The Bloody Chamber

The book is divided thematically, with chapters focused on topics such as the power dynamics of sexual relationships, the importance of mirrors and ways of seeing for subjectivity, and the traditional locations for fairy tales (which Carter follows much of the time in her own stories). The first chapter, for example, opens by drawing attention to one of the “main themes” in Carter collections: “the initiation of a female protagonist into womanhood by placing her into a situation which requires power and resourcefulness.” Topping then observes that while the female characters of many of the “traditional stories” that Carter uses as a source are presented as “victims”, Carter herself gives her women more power and agency, thereby affecting a kind of feminist rewriting of past stories. Each chapter also considers Carter’s use of language, such as the “range of metaphors” used to describe the virginal heroine of ‘The Company of Wolves’: she is variously described as “a sealed vessel”, a “pentacle” and an “unbroken egg”. To take another example, Topping notes the “cleverly ambiguous” colour symbolism of the ruby choker that the marquis gives his new bride, for it is both “a dangerous ill omen” and a sign of survival, since the aristocrats who survived the Terror of the French Revolution used to wear a red ribbon as a way of signifying their escape from the guillotine.