The Bloody Chamber Key Quotes Flashcards
(113 cards)
1
Q
COW
the forest
A
closed upon her like a pair of jaws
2
Q
COW
no sign of a
A
wolf at all, nor of a naked man… a very handsome young one
3
Q
COW
she forgot to
A
be afraid of the beasts
4
Q
COW
his genitals,
A
huge. Ah! Huge.
5
Q
COW
she knew the worst
A
wolves were hairy on the inside
6
Q
COW
the girl burst out
A
laughing; she knew she was nobody’s meat
7
Q
COW
savage
A
marriage ceremony
8
Q
COW
between the paws
A
of the tender wolf
9
Q
TW
the child lived in
A
her grandmother’s house, she prospered
10
Q
TW
wolves are less
A
brave than they seem
11
Q
TW
wrapped up the wolf’s
A
paw in the cloth which her mother had packed the oatcakes
12
Q
TW
by the wart
A
she knew it for her grandmother’s hand
13
Q
TW
a scabby
A
coat of sheepskin
14
Q
TW
beating her old
A
carcass as far as the edge of the forest, and pelted her with stones until she fell down dead
15
Q
LOTHOL
she is so beautiful
A
she is unnatural; her beauty is an abnormality, a deformity
16
Q
LOTHOL
to ride a bicycle is
A
in itself some protection against superstition fears, since the bicycle is the product of pure reason applied to motion
bicycle as a symbol of feminism in the 1890s
17
Q
LOTHOL
can a bird sing
A
only the song it knows or can it learn a new song
18
Q
LOTHOL
ingenious piece
A
of clockwork
she might be an automaton
19
Q
snow child
as soon as he
A
completed her description, there she stood, she was the child of his desires and the countess hated her
20
Q
snow child
how shall i
A
be rid of her
21
Q
snow child
Now the countess was
A
bare as a bone and the girl furred and booted; the count felt sorry for his wife
22
Q
snow child
the countess reigned in
A
her stamping mare and watched him narrowly
23
Q
Erl King
he is an
A
excellent housewife
24
Q
Erl King
he is the tender
A
butcher who showed me how the price of flesh is love; skin the rabbit, he says! off come all my clothes
25
Erl King
then i could lodge
inside your body and you would bear me
26
Erl King
crimson
imprint of his love-bite on their throats
27
Erl King
mother, mother
you have murdered me!
28
Erl King
the woods enclose
and then enclose again, like a system of chinese boxes
29
Puss
a princess in a
tower, chained to a dolt and dragon-guarded
30
Puss
as soon as they were
left alone, no hi-fling, this time: they're at it, hammer and tongs, down on the carpet since the bed is occupe
31
tiger's bride
a beautiful
face; but one with too much formal symmetry of feature to be entirely human
32
tiger's bride
i let out
a raucous guffaw
33
tiger's bride
there must be a sheet
over my face, to hide it... so, i shall be covered completely from the waist upwards, and no lights
34
tiger's bride
clockwork
twin of mine
35
tiger's bride
perform the
part of my father's daughter
36
tiger's bride
soubrette
from the opera
37
tiger's bride
each stroke of his
tongue ripped off skin after successive skin
38
courtship of mr lyon
miss lamb,
spotless, sacrificial
39
courtship of mr lyon
she found his bewildering
difference from herself almost intolerable
40
courtship of mr lyon
she smiled at herself
in mirrors a little too often
41
courtship of mr lyon
a certain inwardness
was beginning to transform the lines around her mouth
42
courtship of mr lyon
under their soft
transformation, the bones showed through the pelt
43
The bloody chamber
and so, my purchaser
unwrapped his bargain
44
The bloody chamber
ceased to be her
child in becoming his wife
45
The bloody chamber
a dozen
husband impaled a dozen brides
46
The bloody chamber
a long,
winding corridor, as if i were in the viscera of the castle
47
The bloody chamber
waxen
face
48
The bloody chamber
there is a striking
resemblance between the act of a lover and the ministrations of a torturer
49
with the heavy eyelids
folded over eyes that always disturbed me by their absolute absence of light
50
like a mask, as if
his real face, the face that truly refelcted all the life he had led in the world before he met me, before, even, i was born, as though that face lay underneath this mask.
