"And I know that she is wise, and she's the apple of my eye..."

There are two main female characters in The Bloody Chamber; the narrator (the new wife of the Marquis) and her widowed mother. Like the to male characters in the book, they are quite different from each other in both appearance and personality.
The narrator is young and naive and describes herself as "the poor widow's child with my mouse-coloured hair.... my bony hips, my my nervous, pianist's fingers". She is the quite the opposite of her mother who she describes as being a strong woman whose "adventurous girlhood in Indo-China" had led her to outfacing "a junkful of Chinese pirates" and shooting a man-eating tiger before the age of 17. The contrasts between the two female characters are referred to many times throughout the story and perpetuates our narrator's innocence and vulnerability, through having a stronger and more active female character to compare her to. The mother's strength is shown by the fact that she keeps her deceased husband's 'antique service revolver' in her handbag, and guns are very masculine objects which denote power. She later uses this gun to kill her daughter's sadistic husband.
The end of the story really shows the differences between mother and daughter. When our narrators realises her new husband's true nature she continues with her passive nature and does not seem to make any attempt to leave the castle and escape her impending fate; "then I went to my dressing room and put on that white muslin shift..." Her passive nature would have lead to her demise; "I've done nothing; but that may be sufficient reason for condemning me" unless her mother had not come to her rescue.
Her mother's "maternal telepathy" had caused her to sense that something was wrong with her daughter and she had travelled to the castle to arrive just in time to save her; "her hair was her white mane, her black lisle legs exposed to the thigh, her skirts tucked round her waist..." In traditional fairytales it is the man who saves the 'damsel in distress' but Angela Carter has twisted the structure of traditional tales to give them feminist themes, therefore it is the strong maternal figure who is the hero, or should I say heroine, of the story.

"a man's need are full of greed... a man's needs are lost on me..."

The two main male characters in The Bloody Chamber are the narrator's husband, the Marquis, and the piano tuner and these male characters have quite opposing roles.

The Marquis symbolises the stereotypical man of power, with his size and experience. The narrator describes the way that he looks at her like "the assessing eye of a connoisseur inspecting horseflesh" as though she is little more than an object. He seems to have a somewhat stereotypical masculine belief that a woman is no more than object of desire, who's purpose is to please a man by being at his every command. The way in which she describes him is seemingly unpleasant; "opulent male scent of leather and spices" and she often uses quite animalistic words to describe his physical appearance; "leonine".
It is clear that he is great in both size and power through her descriptions of his physical appearance and his attitude towards her. For example, after they have consummated their marriage she describes him as being "felled like an oak" which gives an indication of his size.
He also seems to show his power and size through the fact that he treats his wife almost as a child; "took me to perch on his knee", which suggests that he oppresses her as though she is merely an object rather than his wife.

The shy and unassuming piano tuner, on the other hand, is quite the opposite of the Marquis. Due to his blindness he does not see our narrator for her physical appearances, as the Marquis does, and is therefore more interested in her personality and who she is as a person. When she talks about her first encounter with him she describes him as being "all most satisfactory" which could be interpreted as being quite satisfactory or as being 'almost' satisfactory, which could be in reference to his blindness. It is as if his lack of sight and his inability to admire a woman's physical appearance means that he lacks in the power had by a man who can look at women. This, and his low standing as a blacksmiths son, means that he does not have any power over our narrator therefore giving her the ability to judge him and for a woman to have power over a man.

"...burning like a flame inside of you, is this just desire or the truth..."

In Thursday's lesson we continued reading The Bloody Chamber. We have now been introduced to the husband's previous three wives who, shockingly enough, all died tragically suddenly.
Our narrator says; "he had invited me to join this gallery of beautiful women" suggesting that she looks up to her husband as though she belongs to him like an object. Her passive nature is becoming more and more apparent the more we read and the way she talks about her husband suggests that she will is happy to let him be the dominant character.
This can also be seen in the way she describes how he looks at her like a 'connoisseur inspecting horseflesh'. This links to his animalistic and beast like nature as well as having connotations of death. Controversially, she seems thrilled somewhat by the way in which she can easily see the potential for her innocent self to be corrupted by this man. Does she desire this corruption?

We are also starting to see foreshadowing in what she says as she describes the "choker of rubies" that her husband gave to her as a wedding gift. She describes it as a 'precious slit throat' and explains its origins as an 'ironic fad' of those who escaped the guillotine to tie a 'red ribbon around their necks at just the point where the blade would have sliced it through' . Could this be foreshadowing what awaits her?

"I want to satisfy the undisclosed desires in your heart..."

In Monday's lesson we looked at an article about Germaine Greer' s 'A Female Eunuch', a strong feminist text written in the 1970s. Her views in this text are that womens sexuality and libido is surpressed by men and by their roles in the nuclear family.

After having read the first four pages of Anglea Carter's 'The Bloody Chamber' it is clear to see that womens sexual desires and the surpression of those desires is a major theme in this story. A lot of sexual imagery is used for example the description of her 'satin nightdress' as she talks about how it "teasingly caressed me, egregious, insinuating, nudging between my thighs as I shifted restlessly in my narrow berth". This connects to the feminist ideas of the supression of womens sexual desires as the young woman narrating the story obviously desires sexual attention and is anticipant of her wedding night.
The book has a feminist quality due to the fact theat it is quite unusual for a book to talk about the sexual desires of a woman and when asked if she loves her fiance the narrator replies " I'm sure I want to marry him" which breaks the common belief that women marry for love. The strong matriarchal figure also links to feminist ideas as the she is a strong and powerful character. This can be shown by the fact that she keeps an 'antique service revolver' in her reticule at all times.