The Bloody Chamber

After completing The Bloody Chamber, I shall use this blog to reflect upon it (this is by no means being forced by Mr. Francis :P ). Well, I guess the thing that most struck me about this short story is how it can be interpreted as a feminist story.

One reason I think this is because of the two main male characters within the book, the Marquis and the piano tuner. The Marquis is a cruel, sadistic murderer who treats all of his wives rather meanly (e.g killing and attempting to kill them). Whereas the Piano tuner is a far nicer character who is kind to the young bride and even sticks by her as she goes down to meet the psychotic Marquis. According to Laura Mulvey, the moment that men look at women they subconsciously hate and oppress them- and this is what the Marquis does to his wives, he controls them and eventually murders them. This theory is backed up by the fact that the Piano Tuner is blind, he cannot see the narrator and so that is why he does not hate and oppress her.

The mother of the narrator is a very prominent figure in the novel, she is portrayed as a very strong character, from the beginning we are told that she, “outfaced a junkful of Chinese pirates, nursed a village through a visitation of the plague, shot a man-eating tiger.” These are all very dangerous, heroic and assertive things to do- she is portrayed perhaps in a stereotypical role of a male. The mother acts as a role model for her daughter, who is far less assertive. In fact the narrator is a pushover and is not even given a name- she is that insignificant. She allows the Marquis to control her and is even so obedient that when he tells her to come down to the courtyard for him to kill her- she goes!

It is also possible to link the Madonna/Whore complex to this short story as when we see inside the bloody chamber, we see that the Marquis has dressed his dead wives in their bridal clothes. This is because this is the last time his wives were virginal and pure- after this, in male’s eyes women are whores and so by dressing the women as for their wedding the Marquis is seeing them as the Madonna. This is backed up as the Marquis refers to his newest bride as a, “whore.”