51
his wedding gift
clasped round my throat. a choker of rubies, two inches wide, like an extraordinarily precious slit throat
52
for the first time in my innocent and
confined life, i sensed in myself a potentiality for corruption that took my breath away
53
with my stunning marriage
had exiled myself. into marriage, into exile
54
that castle
at home neither on the land nor on the water
55
bare as a
lamb chop
56
no paint nor powder,
no matter how thick or white, can mask that red mark on my forehead
57
you never saw such a
wild thing as my mother... as if she had been Medusa
58
take her the rose then
but bring her to dinner, he growled
59
she would gladly
have gone to the ends of the earth for her father, whom she loved dearly
60
she smiled at herself
with satisfaction. she was learning, at the end of her adolescence, how to be a spoiled child
61
her trance before the
mirror broke; all at once, she remembered everything perfectly
62
her tears fell on his face
like snow and, under their soft transformation, the bones showed through the pelt, the flesh through the wide, tawny brow. and then it was no longer a lion in her arms but a man
63
mr and mrs lyon walk in the
garden; the old spaniel drowses on the grass, in a drift of fallen petals
64
the living
image of her mother
65
the lion lies
down with the lamb
66
he is a carnival
figure made of papier mache and crepe hair
67
as if his master
were the clumsy doll and he the ventriloquist
68
for now my skin was
my sole capital in the world and today i'd make my first investment
69
the artificial masterpiece
of his face appals me
70
my masters sole desire is
to see the pretty young lady unclothed nude without her dress
71
a cell had been prepared for me
a veritable cell, window-less, airless, lightless, in the viscera of the palace
72
all the best religions in the world
state categorically that not beasts nor women were equipped
73
the clockwork girl who
powdered my cheeks for me: had i not been alloted only the same kind of imitative life amongst men that the doll-maker had given her?
74
the lamb must
learn to run with the tigers
75
i felt as much atrocious
pain as if i was stripping off my own underpelt
76
more like the marketplace
where the eyes that watch you take no account of your existence
77
he went still as stone
he was far more frightened of me than i was of him
78
and each stroke of his tongue
ripped of skin after successive skin, all the skins of a life in the world, and left behind a nascent patina of shining hairs
79
the sweetest singers
he will keep in cages
80
i feel your sharp
teeth in the subaqueous depths of your kisses
81
he strips me to my last
nakedness, that underskin of mauve, pearlized satin, like a skinned rabbit; then dresses me again in an embrace so lucid and encompassing it might be made of water
82
his touch both
consoles and devastates me
83
i go back and back to him to have
his fingers strip the tattered skin away and clothe me in his dress of water
84
your green eye is a
reducing chamber. if i look into it long enough, i will become as small as my own reflection
85
lullabies for
foolish virgins
86
then she will open all the cages
and let the birds free; they will change back into young girls
87
the beautiful sonambulist
helplessly perpetuates her ancestral crimes
88
girl who is both
death and the maiden
89
she is the last bud
of the poison tree that sprang from the loins of Vlad the Impaler
90
her keeper
lets her out into the garden
91
she will creep home
hunger
a small cry of both
whimpering, with blood smeared on her cheeks
always overcomes her
pain and disgust
92
when she takes them by the
hand and leads them to her bedroom, they can scarcely believe their luck
93
power in
potentia
(virginity- lothol)
94
the old lady unlocked the door
which swung back on melodramatically creaking hinges
95
he saw the girl who wore
the dress, a girl with the fragility of the skeleton of a moth
a self-articulated garment
96
he thought of a child dressing
up in her mother's clothes
97
he was disturbed, almost repelled
by her extraordinarily fleshy mouth... a whore's mouth
98
her voice is curiously
disembodies; she is like a doll, he thought, a ventriloquist's doll, or, ,ore, like a great, ingenious piece of clockwork
the idea that she might be an automaton
99
she has fumbled the ritual
it is no longer inexorable. the mechanism within her fails her
100
he is an exorcism...
and so he puts his mouth to the wound. he will kiss it better for her, as her mother, had she lives, would have done
101
now you could see how
tawdry it all was... as in a theatre
102
in death she looked
far older, less beautiful and so, for the first time, fully human
103
here, take your
father's hunting knife; you know how to use it
104
i wish i were a wolf again
to teach this whore a lesson!
105
the pelt peeled off again
and he was just as he had been, years ago, when he ran away from his marriage bed, so that she wept and her second husband beat her
106
within the invisible pentacle of
her own virginity. she is an unbroken egg she is a sealed vessel
107
the wolf is carnivore
incarnate
108
he carefully put on the bed
instead of the tell-tale stained ones he stowed away in the laundry basket
109
she knew the worst
wolves are hairy on the inside
110
it is christmas day
the werewolves' birthday
111
she inhabits only the present tense
a fugue of the continuous, a world of sensual immediacy
112
wolf alice looked at herself
in the mirror and wondered whether there she saw the beast who came to bite her in the night
113
she leapt upon his bed to lick
without hesitation, without disgust, with a quick, tender gravity, the blood and dirt from his cheeks and forehead
the rational glass
