The Bloody Chamber Angela Carter

The definition of the word “power” is “possession of control, authority, or influence over others” and the word “knowledge” as “the fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association”. In The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter, knowledge and power correlate with the class struggles of society. Angela Carter wrote The Bloody Chamber in 1979, Carter saw how the upper class and the lower class lived and, it seems that she attempts to exploit the lower and higher classes.

The Bloody Chamber reflects the struggle between the two classes. In The Bloody Chamber, the Marquis uses his societal status to assert power over others, especially the heroine.

In The Bloody Chamber, the Marquis is considered to be powerful because of his social status. At the beginning of the story, the heroine is speaking to her mother about marrying the Marquis. The heroine’s mother asks her “Are you sure you love him?” the heroine replies with “I am sure I want to marry him.

” The heroine and her mother were of a lower class than the Marquis, the heroine’s mother married for love and ended up becoming poor because her husband died at war. This signifies the power that the Marquis holds over the heroine already. She is so desperate to marry out of her social class that she is willing to not marry for love. When the Marquis and the heroine exit the train car, the heroine says “Oh, the wonder of it; how all that might of iron and steam had paused only to suit his convenience.

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The richest man in France.”

The heroine says this because there is a certain power that the Marquis holds, that even the smoke from the train respects his presence. She also references his wealth, as she calls him “the richest man in France.” This shows that even the heroine recognizes that the Marquis has a powerful influence because of his money. The Marquis is considered high class because of his wealth which means that he can control the heroine as if she is an object. The heroine is innocent and low class, while the Marquis is experienced and powerful. The Marquis makes it known that the heroine is his property, when they met the Chauffer she said, “My husband liked me to wear my opal over my kid glove, a showy, theatrical trick–but the moment the ironic chauffeur glimpsed its simmering flash he smiled, as though it was proof positive I was his master’s wife”.

The Marquis makes the heroine wear her wedding ring over her glove just to make it known that she belongs to him. The heroine also refers to the Marquis as the chauffer’s “master” which is again expressing his dominance to the lower-class workers. The Marquis also gives a ruby choker to the heroine. The heroine describes the choker as a “choker of rubies, two inches wide, like an extraordinarily precious slit throat…bright as arterial blood.” This is a useful method of representing the Marquis’s power because the necklace acts as a collar. This signifies how the Marquis behaves like the heroine’s master. Another example of the Marquis expressing this power is when the Marquis takes the heroine’s virginity. The Marquis is treated her as if she were an object. There was no sort of care in his actions, she compared his undressing her to “stripping the leaves off an artichoke”. The Marquis also tells the heroine to wear the choker before consummating their marriage; in relation to power, this shows how the Marquis has the right to her body.

The Marquis views the heroine as innocent and pure, that is what has drawn him to her in the first place. The Marquis think of the heroine almost as a child, too pure for the world. When the Marquis refers to the heroine, he refers to her as “My dear one, my little love, my child, did it hurt her? He’s so sorry for it, such impetuousness, he could not help himself; you see, he loves her so…”. The Marquis speaks as if the heroine was a child, he again is asserting his power over her. The Marquis is drawn to the heroine because of her innocence, so he feels that he is of a higher status so he can speak to her in such away. On the night of the heroine and Marquis’ honeymoon, the Marquis is suddenly called to leave France for business for at least six weeks. Just before he leaves, the Marquis decides to give the heroine a set of keys to the castle. The heroine is given free rein of the castle except, just before he leaves the Marquis says “All is yours; everywhere is open to you except the lock that this single key fits.’

There is one door that the heroine is not permitted to enter, the Marquis hands her the key to that specific door separately. The key provides the heroin with access to the knowledge the Marquis conceals in the chamber. By giving her the keys, the Marquis is almost challenging the heroine. He wants to see if she will defy his request and go into the forbidden chamber anyway. The Marquis tells the heroin “the key is to my enfer”. An enfer is Hell and even with this warning, the heroine defies the Marquis by entering the forbidden chamber. The heroine defies her role in society to stay in her own little bubble and obey her husband. This further links to the conflict that the people of the lower classes are given a false sense of power and control within their life when given the opportunity to do something. When the heroine decides to disobey the Marquis and enter the forbidden room she is disobeying every societal rule. When she enters the room she discovers the Marquis’s deepest secret, the bodies of his previous wives who disobeyed him. What she finds shocks her so much that she drops the key to the room in a pool of blood and flees.

The reason the heroine entered the room despite the Marquis’s orders was that she wanted to feel power over him. The power she grasped did not last long, because the “heart-shaped stain” on the key reveals her actions to the Marquis. When the Marquis learns of her betrayal and how she fell into his trap the Marquis orders the Heroine to kneel before him while “he pressed the key to her forehead”. This reinforces the Marquis’s authority because people usually kneel before people of a higher status. In the story, this relates to the idea of the Marquis embodying God-like features and the supremacy he exhibits. In relation to power, Carter also implies a reference to the Garden of Eden, as the heroine’s temptation to explore the Chamber links to how Eve ate the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. This is later echoed when the Marquis learns of the heroin’s disobedience. The Marquis sentences the heroine to death with the ruby choker. In addition to this, The Marquis transferring the stain onto her forehead is also a physical representation of this.

This mark of power is permanent as “No paint nor powder, no matter how thick or white, can mask that red mark”. The everlasting stain is symbolic to how the Marquis has physically left a reminder of his power on the Heroine However, at the end of the story the heroin’s mother shoots down the Marquis. The actions of the heroine however can be read as a representation of a victory for the struggling classes. Living with the blind piano tuner and her rescuing mother, the girl finds herself spending a significant sum of her money inherited through the Marquis and his castle on charity. The comparison of the behaviors of the Marquis and the heroine can be contrasted. The Marquis merely slaughters those who see into the darkness of his chamber-room, where all have gone in none have left the castle and the Marquis only shares his wealth in order to continue his sadistic acts.

The heroin in comparison shares her realization of the events and shares her wealth. By doing so it’s arguable the heroine is less concealed by the gains of self-based riches. In conclusion, The Bloody Chamber has a bit of a Marxist message to it, seen whenever the Marquis uses his status as power over the heroine. The heroine is also viewed as passive in the story’s ending and the mark that stays upon her forehead does not allow for a true sense of relief at the end of the story. Carter’s stories are never black and white; there are Marxist qualities to the happy ever after ending, but not necessarily in the way, one would expect.