The Bloody Chamber

Question 1

What can mask the red mark..?

Answer 1

Nothing ‘can mask that red mark on my forehead’

Question 2

How did the Marquis watch her?

Answer 2

‘watching me in the gilded mirrors with the assessing eyes of a connoisseur inspecting horseflesh…cuts on the slab’

Question 3

How is the Marquis animalised at the end?

Answer 3

‘roared out aloud, braying with fury’

Question 4

What colour was the water when she tried to clean off the stain? How does she describe the stain as she tries to clean it off?

Answer 4

‘Crimson water’

‘More vivid grew the stain’

Question 5

When she lays in bed, how does she describe her complex feelings for him?

Answer 5

‘I lay in bed alone. And I longed for him. And he disgusted me’

Question 6

What did her mother do?

Answer 6

‘Outfaced a junk full of Chinese Pirates’

‘Shot a man-eating tiger with her own hand’

Question 7

How is the choker described?

Answer 7

‘A choker of rubies, two inches wide, like an extraordinarily precious slit throat’

Question 8

How does she feel in relation to her mother about becoming his wife?

Answer 8

‘Ceased to be her child in becoming his wife’

Question 9

What is there a ‘striking resemblance’ between?

Answer 9

‘There is a striking resemblance between the act of love and the ministrations of a torturer’

Question 10

How did she see herself ‘suddenly’?

Answer 10

‘I saw myself, suddenly, as he saw me’

Question 11

What did she always associate with him?

Answer 11

‘The lilies I always associate with him; that are white. And stain you’

Question 12

How many mirrors?

Answer 12

‘So many mirrors! Mirrors on all the walls’

Question 13

What did the mother do to the husband at the end?

Answer 13

‘Put a single, irreproachable bullet through my husbands head’

Question 14

What does the marquis say is hers (excluding…)?

Answer 14

‘All is yours…except the lock that this single key fits’

Question 15

Bare as what?

Answer 15

‘Bare as a lamb chop’

Question 16

What is the description of the marquis as a puppet master at the end?

Answer 16

‘The puppet master…saw his dolls break free of their strings’

Question 17

How does she feel in the chamber, when she feels as though he is watching her?

Answer 17

‘The eye of God - his eye - was upon me’

Question 18

How is she disturbed by his eyes?

Answer 18

‘disturbed me by their absolute absence of light’

Question 19

How had she seen his composure leave him?

Answer 19

‘I had seen his deathly composure shatter like a porcelain vase’

Question 20

What does she sense in herself?

Answer 20

‘I sensed in myself a potentiality for corruption’

Question 21

What is the unique pleasure of love?

Answer 21

‘The supreme and unique pleasure of love is the certainty that one is doing evil’

Question 22

How does the marquis patronise the girl after she sees his library?

Answer 22

“Have the nasty pictures scared Baby?”

Question 23

How is the consummation of the marriage bed violently described?

Answer 23

‘A dozen husbands impaled a dozen brides’

Question 24

How is she shocked at herself for her feelings for him?

Answer 24

‘I was aghast to feel myself stirring’

Question 25

How does she cling to him?

Answer 25

‘I clung to him as though only the one who inflicted the pain could comfort me for suffering it’

Question 26

How does she describe his scent?

Answer 26

‘Opulent male scent of leather and spices’

Question 27

What does she accidentally do with the key when she is shocked at what she finds in the iron maiden?

Answer 27

‘dropped into the forming pool of her blood’

Question 28

How old was he?

Answer 28

‘He was older than I. Much older than I.’

Question 29

How was his face like a pond?

Answer 29

‘Still as a pond iced thickly over’

Question 30

She says she was not afraid of him, but of what?

Answer 30

‘I was not afraid of him; but of myself’

Question 31

What does she feel about his desire?

Answer 31

‘weight of his desire was a force I might not withstand’

Question 32

What’s the worst part about the embalmed body on the catafalque?

Answer 32

‘The dead lips smiled’

Question 33

What does she say emanates from the marquis when he realises she has disobeyed him?

Answer 33

‘A stench of absolute despair’

Question 34

How does she describe her own fingers and hips?

Answer 34

‘My bony fingers, my nervous, pianist’s fingers’

Question 35

How does she describe Jean-Yves and his humanity?

Answer 35

‘His lovely, blind humanity’

Question 36

How does he strip her?

Answer 36

‘He stripped me, gourmand that he was’

Question 37

How does she describe his head?

Answer 37

‘dark, leonine shape of his head’

Question 38

How does she describe the door to the chamber?

Answer 38

‘Like the door of hell’

Question 39

How does she describe the castle, of which she is two things simultaneously?

Answer 39

‘This lovely prison of which I was both the inmate and the mistress’

Question 40

How is her neck described at the decapitation ceremony?

Answer 40

‘A neck like the stem of a young plant’