Introduction: The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter is her take on a few fairy tales and folk tales. The main story is The Bloody Chamber and there are others like Puss-in-Boots, The Courtship of Mr Lyon, The Snow Child, The Werewolf, Wolf-Alice and a few more. I didn’t enjoy the book as much as I thought I would, and now that a few days have elapsed since I read it, I believe that it's because I’m in a vulnerable state right now I found some of the stories too macabre for my liking.
What is The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter About?
In The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter a wealthy, much older French Marquis proposes to a 17-year old pianist and she agrees to marry him. To demonstrate how wealthy the suitor is, Angela Carter says he is as wealthy as Croesus, which is synonym for a wealthy man. And Croesus, the ancient Greek king of Lydia – 560 to 547 BC – is credited for issuing the first true gold coins.
The Marquis has been married three times before, and his last wife died only three months before he proposes to the pianist. Her widowed mother keeps asking her if she loves the Marquis and her response, “I’m sure I want to marry him.” She never answers the question, but at 17 it would be quite novel to be tied to a Marquis – for the prestige.
As a wedding gift, he gives her a beautiful necklace with rubies two inches wide. She sees him watching her, and when she looks at her reflection in the mirror, for the first time she sees how he sees her. She marries him and he takes her to his castle. He gives her her own suite in the palace. The young wife goes exploring in his library, and finds some pornographic books. Her mother had already told her what lovers do. Her husband finds her in his library and he refers to her as his nun finding the prayerbooks. He is mocking her and asks her if the pictures scare her.
The Marquis asks his wife to put on the choker and afterward they consummate the marriage. The telephone rings and it’s his agent and he has to leave. She is a bit distraught because they are on their honeymoon. He says he has to leave and tells her how long he will be gone for. He also got her a piano so she can continue practicing, but because of the water that surrounds the castle, it affects the sound, so she will have to have a piano tuner in residence. The Marquis hires Jean-Yves, a blind piano tuner, who falls in love with the pianist when he hears her play.
Before he leaves, there is a scene in The Bloody Chamber where the Marquis goes through great fanfare when handing a set of keys to his wife, telling her which key opens where. She is allowed to enter any room except one, and he makes sure that he repeatedly points out which key and where the room is located. So of course the reader immediately asks why would he do that? it must be a trap, and the name of the book, The Bloody Chamber, gives you a clue.
When he leaves she calls her mother to check in. She starts to cry on the telephone about the most mundane thing – gold bath taps – why would she do that? While he is away, she plays the piano and realizes that piano tuner has done a really good job, so she calls him in to thank him for a job well done. She has a lot of time on her hand and she could unpack her trunks, but instead she decides to explore the castle. And as you can guess, she cannot help herself and finds herself in the forbidden room where she gets a horrible surprise. She discovers that hubby has murdered his wives. The key fall into the blood, which is still wet from the last murder.
She is beside herself and doesn’t know what to do because the phone lines have been cut so she cannot call her mother. She doesn’t want to call the police because the Marquis and his ancestors have lived in the area for a long time, so she doesn’t think that the authorities would believe her story. Not knowing what to do, she seeks solace in the one thing that has always given her pleasure and that is to play the piano. But her fingers are stiff.
She hears a crash outside and believes that her husband has returned so she tells him to enter, but it is Jean-Yves. He returns the keys on the key chain that she had dropped minus that one key. She unburdens her soul to the piano tuner and he can smell the blood. They sit and talk for a while, and he tells her about all the rumors he’d heard about the Marquis and his family. His acute hearing tells him that the Marquis has returned to the castle, leaving was a ploy to catch her in the act.
She tells Jean-Yves to return to his room because she has to face her husband alone. Of course the Marquis has a story why he has returned without going to the US. He asks for the keys, and insists that he gets them right away. It’s actually a poignant scene that comes next, and the language is captivating. She asks him how she will die and he tells her by decapitation.
At the time when she is supposed to meet her “maker” Jean-Yves says he will go with her and they hold hands. I have great problems with her passivity. Your husband tells you that he is going to cut off your head, and you know he will because you have seen what he has done to his other wives, yet you resign yourself to dying without fighting back. That doesn’t compute for me.
Before he can complete the act, her mother comes charging in like a mad woman and shoots the Marquis in his head killing him. She was very concerned because her daughter burst into tears when she called because it was very odd behaviour to her — it was maternal telepathy. The pianist inherits her husband’s wealth and now she is as rich as Croesus, however, she gives away most of the money to charity, and donates the castle to be used as a school for the blind. The little money that is left, the pianist uses to open a music school on the outskirts of Paris.
The pianist, the piano tune, and her mother live together.
Final Thoughts: The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
If you are interested in rewriting fairy tales, The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter is a good book to read to get your creative juices flowing.
The Bloody Chamber: And Other Stories: 75th-Anniversary Edition (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales. Edited by Angela CarterThe Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor HoffmanThe Passion of New Eve (Virago Modern Classics)Wise Children: A Novel (FSG Classics)Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short StoriesNights at the CircusSentence Diagramming Beginning: Breakdown and Learn the Underlying Structure of Sentences (Grades 3-12+)
