how...I lay awake...in a tender, delicious ecstasy of excitement...' - overtly sexual undertones - almost mocking. masochism. Licentious. Damsel? Corruption of purity. No Ingenue. Desire.
• 'His wedding gift, clasped round my throat. A choker of rubies...like an extraordinarily precious slit throat.' - possessive, death: proleptic of fate. Sadomasochism. Materialism: rich colour. Impending doom.
• 'Into marriage, into exile...I knew it, henceforth, I would always be lonely.' - only wants thrill - detracts innocence. Fem Gaze: female sexuality.
• '...like a child's story, as the train began to throb again...' - disturbing euphamism linking sex to children. Innocence questionable; fuels argument that she lacks ingenue.
• 'deathly passion' - SADOMASOCHISM.
• '...a pungent intensification of the odour of leather that suffused his library...' - synaesthesia signifies his dominance. Library = knowledge - masculine.

Themes Continued...

• 'Lights! More Lights!' - childish/ingenue aspect of her persona. Proleptic that she will shed light on the mystery - truth.
• '...bit into my neck, but with such tenderness...' - Sadomasochism. Marquis de Sade influence. 'deathly passion'.
• 'Our bed...surrounded by so many mirrors!' - mirrors = distorted reality. love and passion mixed. He always watches her.
• 'The lilies I always associate with him; that are white. And stain you.' - death. corruption. power to him. ironically represent purity. blood. proleptic of future: sex and death are linked.
• 'No paint nor powder...can mask that red mark on my forehead; I am glad he cannot see me...because it spares my shame.' - shamed for being a Damsel (authorial intrusion on Carter's part).

Critics

• 'The sexually depraved Marquis is unnaturally white and waxy, like the funeral lilies...' - Makinen
• 'The two virgins in The Bloody Chamber and The Erl-King do not fear ****...just their sexual partners' designs on them.' - Makinen

'THE SNOW CHILD' QUOTATIONS

Count, Countess and fantasy girl - death in snow - necrophilia 

Setting

Characters

Themes

Critics

Setting

• 'Midwinter - invincible, immaculate.' - reflects virginity and untouched. SUBLIMINAL POWER - nature is 'invincible'. Power of patriarch: their desire shapes the female persona: desire of purity. SETTING REFLECTS THE MASCULINE FANTASY.
• '...the whole world was white.' - purity, virginal. Alliteration = whispy and airy connotations to the sentence --- enhance idea that it is a fantasy, not solid reality.
• 'Fresh snow fell on snow already fallen...' - isolation and entrapment. Female trapped by male. Gothic setting.

Characters

Countess:

• '...wrapped in the glittering pelts of black foxes...' - slyness and cunning. intelligence and 'black' = no purity = threat to masculinity and so not desire.
• '...high, black shining boots with scarlet heels, and spurs.' - emphasise femme fatale elements. Blood - lustful. Materialism.
• 'Now the Countess was bare as a bone...' - stripped of materials so status. anorexia: abject want for perfection - lost humanity and femininity because husband took wealth.

Count:

• '...thrust his virile member into the dead girl.' - grotesquely and abjectly possessive. Taboo. Wrong to the extreme: excess masculinity makes his fantasy ridiculous: it is ridiculous to expect such purity --- masculinity corrupts femininity, so purity never obtained.

Characters Continued...

Girl:

• '...white skin, red mouth, black hair and stark naked...' - note the colours: purity; corruption/death, blood/corruption --- almost proleptic. Also symbolises that fantasy is ridiculous.
• '...she was the child of his desire...' - only his desire, not love.

Themes

• '...she was the child of his desire...' - male fantasy: NOT REALITY.
• '...a bloodstain, like the trace of a fox's kill on the snow...' - Countess vs Girl = REALISM vs MAGICAL.
• 'Count' and 'Countess' - materialsim, wealth and status (importance of).
• 'Midwinter' - death, cold, nature is dead: reflective of woman's 'natural' purity - corrupted by masculinity.
• 'Snow' 'Blood' 'Raven' - death, corruption, pain.
• "It bites!" - ambiguous ending, typically Gothic. Is she hurt, thus man unpunished? Or is she avoiding pain of love, so dropped rose before hurt?

