The Bloody Chamber Flashcards
The Bloody Chamber
“away from girlhood… into the unguessable country of marriage”
“a choker of rubies, two inches wide, like an extraordinarily precious slit throat.”
“I sensed in myself a potentiality for corruption.”
“my little nun has found the prayerbooks, has she?”
“a dozen husbands impaled a dozen brides”
“virginity so recently ruptured”
“he was blind, of course”
“museum of his perversity”
“one hand on the reigns of the rearing horse while the other clasped my father’s service revolver.”
The Courtship of Mr Lyon
“his Beauty, his girl-child, his pet”
“a constant human presence would remind him too bitterly of his otherness”
“Miss Lamb, spotless, sacrificial.”
“He flung himself at her feet and buried his head in her lap.”
“and then it was no longer a lion in her arms but a man.”
The Tiger’s Bride
“My father lost me to the Beast at cards.”
“Take off my clothes for you, like a ballet girl? Is that all you want of me?”
“I was a young girl, a virgin, and therefore men denied me rationality.”
“The lamb must learn to run with the tigers.”
“Each stroke of his tongue ripped off skin after successive skin.”
“I shrugged the drops off my beautiful fur.”
The Snow Child
“White skin, red mouth, black hair and stark naked; she was the child of his desire.”
“the Count got off his horse, unfastened his breeches and thrust his virile member into the dead girl.”
“The Countess reined in her stamping mare and watched him narrowly.”
The Lady of the House of Love
“She is so beautiful she is unnatural; her beauty is an abnormality, a deformity”
“She would like to caress their lean brown cheeks”
“He had that special quality of virginity, most and least ambiguous of states: ignorance, yet at the same time, power.”
“To ride a bicycle is in itself some protection against superstitious fears.”
“And so he puts his mouth to the wound. He will kiss it better for her, as her mother, had she lived, would have done.”
“The dark, fanged rose I plucked from beneath my thighs.”
“In death, she looked far older, less beautiful, and so, for the first time, fully human.”
The Werewolf
“The good child does as her mother bids”
“Here, take your father’s hunting knife; you know how to use it.”
“The wolf let out a gulp, almost a sob”
“Now the child lived in her grandmother’s house; she prospered.”
The Company of Wolves
“The wolf is carnivore incarnate”
“Her breasts have just begun to swell… and she has just started her woman’s bleeding.”
“She is an unbroken egg; she is a sealed vessel”
“The worst wolves are hairy on the inside”
“The girl burst out laughing; she knew she was nobody’s meat.”
“Sweet and sound she sleeps in granny’s bed, between the paws of the tender wolf.”
“She ripped off his shirt for him”
