Feminist Literature: Bloody Chamber, Essay Example

Introduction

The story depicted in the “Bloody Chamber” by Angela Carter is a truly feminist narrative. It describes the events from the woman’s perspective, and reflects on the role of the female in society, marriage, and economics. As De Beauvoir states: feminist writing is a way of fighting for women’s rights to have their own perspective and opinion (De Beauvoir 16). The “Bloody Chamber” is intending to “unravel the world” from a woman’s perspective.

The story

The author retells the story of Blue Beard; a folk tale. Something that starts off as a modern story turns into a scary tale. Interestingly, the heroine of the “Bloody Chamber” is keen on music and opera. Indeed, her husband takes her to the opera to “sit in the box” before they get married. One cannot help but remember the Opera written by Hungarian composer Bartok: “Duke Bluebeard’s Castle”. She sees the man as superior to her, and obeys apart from one thing: opening the bloody chamber. When she does, she realizes that indeed she married a monster; only that it is too late, as the man tries to kill him. If her mother does not turn up in time, she would end up like the other wives of her husband.

The woman as an accessory

Throughout the narrative of the “Bloody Chamber”, the narrator is trying to accept the fact that she is only an accessory to the man she married. She is not happy with the trade, but she loves the man, and hopes that she can be happy. All we know about her is that she is the daughter of a widow, and her mother had been struggling to provide her and send her to music school. She is not used to vanity, and has an honest attitude towards people. She accepts that her fate is in her husband’s hands. As De Beauvoir states: men have the “upper hand”. In women’s eyes, men seem to have a “demigod” status (De Beauvoir 24). However, she is emotional; she reflects on the events, her own feelings, and the behavior of her husband. Riley (1) states that the meaning of the word: “woman” is “historically, discursively constructed”, and it is a volatile category. Indeed, every piece of feminist writing is attempting to “deconstruct” and “reconstruct” the meaning of the word: “woman”. As the author states: “socialist feminism has always tended to claim that women are socially produced” (Riley 2). In the story, the heroine becomes someone else because of her marriage to the Marquis; she even takes on “vanity” after being presented with valuable gifts. Other arguments that the author mentions state that women are positioned by their interactions and communication styles. Indeed, in the story, the husband treats the heroine as a type of commodity; he indeed looks at all his wives as tools to fulfill his sick desires. In the end scene, when he is preparing to kill her, he states: “It will serve me for a dozen more fiancees” (Carter 35). In other places, the author describes the husband’s attitude towards the woman of his life as “rational”: “He stripped me, gourmand that he was, as if he were stripping the leaves off an artichoke – but do not imagine much finesse about it; this artichoke was no particular treat for the diner nor was he yet in any greedy haste” (Carter, 10). The heroine’s discontent with this treatment is clear through the narrative. Deep inside, she does not want to be the same as the husband, but – as De Beauvoir states: different but equal. We witness something that Riley (17) describes as “dangerous intimacy between subjectification and subjection”.  While in the original tale of Blue Beard, and the opera, the narrative suggests that – based on male norms of behavior and perception – the woman committed a sin because she looked in the “bloody chamber”, in Carter’s story, the norms are not masculine any more. Indeed, the piano tuner, who becomes her lover tells the heroine: “You disobeyed him… That is sufficient reason for him to punish you.” (Carter 34). By stating that, he admits that men’s views and norms should not be superior to women’s. He confirms that the heroine does not have to accept orders just because they come from a man. Going back to De Beauvoir, the expression of feminism is visible through rebelling against being a subject.

The narrator’s mother is the character who goes against standard gender roles the most. While her intuition is a feminine quality, she acts like a man when she pulls out the gun and kills the monster. She is supposed to take a passive role, but instead she acts as a superior. In traditional narrative, in particular medieval Troubadour literature, the role of the “savior” is assigned to a strong male character. In this case, the mother takes on the responsibility to save the maiden from the monster.

Women’s feelings

Men predominantly talk about actions and achievements, while women converse on a more emotional level, according to feminist theorists. The fact that Carter chooses to describe a well-known story from a woman’s perspective is interesting, as she- as a woman pays less attention to facts and times, and more to sensations, smells, feelings, and even intuition. If the reader looks at the description of the choker necklace first appearing in the beginning of the story, it is clear that the future events are reflected upon the description. This type of narrative confirms that the “Bloody Chamber” is a truly feminine story, and could not have been written by a man. Intuition as a female “quality” plays an even more important role in the story: the heroine’s mother simply senses that something is not right. She gets on the next ship and turns up just in time to save her daughter. This “feminine” quality is deciding the outcome of the story, and confirms that indeed, women are “different but equal”.

Deconstructing good and evil

Özüm (2) states that Carter in all stories, but in particular in the “Bloody Chamber” reconstructs the conventions governing certain social behaviour for women”. The young innocent woman is supposed to be the good and take on the role of the “martyr” without knowing anything about the pervert desires of the husband. Indeed, this is not the case. When the heroine finds the book on a sexual topic, she says: “I knew enough for what I saw in that book to make me gasp” (Carter 17). She is indeed, not as innocent as the husband thinks, while she is a virgin. She does find the blind piano tuner (closer to her age) attractive, and later she marries him. Indeed, when describing trying on the necklace, she says: “I sensed in myself a potentiality for corruption that took my breath away”. She is a woman, and not the same person that her husband imagines her to be. She knows that her greatest asset is her virginity, and her husband placed lilies in her chamber to match her innocence.