Critics

• the story uses 'the colours of the extreme - black for villainy, white for innocence and lashings of red for blood.' - Makinen
• 'This narrative clearly exposes how the heroines of fairy tales are the constructs of patriarchal thinking...having to endure and compete for the fickle attention of men.' - Norwood
  

'THE COURTSHIP OF MR LYON' QUOTATIONS

 'Beauty and the Beast' - girl ingenueand submissive;ditiful - loses beauty when she (Beauty) neglects duties - he transforms - happy ever after - dog is still a dog

 Setting

Characters

Themes

Critics

Setting

• 'Outside her kitchen window...the snow possessed a light of its own...' - domestic associations and purity linked to the girl. Snow = white = pure = girl - but hints at independence and proleptic.
• '...the winter's landscape...' - Romantic setting of isolation. Somewhat eery.
• '...a miniature, perfect, Palladian house that seemed to hide itself shyly behind snow-laden skirts of an antique cypress.' - Palladio was architect noted for his graceful, balanced and restrained classical designs; his designs not based on expensive materials though; appearances are deceiving maybe? Link to beast: counter with Girl, whose image changes with her independence. ALSO, anthropomorphisation: Beast reflected by his house: he hides behind Beauty. 'Cypress' = mourning tree. 'snow-laden skirts' = purity.

Characters

Girl (Beauty)

• 'This lovely girl, whose skin possesses that same, inner light [as if she] was made all of snow.' - purity, a sense of divinity. Obedience = pure inner self as well as outer.
• '...she felt herself to be, Miss Lamb, spotless, sacrificial.' - Sacrificial lamb - death of purity etc.
• '...she was possessed by a sense of obligation...' - authorial intrusion: 'possessed' = imposed, not natural.
• '...that pearly skin of hers was plumping out...' - accompanies her learning of how to be a 'spoiled child'. Loss of innocence for women = same on outside: INTERIOR NOT MATTER; independence does no good for us.

Characters Continued...

Beast

• '...leonine apparition...' - inner identity is visible, unlike girl's.
• 'There was an air of exhaustion, of despair in the house...' - Anthropomorphised in the house: uncanny, supernatural.

Spaniel

• '...the Spaniel growled, almost bad-temperedly...' - response to Beauty question authority of Beast. Carter allows Spaniel this much humanity/freedom - no transform because dogs are obedient, not independent.

Themes

• '...suspension of reality...' - distances wealthy from mundane trivialities of life - magical realism.
• 'He cursed the useless car...' - idea of materialism and happiness. Blame the car, not himself. The realism shines through. Also enhances fantastical elements of Beast and castle: makes more secluded.
• '...the one white rose...' - purity, innocence and unique. Divinity.
• 'Mr and Mrs Lyon walk in the garden...in a drift of fallen petals.' - nature is imperfect and dying. Accepting imperfection of human nature? Not always get what want: happy, but not eternally?

Critics

'THE TIGER'S BRIDE' QUOTATIONS

Father loses daughter to cards - isolated mansion - voyeuristic requests - reveals himself as animal - decides to be with him and changes into beautiful animal.

Setting

Characters

Themes

Critics

Setting

• 'Everything flowers; no harsh wind stirs the voluptuous air...the sun spills fruit for you. And the deathly, sensual lethargy infects the starved brain...' - connotes purity via the actual description: fruitful and calm. But undertones are incredibly sexual, thus purity and ingenue subverted. Also excessive: 'spills' and 'infects' the 'starved brain' - gothic atmosphere, which is proleptic of the ending. Excess also adds to sensual aspects - synaesthesia: licentious.

Characters

Father

• '...the veins in his forehead stand out and throb.' - masculinity, sexual dominance: he possesses the girl too.

Tiger Beast

• 'He must bathe himself in scent, soak his shirts and underlinen in it...' - synaesthesia. over-powering = authority. Rugged attributes. Dominance.
• 'He is a carnival figure made of papier mache...' - hidden identity - mysterious. Something laughed at? Alludes to being beneath - sympathy also.

Characters Continued...

Girl

• '...my glossy nut-brown curls, my rosy cheeks.' - not blonde. Brown = intelligence and knowing: not ingenue. Red cheeks = bashful, sexual appeal.
• 'How I'd squeal in delighted terror...' - sadomasochism.
• 'My earrings turned back to water and trickled down my shoulders; I shrugged the drops off mybeautiful fur.' - accepting her position as a wild animal. Sheds her beauty: what makes us feminine in the eyes of men. Supernatural: MAGICAL REALISM. Women must change selves to change views of men.

