The Bloody Chamber Quotes

Quotes - including settings, characters, themes, figurative techniques, narrative voice.

For stories of The Bloody Chamber, The Company of Wolves and The Snow Child.

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The Bloody Chamber

The Bloody Chamber

Quotes-

Settings

Characters

Themes

Figurative Techniques

Narrative Voice

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The Bloody Chamber

Settings

  • "that magic place, the fairy castle whose walls were made of foam"
  • "And, ah! his castle. The faery solitude of the place"-Castle=Adheres to the Gothic
  • "his castle that lay on the very bosom of the sea"
  • "cut off by the sea from land for half a day"-Entrapment= Also adheres to the Gothic
  • "a mysterious, amphibious place"
  • "The walls of this stark torture chamber were the naked rock"-Chamber= Adheres to the Gothic.
  • "into that dreadful place"-Menacing- typically Gothic
  • "It is the key that leads to the kingdom of the unimaginable"
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The Bloody Chamber

Characters

Narrator=

  • " I was seventeen"-Innocent= Typically gothic=virginal and innocent victims
  • "mouse coloured hair"
  • "My first thought, when I saw the ring for which I had sold myself to this fate, was how to escape it"

Marquis

  • "He was older than I"
  • "he was a big man"
  • "streaks of pure silver in his dark mane"
  • "The atrocious lonliness of that monster"
  • "His curling mane was disordered"
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Characters Continued...

Piano tuner

  • "He was blind of course"
  • "young, with a gentle mouth and grey eyes"

Mother

  • "My eagle-featured, indomitable mother"
  • "a wild thing as my mother"
  • "her hair was he white mane"
  • "clasped my father's service revolver"
  • "put a single, irreproachable bullet through my husband's head"= deviates from the gothic= Carter empowers the women within this story; as it is her mother who saves her not a young dashing hero!!
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The Bloody Chamber

Themes

  • Dreams= Can be seen to adhere to the gothic "I drifted into slumber...and chased bad dreams away.
  • Sleep= "I could not sleep" this may be seen to apply within some gothic novels
  • Death= It is a typical feature of the Gothic "The opera singer lay, quite naked...such as the princes of Italy used to shroud those whom they had poisoned" & "Decapitation" & "put a singe, irreproachable bullet through my husband's head"
  • Religion= "our last rites" & "holy books"-also can be seen to adhere to the Gothic.
  • Class= "Marquis" & "The chauffuer" & "housekeeper"
  • Isolation= " I felt a vague desolation that within me"
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The Bloody Chamber

Figurative Techniques

  • "red ribbon"= Colour- adheres to the Gothic
  • "black silk, with the dull, prismatic sheen of oil on water"= Colour- adheres to the Gothic
  • gallant soldier never returned"
  • "starburst of lights spattered"= Onomatopoeia
  • "like a lily"=Simile
  • "Possessed of that strange, ominous calm of a sentient vegetable, like one of those cobra-headed, funereal lilies whose white sheaths are curled out of a flesh as thick and tensely yielding to the touch as vellum"=Metaphor
  • "a fire opal the size of a pigeon's egg set in a complicated circle of antique gold"-descriptive
  • "clasped round my throat...A choker of rubies"-Colour red-adheres to the gothic
  • "the flashing crimson jewels round her throat, bright as arterial blood"=Similie
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The Bloody Chamber

Figurative Techniques continued...

  • "Not yet.Later.Anticipation is the greater part of pleasure, my little love"=Delaying
  • "red lips"
  • "It  was cold as ice"- Clique similie
  • "A dozen husbands impaled a dozen brides while the mewing gulls swung on invisible trapezes in the empty air outside"= Metaphor
  • "And I longed for him.And he disgusted me"= Irony
  • "My mother. I ran to the telephone; and the line, of course, was dead"
  • "can't it wait until morning, my darling"= Entrapment; Isolation
  • "The whizz of that heavy sword"= Descriptive
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The Bloody Chamber

Narrrative Voice

  • " I remember how"= First person
  • "the train that bore me through the night, away from paris, away from girlhood"= Journey-typical to the Gothic
  • "The train slowed, shuddered to a halt"=Journey
  • "Have this nasty picture scared Baby? Baby mustn't play with grownups' toys until she's learned how to handle them, must she"= Marquis- Mocking tone
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The Snow Child

Settings

  • "the whole world was white"
  • "Midwinter- invincible, immaculate"
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The Snow Child

Characters

  • Countess= "she wrapped in the glittering pelts if black foxes, and she wore high, black shining boots with scarlet heels and spurs" & "Now the countess was bare as a bone
  • Girl= "She stood beside the road, white sking, red mouth, black hair and stark naked" & "the girl was furred and booted"
  • Count= "Weeping, the count got off his horse, unfastened his breeches and thrust his virile member into the dead girl"
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The Snow Child

