The Bloody Chamber - The Lady of the House of Love
DEPICTIONS OF EVIL/GOOD
Ancestors:
“subtle and vindictive inhabitants”
“demented and atrocious ancestors” “blubber lips” “demented eyes”
The Countess:
“queen of the vampires”
“white lace neglige stained a little with blood”
“teeth as fine and white as spikes of spun sugar”
“my darkness” “I thought, perhaps, you might irradiate it”
The Hero:
“youth and strength and blond beauty” “pentacle of his virginity”
“immune to shadow, due to his virginity”
“his heroism, which makes him like the sun” “he cannot feel terror”
(isol line) “This lack of imagination gives heroism to the hero”
“he would like to take her into his arms and protect her”
SUPERNATURAL
“sobbing in a derelict bedroom where a cracked mirror … does not reflect a presence”
“ghostly occupants”
“her voice is curiously disembodied” “like a doll” “ventriloquist’s doll” “great, ingenious piece of clockwork”
“no mouth with which to kiss, no hands with which to caress, only the fangs and talons of a beast of prey”
“fundamental disbelief”
“petals had regained all their former bloom”
PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTORTION
“the blood on the Countess’ cheeks will be mixed with tears”
“brusquely reminded himself that he was no child, now”
“he sharply reprimanded himself for his own childish lack of enthusiasm”
HORROR AND TERROR
“hereditary commandant of the army of shadows” “who make the milk curdle”
“What a grisly picture of a capering skeleton!”
“fatal embrace” “the bridegroom bleeds on my inverted marriage bed”
“monstrous flower” “corrupt, brilliant, baleful splendour”
FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE
“their swooning odour, that breathes lasciviously of forbidden pleasures”
“ceaselessly construing a constellation of possibilities”
“he would dazzle her like the sun she is forbidden to look at”
“retaining all about you the golden light of summer’s day of which I know nothing, nothing”
“so fingered, so soiled, so worn” “no longer make the image out on any single one of them”
FRIGHTENING ATMOSPHERE AND IMAGES
“too many shadows” “shadows” x2
“centuries of corpses” “last bud of the poison tree”
“blast of rich, faintly corrupt sweetness strong enough, almost, to fell him”
“too many roses. too many roses bloomed” “remains”
DRAMATIC TENSION
“now you are at the place of annihilation” x4
“it was too late to turn back”
“does not yet know what there is to be afraid of”
“Suivez-moi, je vous attendais, vous serez ma proie”
“the handsome bicyclist, scarcely believing his luck, will follow her into her bedroom”
“she knows no other consummation than the only one she can give him”
MASCULINE/FEMININE
“perennial sadness of a girl who is both death and the maiden”
“beautiful and ghastly lady” “queen of night, queen of terror” “Countess” “horrible reluctance for the role”
“tenebrous belle”
“but now she is a woman, she must have men”
“she would like to caress their lean brown cheeks and stroke their ragged hair”
“the fragility of the skeleton of a moth, so thin, so frail”
“bedizened scarecrow” “lovely death’s head”
“shipwrecked bride” “huge dark eyes” “waiflike, lost look”
“extraordinarily fleshy mouth” “vibrant purplish-crimson” “morbid mouth”
“blond, blue-eyed, heavy-muscled”
“the special quality of virginity, most and least ambiguous of states” “power in potentia”
ENTRAPMENT
“she likes to hear it announce how it cannot escape”
VAMPIRES/THE BEASTLY
“until she grows hungry, until she grows ravenous”
“her beauty is an abnormality, a deformity”
“symptom of her disorder, of her soullessness”
“sniff the air and howl” “on all fours” “crouching, quivering” “scent of her prey” “huntress” “poor night bird, poor butcher bird”
MURDER/DEATH/DAMNATION
“beautiful somnambulist helplessly perpetuates her ancestral crimes”
“a cave full of echoes, she is a system of repetitions, she is a closed circuit”
“her inevitable Tarot”
“visible signs of the destiny she wistfully attempts to evade”
“constantly constructing hypotheses about a future which is irreversible”
“you will follow her”
“history has already prepared a special, exemplary fate in the trenches of France”
“I am condemned to solitude and dark; I do not mean to hurt you” (2nd part x2)
INTERTEXTUALITY
“La Papesse, La Mort, La Tour Abolie, wisdom, death, dissolution”
“a single kiss woke up the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood”
“Les Amoureux. Never, never before… never before has the Countess cast herself a fate involving love”
“curiouser and curiouser”
“(One kiss, however, and only one, woke up the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood)”
GOTHIC SENSATIONALISM VS REALISM (Sensationalism: lust, horror, disgust, shock, opposite of sentimentalism)
“somehow obscene in their excess” “outrageous in their implications”
“protection against superstitious fears” “pure reason applied to motion”
“two-wheeled symbol of rationality vanish into the dark entrails of the mansion”
LIMINALITY
“the path too steep to ride” “hungry, thirsty, weary, dusty”
“a hand of love and death”
“delicate and damned”
“the mysterious solitude of ambiguous states”
“she hovers in a no-man’s land between life and death, sleeping and waking”
“special quality of virginity, most and least ambiguous of states”
TRANSFORMATIONS
‘Can a bird sing only the song it knows or can it learn a new song?’ x2
“(And could love free me from the shadows?)”
“light and air streamed in; now you could see how tawdry it all was”
“its ecstatic morning song” “up and away into the clear blue bowl of the heavens”
“clinic” “eye specialist” “dentist” “manicurist”
“we shall turn her into the lovely girl she is; I shall cure her of all these nightmares”
“the end of exile is the end of being”
“far older, less beautiful, and so, for the first time, fully human”
“I will vanish in the morning light; I was only an invention of darkness”
SETTINGS
“dark red figured wallpaper is obscurely, distressingly patterned by the rain”
“this ornate and rotting place” “mistress of all this disintegration notices nothing”
“resemblance to a burial ground” “a huge, spiked wall that incarcerates her”
“the Countess’ larder”
“beauty of the flaming sunset” “bright, clear water”
“subtle and haunting light” “immense, rambling, a dilapidated eagle’s nest”
“the dark portals of the fatal castle”
“ritual” “wicked spell” “vile and murderous room”
NOTE: I didn't learn all of these for the exam, neither should this be considered a total, complete list. Just a handy selection of quotes that I found covered most of the main themes of The Lady of The House of Love by Angela Carter!
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