Themes

• 'My father lost me to the beast at cards.' - materialism. possession. realism. loss and carelessness.
• "I have lost my pearl, my pearl beyond price." - possession and wealth is important. He sees her as a treasure, not much more.
• 'I ***** my finger and so he gets his rose all smeared with blood.' - incredibly sexual: loss of virginity/innocence. But SHE does it: she is the active being.
• 'He and I and the wind were the only things stirring.' - nature: accept that we are essentially the same: authorial iuntrusion.
• '...the market place, where the eyes that watch you take no account of your existence...' - Fem gaze: the girl is aware of her subjugation, hence why she rises against it.

Critics

'THE ERL-KING' QUOTATIONS

seemingly innocent girl walking in forest - man/goblin finds and entices her - wants to transform her; she still follows him - she imagines an alternate fate to captives though. DISOBEYS ALL REGULAR LITERARY RULES IN TERMS OF TENSE.

Setting

Characters

Themes

Critics

Setting

• '...these vertical bars of a brass-coloured distillation of light...' - prison-like/entrapment. Science - leaked into nature: nature corrupt with human influence.
• '...sulphur-yellow interstices in a sky...' - sulphur: death. scientific language.
• 'It struck the wood with nicotine-stained fingers...' - self-imposed death. taint of humanity on nature. 'struck' = physical power over mother nature: fem gaze.
• '...cold oozed up through the soles of shoes...' - blood, grotesque. Encapsulating. sibilance: assonance --- sinister, impending.
• '...the stark elders have an anorexic look...' - exposed. grotesque/abhuman/abject.
• 'The woods enclose...the woods swallows you up.' - sibilance: sinister. Anthropomorphism of Erl-King: siezed control of nature - supernatural. Prolepsis.
• 'Tumbling crows play tig in the branches of the elms they clotted with their nests...' - careless, no elegance. Sibilance: danger to infants: enticing entrapment. 'Clotted' grotesque and brutality linked with home: controlled.

Characters

Erl-King

• 'Eyes of an incomparable luminosity...like a green liquid amber...' - fiery, jealous, negative connotations. Piercing eyes: leering.
• 'He is an excellent housewife.' - emasculating: changes position of girl.
• 'He is the tender butcher who showed me how the price of flesh is love...' - enticing. sadomasochism, lure and a 'deathly passion'. Love is a secondary emotion?

Girl

• '...my girlish and delicious loneliness...' - ingenue undermined by connotations of the sibilance: licentious and manipulative...she is also controlling the narrative.
• '...I fall down for him...' - victim or sadomasochism?

Themes

• '...voles, shrews, fieldfares, little brown bunnies...A lean, tall, reddish hare...The rusty fox...' - Autumn colours, with repetition of yellow = liminal: between death and birth, but inevitable towards the death: fate. Yellow = insanity, illness, death: 'The Yellow Wallpaper'.
• '...the pretty wedding rings round their necks...' - marriage is a trap: A04.
• '...you sink your teeth into my throat and make me scream.' -sadomasochism: no ingenue. Victim? Or is he the victim to her sexuality?
• Narrative voice constantly shifts: 'Carter...shifts between past, present and future tenses; the tale never settles into one narrative mode and the effect is both disorientating and entrancing.' - Roberts. REFLECTS THE POSITION OF THE GIRL.

Critics

A04 - critical reception

• Published in 1979 --- Thatcher elected: looks good for women (not have time yet to fear of loss of feminist achievements).
• 'Her work caused shock waves when it appeared, and it continues to shock.' - Simpson.
• It 'apparently elicits furious hostility' from students because their childhood has been 'newly configured as tales of sex and violence.' - Simpson
• But one would argue alongside Carter in her study of the patriarchy and its influence upon what we deem to be 'feminine'. Beauty and passivity products of male desire inflicted upon women-become feminine attributes --> Carter not corrupting our childhood stories-- identifying corruption already within: 'I really can't see what's wrong with finding out about what the great make fantasies about women are.'
• Marquis de Sade - sadomasochism.
• Carter = iconic feminist of the post-modern.
• Influenced numerous writers, one of the most notable being Atwood, who aplty describes Carter as a 'fairy godmother'.

A vampiress lives on her own in a tower; she despises her nature and the necessity to feast on men. Her keeper, or captor, brings her the victims, but the final victim is an innocent soldier who kisses the Vampire and turns her mortal: she dies - humanity sucks.

