The Bloody Chamber

Carter's first story, 'The Bloody Chamber' was an interpretation of the original 'Blue-beard' tale. The original tale talks about the antagonist as a man who was characterized by his blue beard, and people avoided him because all the women he married never came back out again. So after his newest victim, he goes out into the town and tries to take in one of the two sisters of a lowly house to be his bride, and the younger one reluctantly agrees and goes to the castle as his new bride. The bride discovers the bloody chamber, the key is dropped, the stain doesn't dissapear, 'Blue-beard' finds out and swears to kill the bride, the bride goes onto the highest tower, locks herself in and calls for help, blue beard breaks down door with sword and when he's about to kill the woman the woman's two brothers come in and save the day and all the money gets passed to the woman and they live happily ever after.

uh huh


It's not the best tale, and it has a sour-note to reading it (as does most tales in the past), it's as if the writers wanted other authors to create their own version of the fairy tale.

I am a personal fan of authors who can twist old legends, fairy-tales and myths into a world that has these character's evolved into a fully fledged human being with emotions. Carter, Instead of putting us at a distance and letting us read the story with a very shallow perspective, allows us to see through the perspective of these characters. Being able to feel the bride's almost desperate state of confusion between the loyalty to her husband and with her own instincts, the horror of discovering the corpses of the husband's previous wives; it all comes alive with much more poignancy and I loved that. Being able to put in character's or shift character's to create a symbolism of the feminant and the realistic, but preserving the mystic with the blood-stained key... I could go on about it, but all I can say is that Carter's work was a very fun read.