Franz Burgmann

Second Draft

Femininity in Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber"

"The Bloody Chamber" is a first-person narration by the late British author Angela Carter;
it was first published in 1979. The protagonist is a girl of seventeen who gets married to a
considerably older nobleman only to discover that his three former wives have all been
murdered by him. She then learns that she is about to share their fate. At no time does
she oppose her husband; on the contrary, she acts passively and unresistingly accepts his
decisions. In the end, it is her mother who comes to the rescue and singlehandedly kills
her daughter's oppressor. "The Bloody Chamber" presents a microcosm of two contrasting
stereotypes regarding women and portrays the two female protagonists in unrealistic and
satirical extremes. On the one hand, there is the passive, submissive wife, afraid to
contradict the will of her husband, even if it means her demise. On the other is the
independent, strong, Amazonian-like mother who comes to the rescue of her helpless
offspring.
As far as the main protagonist is concerned, Carter depicts her as a mere
marionette. She acts as a woman who is entirely controlled by the male world around her.
Throughout the entire short story, she is but a puppet in the hands of a puppeteer her
husband. One scene where this becomes very evident is when he orders her to perform a
submissive action: "Kneel!'" (Carter 36). She cringingly obeys: "I knelt before him" (Carter
36). Furthermore, the cruel husband's decision to sentence her to death by decapitation
(para. Carter 36) does not relieve her of her passivity. Awaiting her husband's call from a
place distant to his, it would have been easy for her to hide in one of the castle's many
rooms, but subserviently she follows her husband's summons when he calls her on the
phone: "The courtyard. Immediately." (Carter 38). Throughout the entire short story, the
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main protagonist maintains her passive, submissive role; she routinely obeys her
husband's orders and acts entirely subordinately.
There is one instance where the protagonist seems to be freed from the sexist
clutches of her husband, but the repercussions of her actions clearly prove that her
independence is not acceptable. The only time that the main protagonist disobeys her
husband is when she sneaks into the Bloody Chamber. She does so when the influential
grip of her husband is loosened due to his absence, and for a moment her mother's
strength is manifested in her: "[m]y mother's spirit drove me" (Carter 28). For this time,
perhaps, she is trying to manifest a modern view of feminism, demonstrating more
independence and strength. However, the fact that her husband punishes her to death for
her disobedience proves to the extreme extent that she is trapped in a male-dominated
reality.
The protagonist's dependency becomes all the more evident when compared to
the courageous, autonomous, and independent role her mother plays in the short story.
Her mother is described as having "outfaced a junkful of Chinese pirates, nursed a village
through a visitation of the plague, [and] shot a man-eating tiger with her own hand."
(Carter 7). Additionally, the fact that the protagonist is only a teenager does not play a
role in the contrasting behavior of the two female characters, since the protagonist
explains that her mother had done all this "before she was as old as I" (Carter 7). The
mother also shows great strength of character through the fact that she "beggared
herself for love" and later on had to raise her daughter alone in poverty (para. Carter 8).
At the end of the short story, the mother is portrayed as an Amazonian-like warrior when
she arrives on horseback at the scene of the execution and shoots the vicious husband
(para. Carter 40). She is described by her daughter as "a wild thing, her hat seized by the
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winds and blown out to sea so that her hair was her white mane, her black lisle legs
exposed to the thigh, her skirts tucked round her waist" (Carter 40). The murderous
husband is stopped in his tracks, the sword suspended over his head, by the mother's
appearance, which is likened to Medusa in her fierce glory (para. Carter 40). She makes
the kill in a single shot and "without a moment's hesitation" (Carter 40), ironically with
the gun of a man, her late husband (para Carter 40). With her actions, she lives up to her
role as a courageous, self-determined, and independent woman, even being able to
defeat a man who is depicted as a cruel and ruthless murderer, and she presents a sharp
contrast to the weak victim role her daughter personifies.
In "The Bloody Chamber", the contrasting depictions of its female characters reflect
two extreme approaches to the roles of women. It is left to the reader's interpretation to
determine whether Carter intended to make a point regarding feminism or whether she
was merely retelling an old fairy tale in a sensationalistic and contemporary way. What
Carter definitely achieves with "The Bloody Chamber", though, is to show the two opposite
poles of the whole range of femininity. This might enable readers to examine the roles of
women in our society and to provide a new understanding of femininity and feminism.

Works Cited
Carter, Angela. The Bloody Chamber: And Other Stories. London: Penguin Books, 1995.
Print.