The “evil” character of the husband, is also more complicated than it would be in a story written by a male writer. He is not always superior to the woman, and indeed, he is not flawless. While traditional narratives usually depict women as those who have a certain place and never have the “upper hand”, it is not the case in the “Bloody Chamber”. When Carter describes the husband as the heroine sees him, his superiority is shaken: “I felt there emanate from him, at that moment, a stench of absolute despair, rank and ghastly, as if the lilies that surrounded him had all at once begun to fester” (Carter 32).

Indeed, the Marquis can be seen as a victim of his own desires, madness, or the role that was assigned to him by his ancestors. The piano tuner tells the heroine that stories had been going around about men of the Marquis’ family chasing women through the forest and decapitating them. He might be a victim of a curse, an uncontrollable power. Indeed, in most writings, women are victims of other people’s wills, their weakness, vanity, procrastination, or limitations of their sex. In the “Bloody Chamber”, while the heroine is victimized, she comes out as a winner: she inherits the castle, and is able to fulfill her dream of marrying for love, looking after those disadvantaged, and teaching students to play the piano. In the end of the story, she has the “upper hand”. None of the main characters of Carter’s story are over-simplified: she refuses to use traditional stereotypes to describe “males” and “females”, and that is why the “Bloody Chamber” is a truly feminist work.

Feminine voice

The story uses several subjective expressions that would not have a role in a writing produced by men. She remembers smells, colors, sensations, and movements more than a man would ever be able to. The depiction of the change of the tide, and mentioning it throughout the story is a feminine aspect that indicates that the heroine is in charge of the narrative; she is the one who shows the events to the reader through her own eyes. She is not simply implying that she “needs to marry” the man. When her mother asks her, if she loves him, she answers: “I’m sure I want to marry him,” (Carter 2).

The vivid description of the characters, the events, and the surroundings is also specific to female characters. She does not only want to know the “facts”, but wants to know her husband, and this is the main reason why she rummages through the study and visits the “bloody chamber”. She is interested in the person behind the title and the business affairs. Even when she is facing death, she observes the man to try and determine his feelings: “he face that turned towards me contained a sombre delirium that seemed to me compounded of a ghastly, yes, shame but also of a terrible, guilty joy as he slowly ascertained how I had sinned” (Carter 32). A male character would simply label the villain as “evil”. The heroine, however, tries to understand the motivations behind his actions. She is more interested in the emotions of the person than the actions.

Feminine narrative

In the story of “Bloody Chamber” the heroine pays more attention to the past and the present than the future. While her husband is setting her a trap so she visits the chamber, she is too pre-occupied with enjoying the benefits of having servants and getting what she wants that she fails to notice it. She realizes that there is no use fighting back. While a man would have fought for his freedom and life, she simply asks: “What form shall it take?” (Carter 32). While accepting fate might be a feminine aspect of her personality, the sharp question, straight to the point indicates determination and masculinity. Men ask simple questions about “what”, “how”, and “when”. Women, according to social norms and stereotypes are supposed to beg, cry, trick men into doing what they want them to. However, the heroine knows that there is only one hope: she waits until she finds out whether or not she can be saved.

The woman notices the smell of the flowers, the glass jar distorting the image, and creates sensory descriptions of the scenes. She can “imagine” the face that once covered the skull when she visits the chamber. She is shocked, but tries to understand the “monster” who created the evil chamber that was a place of torture and death for many women. She tries to understand the feelings and motivations of the man she married. She states that it is understandable that today the man should not hunt for women in the forest, like his ancestors, but do the “hunting” in the salons. She is intuitive, and this shows through the whole story. She reflects on her fate as follows: “Except that, in my heart, I’d always known its lord would be the death of me” (Carter 29). She even tries to understand the monster and analyze him when she is sure to near her death. She sees him, standing over her with the sword as if he was watching Tristan; feeling like the puppet-maker who sees the creatures break free. The woman breaks free, he loses control over her before he would lose his mind. This emotional scene is carved into the memory of the narrator as vividly as it can be.

Conclusion

The story of the “Bloody Chamber” depicts male and female characters in a unique way. They are more complex than one would expect them to be described. There is no clear boundary between “victim” and “villain” any more. Both main characters take on an active and passive role alike. Indeed, this movement is something that Christian describes as going against “tendency towards the monolithic, monotheistic, etc., which worries me about the race for theory. Constructs like the center and the periphery reveal that tendency to want to make the world less complex by organizing it according to one principle, to fix it through an idea

which is really an ideal”. While the author talks about race theories, it can be applied to gender theories and feminism as well. Questioning the statement that women have “pre-assigned” roles that are determined by social norms, methods of socialization, and implying that individual personality traits can influence one’s behavior, independent of their gender is what modern feminist narrative is about. Confronting roles assigned to different sexes is represented throughout the story that is a great example of modern feminist writing.

Works Cited

Beauvoir, De Simone “The Second Sex” 1949, 1989. Print.

Carter, Angela. “The Bloody Chamber” 2007. Print.

Christian, Barbara. “The Race for Theory”. In: Cultural Critique. No. 6. The Nature of Minority Discourse. Spring, 1987. Print.

Özüm, Aytul. “Deconstructed Masculine Evil in Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber Stories”. In: Billias, N. (ed.) Promoting and producing Evil. 2010. Print.

Riley, Denise. “Am I That Name? Feminism and the Category of “Women” in History”. Jacqueline Rose History Workshop No. 29 (Spring, 1990), pp. 159-162. 1990. Print.