Themes

  • Good VS Evil = Countess- Evil "hated the young girl" & Young girl= Good
  • Death= "So the girl picks a rose; pricks her finger on the thorns; bleeds; screams; falls"
  • Class= "Count" & "Countess"= Aristocracy
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Figurative Techniques

Figurative Techniques

  • "Fresh snow fell on snow already fallen"- Entrapment/Isolation
  • "girl as white as snow; girl as red as blood; girl as black as that bird's feather"- Colours typically used in Gothic tales
  • "Then the girl began to melt. Soon there was nothing left of her but a feather a bird might have dropped"- Metamorphosis
  • "It bites= Ambiguous ending- typical to the Gothic
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The Snow Child

Narrative Voice

  • "The Count and his wife go riding"- Third person- not typically found within a Gothic tale.
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The Company of Wolves

Settings

  • "In this region of mountain and forest"
  • "It is winter and cold weather"
  • "The forest closed upon her like a pair of jaws"
  • "Grandmother's house stood by itself a little way out of the village"
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The Company of Wolves

Characters

  • "The wolf is carnivore incarnate"
  • "the eyes of wolves shine like candle flames, yellowish, reddish"
  • "terrible sequins"
  • "Those slavering jaws; the lolling tongue; the rime of saliva on the grizzled chops"
  • "a wolf came slinking out of the forest"
  • "The hunter jumped down after him, slit his throat, cut off all his paws for a trophy"
  • "strong minded child insists she will go off through the woods"
  • "youngest of her family"-typically gothic
  • "She has a knife and she is afraid of nothing"
  • "The girl burst out laughing; she knew she was nobody's meat"- deviates from the gothic- empowers women in the tale.
  • "Aged and frail"- Grandmother
  • "a young man, eyes like cinders, naked as a stone, approaching her bed"
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The Company of Wolves

Themes

  • Religion- "Congregation" & "She has her bible for company" & "now call on Christ" & " all the angels in heaven to protect you" & "sing to Jesus all day"
  • " ghosts, hobgoblins, orges that grill babies upon gridirons, witches that fatten their captives in cages for cannibal tables, the wolf is worst for he cannot listen to reason"
  • "She knew she should never leave the path on the way through the wood or else she would be lost instantly"
  • "sprang to the door, passing his back against it so that she could not get out again"
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The Company of Wolves

Figurative Techniques

  • "red for danger"- Color typically gothic
  • "unnatural green"
  • "forest assassins as they cluster invisibly around"
  • "They will be like shadows, they will be like wraiths"
  • "It is winter and cold weather"-Pathetic fallacy
  • "They are grey as famine, they are as unkind as plague"
  • "Their knives are half as big as they are"
  • "Quack, quack!"-Comic
  • "And then no wolf at all lay in front of the hunter but the bloody trunk of a man, headless, footless, dying, dead"
  • "The forest closed upon her like a pair of jaws"
  • "white teeth"
  • "As the day darkened, it began to snow again"-Pathetic fallacy
  • "This young man had a remarkable object in his pocket"-Suggestive
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The Company of Wolves

Figurative Techniques Continued...

  • "A kiss"-Flirtaous
  • "for she wanted to dawdle on her way to make sure the handsome gentleman would win his wager"
  • "The grandfather clock ticks away her eroding time"
  • "devasting eyes as red as a wound"-Simile
  • "infernal vermin"
  • "his feral muzzle is sharp as a knife"-Simile
  • "dark as poison knife"
  • "red as the blood she must spill"
  • "It is very cold"-Pathetic Fallacy
  • "scarlet shawl, the colour of poppies"- Colour associated with the Gothic
  • "her hair looked white as the snow outside"
  • "The blizzard will die down. The blizzard died down"-Entrapment
  • "See! sweet and sound she sleeps"-Alliteration
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The Company of Wolves

Narrative Voice

  • "Fear and flee the wolf; for, worst of all, the wolf may be more than he seems"- Instructive; dramatic irony-hints of what is to come!
  • "you must rung as if the Devil were after you"-Also instructive
  • "Granny lives two hours' trugde through the winter woods" Fairytale like quality
  • "Rat-a-tap-tap"- Comic and fairytale like
  • "What big eyes you have. All the better to see you with" Also fairytale like quality- Little Red Riding hood!
  • "I love the company of wolves"- The title of the tale; reference to the meaning of the tale.
  • "Midnight; and the clock strikes"
  • "It is Christmas Day, the werewolves birthday"
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Comments

FirdosB

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Very Useful, Thank you :)

Rachel

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Exactly what I was looking for thanks :)

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