Bloody Chamber

Question 1

Castle setting of Bloody Chamber

Answer 1

“Cut off by the tide from land for half a day”

Question 2

Sublimity of Bloody Chamber setting

Answer 2

“Sea; sand; a sky that melts into the sea”

Question 3

Terror of the narrator and portrayal of death in Bloody Chamber

Answer 3

“With trembling fingers, I prised open the front of the upright coffin”

Question 4

Time & Era when the Bloody chamber is set

Answer 4

Fin de Siecle in the French 3rd Republic (synonymous with corruption)
“November” (Bare, bleak and dormant)

Question 5

The Marquis’ handsomeness

Answer 5

“There were streaks of pure silver in his dark mane”

Question 6

The Marquis beauty but danger

Answer 6

“He seemed to me like a lily”

Question 7

Aristocracy and power of the Marquis

Answer 7

“He had been gifted at birth with more specific gravity”

Question 8

The mask of the Marquis in the Bloody Chamber

Answer 8

His face “seemed to me like a mask”

Question 9

The Marquis’ scent (development)

Answer 9

“The opulent male scent of leather and spices”
BECOMES
“the elements of flayed hide and excrement”

Question 10

The corruption of the narrator in The Bloody Chamber

Answer 10

“I swear to you I had not been vain until I met him”

Question 11

Innocence of the narrator in the bloody chamber

Answer 11

“I, the little music student”

Question 12

Sadism in the Bloody Chamber

Answer 12

“He kissed those blazing rubies … before he kissed my mouth”

Question 13

The pain of the Narrator’s loss of virginity in the Bloody Chamber

Answer 13

“A dozen husbands impaled a dozen wives”

Question 14

The narrator of the Bloody Chamber being bought by the Marquis

Answer 14

“Were there jewels enough in all his safes to recompense me for this predicament”

Question 15

Relationship between narrator and mother in the Bloody Chamber

Answer 15

“My mother’s spirit drove me on”

Question 16

Negative depictions of lower classes in the Bloody Chamber

Answer 16

“The faceless housekeeper”

Question 17

How the Marquis deliberately tested the Narrator

Answer 17

“I only did what he knew I would”

Question 18

Beauty’s father’s valuing of her in The Tiger’s Bride

Answer 18

“You must not think my father valued me at less than a king’s ransom; but, at no more than a king’s ransom”

Question 19

The derelict gothic setting of Milord’s palazzo in the Tiger’s Bride

Answer 19

“an acreage of half-derelict facades”

Question 20

The sublime landscape in which Beauty strips for the Beast in Tiger’s Bride

Answer 20

“Wilderness of desolation all around me”

Question 21

Beauty’s use of her sexuality as her power in the Tiger’s Bride

Answer 21

“My own skin was my sole capital”

Question 22

The treatment of Beauty as a slave or property

Answer 22

“I had been bought and sold, passed from hand to hand”

Question 23

The innocence and virginity of Beauty in the Tiger’s Bride

Answer 23

“No man had seen me naked”

Question 24

Beauty casting off societal expectations in Tiger’s Bride

Answer 24

“His tongue ripped of skin after successive skin, all the skins of a life in the world”

Question 25

The Beast’s loneliness without people, his rejection by society in Tiger’s Bride

Answer 25

“Nothing human lives here”

Question 26

The Beast’s sensitive soul, and shame objectifying women

Answer 26

“One single tear swelled … a tear, I hoped, of shame”

Question 27

The beast’s perfume that hides his true nature in Tiger’s Bride

Answer 27

A “thick, rich, wild scent with which Milord soaked himself”

Question 28

The Beast’s natural scent at the end of the Tiger’s Bride

Answer 28

“There was a reek of fur and piss; the incense pot lay broken in pieces on the floor”

Question 29

On the style Carter created by combining Gothic and fairy tales (Femme Fatale, The Guardian, Helen Simpson, 2006)

Answer 29

“An exotic hybrid that would carry her voice to a wider audience”

Question 30

On Carter’s rejection of the male gaze and objectification - of female passivity (Femme Fatale, The Guardian, Helen Simpson, 2006)

Answer 30

“One shining apercu that emerges is that passivity is never a virtue … especially not in women”

Question 31

On the capacity for societal development showcased in metamorphoses – Women’s Liberation (Femme Fatale, The Guardian, Helen Simpson, 2006)

Answer 31

“The stories of The Bloody Chamber are fired by the conviction … that human beings are capable of change.”

Question 32

On Carter’s rejection of passivity in the male gaze (“Angela Carter, Gothic Literature and the Bloody Chamber”, The British Library, Greg Buzwell, 2016)

Answer 32

“Any woman who remains passive under the male gaze invariably finds herself in peril”

Question 33

On sadomasichism in the Bloody Chamber tale (Femme Fatale, The Guardian, Helen Simpson, 2006)

Answer 33

“The menace is located … in the darker side of hetero-sexuality, in sadomasochism”