Setting

Characters

Themes

Critics

Setting

• 'abandoned the village' - fear, fled, alone, death, eerie, neglect.
• 'The walls of her bedroom are hung with black satin, embroidered with tears of pearl.' - 'hung' is death and waiting; 'satin' and 'pearl' are regal and connote wealth and status, which enhances her elegancy; 'embroidered' is careful and meaningful, not just killing: can sympathise with her, but also suggests manipulative nature; 'tears' are ambiguous: happy or sad? The bedroom is also promiscuous in connotations.
• 'the shaggy gardens and the beauty of the flaming sunset.' - vivacious sun, with power and beauty: blood colours and fire (passion) - 'deathly passion'. The gardens contrast this with their unkept appearance and neglect - both personas.
• 'The mansion emerged grudgingly in the subtle and haunting light of the setting sun...' - highly reflective of vampire's nature. Victimisation and sublime entrapment that reflects the mythological sirens. Anthropomorphism and magical realism. Transferred epithet too.

Characters

Soldier:

• 'Although so young, he is also rational.' - modernity contrasts her archaic image as a Vampire. Ingenue, naiive? Implied victim, but modernism kills beauty.

Vampire:

• '...a girl who is both death and the maiden.' - contrasting features disproving Lewallens: '**** of be ****ed' theory.
• 'She is so beautiful she is unnatural; her beauty is an abnormality, a deformity...' - she is sublime. But also ill - beauty is likewise an abnormaility unjust for judgement.

Keeper:

• 'An old mute...' - she lacks song and spirit. She is the true enticer: beauty not that vital.

Themes

• '...the imperfection of the human condition.' - humanity is dilapidated, the rules by which we live are a condition...they are not normal.
• '...the magic comfort of the Tarot Pack...' - fate and a certain destiny is comforting, but we lack that.
• '...too many shadows...shadows that have no source in anything visible...' - nothing is clear, nothing is there. The Vampire is liminal, as is this place. She is perfection in terms of beauty and aesthetics, yet she is unattainable and not of a solid form: perfection is not attainable.
• 'We shall take her to Zurich, to a clinic; she will be treated for nervous hysteria.' - the death of Romanticism and how war and corrupt modern society can twist the fantastical with logic; the Gothic elements are virtually destroyed and overlooked.

Critics

Subverted 'Red Riding Hood' - sexual to the max and virginity and broken eggs etc. Man is wolf and wolf is man, but which is more dangerous?

Setting

Character

Themes

Critics

Setting

• '...the shaggy branches tangle about you, trapping the unwary traveller in nets...' - luring one to their doom and demise. A sense of enticement via sexuality. 'Shaggy' = masculine typically, which contradicts the feminine image of Mother Nature - Carter's aims. Thorough A02. Woods and Forrest = foliage in which facades are present and uncertainty/ambiguity is present: reflects humanity and sexuality.
• 'It was a white night of moon and snow...' - moon is femininie, which contradicts the purity of white due to its menstrual cycle connotations. Snow is romanticised and Gothic to add a sense of fantasticalism, yet paralleled to the reality of periods. 'White night' is contradictory - animal is peace.

Characters

Wolf:

• 'The wolf is carnivore incarnate...' - absolute terror; power and death. Meat and flesh - primal nature. Hash, abrupt, power. Repetition emphasises.
• '...a wolf's eyes reflect only moonlight, then they gleam a cold and unnatural green...' - feminine moon and jealous green. Men's desires are animalistic. Desire purity but also a corruptness.
• '...tender wolf.' - animal is less livid than the man.

Characters continued...

Girl:

• 'She is an unbroken egg; she is a sealed vessel...' - purity, but on the brink: LIMINAL. Foreshadows her being broken.
• '...her cheeks are an emblematic scarlet and white...' - appealing mix of innocence and maturity. Colour contrast: red blood and white pure.
• 'The girl burst out laughing; she knew she was nobody's meant.' - matter-of-fact: colloquiol almost. No exclamation adds serious tone, which gives more authority.

