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Sadiya
2/9/2015 05:57:11 pm
In ‘The Bloody Chamber’, Carter distorts the institution of marriage through the sinister relationship of the Marquis and the narrator. The Marquis does not fit in the ideal image of a husband since he lacks attributes such as being caring or supportive but instead objectifies his wife by gaining ownership through the ‘ruby chokers’ he ties around the narrator’s neck. ‘The ruby chokers’ in this story are a symbol of sexual possession and also foreshadows the Marquis’s sinister intention of decapitating the narrator. Even though jewels are used for adornment and decoration purposes, in this case, it is symbolic to a leach a master puts around their pet’s collar. Through this, Carter exploits how women are degraded in relationship such as marriage to a point where they are considered subhuman. Since Carter is a feminist, it could be said that Carter is arguing a radical feminist point of view of how marriage puts women in a weaker position.
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Jaspreet
2/10/2015 07:08:45 pm
Similar to “The Bloody Chamber”, the Countess’s actions have derived from her ancestors. Carter presents a sinister distortion of family relationship through the relationship between the Countess and her ancestors, which represents Carter’s critique of a patriarchal society, but also how families can also play a part in the construction of thought and actions of an individual. The Countess is expressed as being a girl who is both ‘death and the maiden’, creating a blurred image of life and death, making her existence irrational, but also alluding to the lack of control she possesses over her own existence. The sinister nature that is prevalent within the story derives from the control her ancestors have over her, who ‘condemn her to a perpetual repetition of their passions’, illustrating an individual forced against their own will to carry out the actions their ancestors desperately desire, living a ‘posthumous existence’ perpetuated by her ancestors. Therefore, any power the Countess is instilled with by Carter is dismantled as non-existent, as the Countess becomes a puppet at the service of a patriarchal system that dictates her behaviour, but also expresses society’s prioritising beauty as a means of acceptance within the order which sees the Countess become the victim of ‘her disorder, of her soullessness’ as a vampire. In a way Carter deconstructs beauty in the story through the description of the Countess beauty, ‘she is so beautiful she is unnatural; her beauty is an abnormality, a deformity’, her beauty is so artificial that it represents the ugliness of society in its unhealthiest of preserving traditional values. Carter uses the supernatural vampire as a means of suggesting that society’s traditional values are like a disease that blurs the boundaries of death and life.
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