In Angela Carter’s gothic retelling of the famous fairytale Bluebeard entitled The Bloody Chamber, she dives deep into ideas such as power, sexuality, transgression, and more. Specifically, from pages eleven to twelve, the bride and narrator describes the foreplay her new husband, the Marquis, puts her through on their honeymoon. In this passage, Carter uses vivid language to illustrate not only the power dynamics between the bride and the Marquis, but foreshadow the ending of the tale.

The passage starts with the Marquis stripping his new bride as a demonstration of the power dynamics between the two. She narrates that “he stripped me, gourmand that he was, as if we were stripping the leaves off an artichoke,” and furthers that “he approached his familiar treat with a weary appetite” (Carter 11). By comparing the Marquis to a gourmand, a type of chef, and the bride to an artichoke, Carter effectively demonstrates the power dynamics in the situation by implying that the bride is quite literally an object in the Marquis’s hands. Further, by comparing her to an inanimate object, she implies that sex is something that is done to the bride, not with the bride, thus further twisting the power in this situation by not only giving the bride more power but alluding that sex is a “manly” activity in which the husband takes charge. By also saying that he approached his treat with a ‘weary appetite’, she also emphasizes the husband’s experience in comparison to the bride, and how much power he has over her in a situation in which she is a complete novice. It further emphasizes the difference between the bride and the Marquis. For the bride, it is meant to be the most special night of her life and she is eager to go through the transformation from a child to adulthood, from a virgin to a wife. On the other hand, the husband is simply going through the motions with his fourth wife and is stuck in stasis, unchanging, locked in a repetitive, brutal cycle.

Carter further demonstrates the balance of power between the bride and the Marquis through vivid similes and metaphors. She describes the bride as a “child with her sticklike limbs, naked but for her button boots and her gloves, shielding her face with her hand as though her face were the last repository of her modesty; and the old, monocled lecher who examined her” (11-12). Carter blatantly describes the bride as a child in comparison to her older husband, who is on his fourth marriage with her. This is further exacerbated by language Carter uses such as “he in his London tailoring; she, bare as a lamb chop”, once again comparing the bride to a piece of meat—an object (12). At one point, the author quite literally calls him a ‘purchaser’ and she a ‘bargain’ whom he is ‘examining’. The differences between the two are highlighted clearly by the bride, who is “shielding her face”, compared to the Marquis, who “closed [her] legs like a book”, too busy to worry about her face (12). Carter thus implies that to the bride, her most valuable possessions are her emotions, which she hides, and that to her, her purity is not what is in between her legs, but her very modesty. Contrast this with the brutal Marquis, who finds value only in examining his bride as though she were a specimen—opening her legs to examine what is inside and then closing them—similar to books, in which the most valuable parts are the words within, to him, the most valuable parts of her are her sexual organs instead of her emotions.

The agency the bride has in this situation is interesting, however. Not only does she take initiative by shyly “shielding her face with her hand as though her face were the last repository of her modesty,” but the boots and gloves she is still wearing protect her most important limbs and give her the ability to flee if she so chose, though the rest of her is naked and vulnerable (12). Further, by being naked apart from her hands and feet, it implies that these parts of her body, some of the most useful to her, are not useful to him in his use of her as a sexual object, and as such, he doesn’t care about stripping them. He, on the other hand, is clothed except for his hands, thus again demonstrating how with his free hands, he can have sex on her instead of with her because her covered limbs make it hard for her to reciprocate. Further, having just her hands and feet covered can be seen as erotic to the Marquis, similar to a stripper in a club who ends her dance in nothing but boots and gloves. The bride’s vulnerability and attitude toward sex are further backed up by the narrator stating that “when [she] had first seen [her] flesh in his eyes, [she] was aghast to feel [her]self stirring” (12). The old-fashioned attitude towards sex, in which men are allowed to feel arousal but women are not, is most clearly seen here. Further, she is only able to see herself as an object of sexual desire when looking through “his eyes” instead of being able to view her value and appreciate her beauty independently. The narrator thus demonstrates a great deal of internalized sexism, believing that sex is something more animal and for men, also putting him in the position of a predator.