Themes

• 'They will be like shadows, they will be like wraiths...' - terror and obscurity. LIminality. Beigns of darkness. Magical realism via subtle comparison of wraiths and shadows: one certainly exists, but which is more menacing?
• 'She bundled up her shawl and threw it on the blaze, which instantly consumed it.' - links to 'deathly passion' in 'BC'. Fire is passion and desire: it consumes and burns and damages and vitalises. Carelessly throwing herself into the passion; it consumes us. Women are as sexually driven as men.
• '...a savage marriage ceremony.' - marriage is savage? limiting freedom perhaps? reflecting upon Carter's divorce maybe?
• 'It was Christmas Day, the werewolves' birthday...' - mix of religion and supernatural unsettles our understanding of culture and goodness: magical realism. What is real? what is more natural and which more nurtured?

Critics

Three pages of horror and grotesque imagery - links religion to supernatural again. Reverses role of hero and villain; the girl is the victim but she is less likable, whereas the gran is the villain but we sympathise with her. Incredibly estrogen-dominated: werewolf is female.

Setting

Character

Themes

Critics

Setting

• 'It is a northern country; they have cold weather, they have cold hearts.' - anthropomorphism. mood is established as dreary, selfish and uncaring: the humans are the negatives.
• '...the Devil they glimpse often in the graveyards...' - corruption and supernatural intrusion upon humanity.
• '...no flowers grow there...' - death, desolation and dilapidation.
• 'Walpurgisnacht' - pagan ritual holding negative connotations. Generally, humans are at fault. A convening of the supernaturals, but werewolves are somehow excluded.

Characters

Girl:

• 'The child had a shabby coat of sheepskin to keep out the cold...' - brutality evident in her unkempt appearance and care for the coat. Killed the animal. Irony - sheep and wolf, but she is the hunter.
• '...she dropped her gifts, seized her knife and turned on the beast.' - moral and cultural dilapidation: not ingenue. Girl corrupted.

Wolf:

• 'The wolf let out a gulp, almost a sob...' - perhaps the only emotion viewed in this story.

Themes

• '...the witches...dig up the fresh corpses, and eat them.' - supernatural, grotesque. Disrespect shows moral decay. Vulgarity is surreal. Truly Gothic description.
• 'Wreaths of garlic on the doors keep out the vampires.' - supernatural presence is strong and overwhelming: ironic comparison. Fear the supernatural or the humans?
• 'Now the child lived in her grandmother's house; she prospered.' - unfeeling, wealth is important. A highly Dystopic emphasis on the importance of wealth over well-being and familial relationships.

Critics

Girl raised by Wolves and taken to be raised properly by nuns: fails. She is then moved to live with the Werewolf Duke as hi servant. She saves him and the two form a bond.

Setting

Character

Themes

Critics

Setting

• 'Spilt, glistening milk of moonlight on the frost-crisped grass...' - sublime mother nature. Maternalistic nature contrasts the nuns at the convent: humanity is less emotive.
• '...midwinter sunset...' - contrast. Winter connotes and end: cold and bitter. Death as well. But sunset is Romantic and flared.
• '...gloomy mansion...' - typically Gothic, vast and secluded. Eery and spacious, supernatural. anthropomorphism.

Characters

Wolf-Alice:

• 'Nothing about her is human except that she is not a wolf...' - liminality and lack of belonging.
• 'Her panting tongue hangs out; her red lips are thick...Her legs are long, lean and muscular. [She is] thickly callused...' - voluptuous innocence. Strength, when compared to Count. She is animalistic in nature.

Count:

• 'The Duke is sere as old paper...his thin legs scabbed with old scars...' - almost death. fragile and perhaps intellect? Survival.
• 'He is white as leprosy, with scrabbling fingernails.' - grotesque. Illness. Disease. Decay and general degredation.
• 'He will use the holy cross as a scratching post...' - rejection of society and culture.

Characters continued...

Nuns:

• 'They found quite easily that she could be taught a few, simple tricks...' - lack of humane sense of morals....she is an animal to them. less sympathetic to humans.

Themes

• 'Her pace is not our pace.' - matching the world up to what we know and what we view. Our ideals. Creatures of nature and distanced seem more sympathetic.
• 'The lucidity of the moonlight lit the mirror propped against the red wall; the rational glass, the master of the visible...' - distorted reality. Mirrors tell all: link to 'Mirror' from Plath. True identity with no lies and not bias. mixture of fem and masc.
• The Count 'howls like a wolf with his foot in a trap or a woman in labour, and bleeds.' - both genders are as bad as each other. An infinate peace and cooperation as animals only.

Critics