Summary The Bloody Chamber Quote Bank with Quotes, Critics, Analysis, Sources
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Course
Literature post-1900
Institution
OCR
A consolidated quote bank for Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber, including a variety of direct textual quotes, sources, analysis, and critics. The bank is organised into main characters and 10x key themes, corresponding to the themes in my Dracula/Frankenstein quote banks for easy comparison. Each...
English Quote Bank (The Bloody Chamber)
Characters:
The Bloody Chamber (8 quotes)
Quotation Source Relevance/meaning
‘Like an extraordinarily precious Page 6 Wedding gift foreshadowing
slit throat… bright as arterial fate, blood as corruption,
blood’ and links to violent French
Revolution
‘He in his London tailoring; she, Page 11 Class element to
bare as a lamb chop. Most exploitation heightens
pornographic of all unequal power dynamic,
confrontations’ consolidates rich man’s
hegemony
‘My little nun has found the Page 13 Infantilisation, religious
prayerbooks’ ‘Have the nasty sacrificial lamb archetype,
pictures scared Baby?’ like Elizabeth
‘She was cool; he had embalmed Page 27 Violent, transgressive
her… the worst thing was, the masculinity, aesthetic
dead lips smiled’ display of crimes, pre-
meditated, maybe even
consensual
‘She was pierced, not by one but Page 28 Excessive force is brutal
by a hundred spikes, this child of and abject, quintessential
the land of the vampires… so full Gothic horror, inversion of
of blood’ predatory vampirism
‘The puppet-master, open- Page 39 Hubris is downfall, women
mouthed, impotent at last, saw can boldly engineer own
his dolls break free’ liberation
‘Took aim and put a single, Page 41 Triumphant inversion of the
irreproachable bullet through my cruel stepmother archetype
husband’s head’ into a powerful maternal
saviour figure
The Marquis is a ‘metamorphic Armitt, critic Typically liminal Gothic
figure oscillating along the antagonist and
boundaries between the human transgressor, shows just
and the bestial’ how easily humans (men)
can devolve
Carter is ‘translating the motifs of Kari Lokke, Postmodernist approach
myth and folklore into the critic with converts ubiquity of
language of the sophisticated fairytales into transgressive
aesthete’ feminist allegory
The Courtship of Mr Lyon (6 quotes)
Quotation Source Relevance/meaning
‘He reared on his hind legs like an Page 47 Liminality of the beast
angry lion yet wore a smoking imitating humanity, but
jacket’ does not hide his abhuman
nature like the Count
‘A constant human presence Page 48 Otherness leads to
would remind him too bitterly of depression and isolation,
his otherness’ not the evil need to corrupt
others: Byronic hero
, ‘Miss Lamb, spotless, sacrificial… Page 48/49 Exploitation of poor girl
longed for the shabby home of adds class elements to her
their poverty’ vulnerability
‘She could not bring herself to Page 51 Fear of the foreign and the
touch him of her own free will, he ‘other’ even with radical
was so different’ female autonomy
‘When her lips touched the meat- Page 54 Metamorphosis, a bloody
hook claws, they drew back… she chamber but one of female-
saw how he had always kept his assisted male liberation
fists clenched’ from patriarchal norms
‘At the close, it is women who Merja Beauty engineers the
become the active saviours, not Makinen, transition of Mr Lyon:
the men’ critic seizing female autonomy or
pawns in salvation of men?
The Tiger’s Bride (6 quotes)
Quotation Source Relevance/meaning
‘My own skin was my only capital Page 62 Commodification of female
in the world and today I’d make body indoctrinated into
my first investment’ young women, only
practical skill in patriarchy
‘I was a young girl, a virgin, and Page 70/71 Direct subversion of
therefore men denied me ‘sacrificial lamb’ archetype
rationality… the lamb must learn as protagonist actively
to run with the tigers’ seizes her own destiny
‘That clockwork girl… had I been Page 70 Doppelganger trope,
allotted only the same kind of subliminal feminist
imitative life among men that the messaging as the magical
doll-maker had given her?’ reflection of own lack of
autonomy
‘The annihilating vehemence of Page 71 Grandiosity and splendour
his eyes, like twin suns… nothing of the Beast’s true form
about him reminded me of realised: liminal nature
humanity’ resolved, no more abhuman
‘Each stroke of his tongue ripped Page 75 Metamorphosis, liberation
off skin… my earrings turned from society, surrender to
back to water’ desire and id, return to
humanity’s natural state
‘A certain amount of tigerishness Margaret Survival entails surrender to
may be necessary if women are Atwood, base, ‘masculine’ impulses.
to… avoid becoming meat’ author But is this compliance to
patriarchal norms?
Puss-in-Boots (6 quotes)
Quotation Source Relevance/meaning
‘His lodgings are poor [but] Page 78 Working-class hero,
there’s a neat, smart, dandified handsome young bachelor
air about him’ with aspirations
‘The chambermaid who strips the Page 80 Transgression of class
bed… the mayor’s wife, even, divides, undermines right-
shed her diamond earrings for wing promotion of social
him’ hierarchy in marriages
‘I gave her the customary tribute Page 82 Overt, graphic sexual
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