Angela Carter uses imagery around the color red throughout the passage to foreshadow further scenes and bring new light to the present. After he strips her of her clothes, she mentions that only her “scarlet, palpitating core remained”, evoking multiple images in the reader’s head (11). The first is the idea of the apple that Eve first took a bite from in Biblical mythology, thus referencing humanity’s first sin and the transgression for which all later women are punished. In this manner, it almost seems as though the Marquis believes that the bride is getting what she deserves because at her core is original sin. This also alludes to Nathaniel Hawthrone’s famous story The Scarlet Letter, in which for the crime of having a child out of wedlock, Hester Prynne is forced to wear a scarlet A upon her breast for all time. Again in this scenario, the color red, or specifically scarlet, is associated with sin and wrongdoing, and even foreshadows the scene in the book in which for the crime of going into the locked room, the bride is permanently branded with a bloody red heart upon her forehead, to forever wear as a mark of shame for giving in to her curiosity. However, by the bride already having a scarlet core, it implies that the capability for this corruption or wrongdoing is already inside of her, and gives her some agency in a situation where she is being fully controlled because the “scarlet sin” is not being pushed upon her, but instead a part of her that is simply brought to light. A second image that is evoked is that of her heart, naked, bloody, and still beating, being held in his large hand in the same way he now controls much of her life. The usage of red finally links back to the ruby collar that the bride wears at all times, especially during sex as per the will of her husband. The collar once belonged to the Marquis’s grandmother, who had it fashioned after the French Revolution to sit upon the very part of the throat which the guillotine would have struck in order to celebrate her survival. Not only does this foreshadow the Marquis’s eventual attempt to have the bride decapitated for her sin, just like his grandmother once nearly was, but just as how the grandmother survived, the bride too survives, almost protected by the choker. Thus, the pattern of the aristocrats murdered during the French Revolution and the lucky grandmother who survived is mirrored in the pattern of the doomed brides murdered by the Marquis and the lucky one who survived. Regardless of the protection the collar implies, however, it is still a collar and a stark mark of her ownership by her new husband.

Carter finally uses imagery around flowers, specifically lilies, throughout the novel in order to bring new light to the scenes at hand and also foreshadow later scenes. In the bride’s bedroom, she notices that the Marquis’s “white, heavy flesh had too much in common with the armfuls of arum lilies that filled the bedroom in great glass jars, those undertakers’ lilies with the heavy pollen that powders your fingers as if you had dipped them in turmeric” (12). The very ending part of the line, the idea of the pollen that stains fingers, again links back to the scarlet letter and the permanent mark that is left upon her after the act of losing her virginity, though the idea that this mark could already have been upon her, been an intrinsic part of her, gives the bride agency in owning her own corruption. It further again foreshadows the permanent brand that she will wear, courtesy of her husband, as proof of her marriage. The flowers in the bedroom, arum lilies, are also known as calla lilies and are linked to death, purity, fertility, and sexuality in flower language. The lilies, which first mean death, thus foreshadow her eventual attempted execution by the Marquis, as at the time that it happens, the ‘undertakers lilies’ will be withering away as she would be. However, they are also linked to the scene at hand through their meanings of fertility and sexuality, as in Greek mythology, they originated from Hera’s breast milk, and were then cursed by Aphrodite with a thick stamen out of jealousy. The thick stamen in the middle not only acts as a phallic symbol within the delicate, feminine petals of the flower, thus mirroring the lewd scene occurring in the bedroom, but the cloying scent and presence of the ‘armfuls of arum lilies that filled the bedroom’ never truly leaves throughout the book, a constant reminder to the bride of her husband’s presence due to their commonality with his ‘white, heavy flesh’. Thus, the very presence of the flowers brings new meaning to the scene at hand.

Angela Carter was an incredibly accomplished author, and in diving deeper and closely reading every single sentence of the vivid fairytale The Bloody Chamber, one can find two, and sometimes even three layers of depth and meaning to a single passage. Carter foreshadows scenes, uses heavy metaphors and allusions, and makes references to sexuality, transgression, and power in a subtle manner that not only brings to light how horrible some old-fashioned social norms were but empowers women and teaches valuable lessons even in the 21st century.

Works Cited

Carter, Angela. The Bloody Chamber: And Other Stories / Angela Carter. Penguin Books, 2015.