Blog #8
Blog #8
“My husband stood stock-still, as if she had been Medusa, the sword still raised over his head as in those clockwork tableaux of Bluebeard that you see in glass cases at fairs.”
The Bloody Chamber, p 973
Throughout the descriptive story “The Bloody Chamber”, and “Bluebeard”, the amount of suspense and descriptive language where what stood out in both stories. A primary example that had a large effect on the reader’s reaction was the marquis’ character:
In “The Bloody Chamber”, the marquis has the power of wealth. Through this, he installs fear in his wife due to his control of everyone around him. He is described as having a face with the same expression like a mask: which is later portrayed in a pornographic book that she stumbles upon: ‘Immolation of the wives of the Sultan’. A painting of “a girl with tears hanging on her cheeks like stuck pearls […] while a man in a black mask fingered with his free hand his prick, that curved upwards like the scimitar he held” (959). Through this image the wife and readers are immediately brought to the attention of his evil and pervasive side that is hidden from society.
In comparison, “Bluebeard” was a character that society feared, and cast him aside. His lower status, his bluebeard, his frightfully ugly face, and disappearing wives made people weary of such a different man. His charm made him less intimidating, which in turn his wife overlooked the hideous bluebeard and fell for him. Through his character, there is less mystery due to the fact that society had already labeled him as a danger to people.
Bluebeard’s character puts him in the position as being revengeful to society. Due to the pain he had suffered throughout his lifetime, he does not forgive judgment against himself; therefore, he is satisfied by “the displeasure of many maiden”. Whereas, the husband from “The Bloody Chamber” had a successful life that still couldn’t overpower his need to dominate over women.
St. Cecelia was a patron saint of musicians and of the blind. She suffered from martyrdom, the burden of ones knowledge concerning an individual’s death due to their belief principle or cause.
The patrons dedication for musicians and the blind was representative in the intertexual allusion where both the widow and the piano tuner express their passion by giving back to the blind and turning an evil castle into something positive, such as a school for the blind.
Bloody Chamber question:
The marquis described in terms that link him to an animal:
-“He had the ring already in a leather box lined with crimson velvet, a fire opal the size of a pigeon’s egg set in a complicated circle of dark antique gold.”
-(Body of a Romanian countess) “The sharp muzzle of a pretty, witty; naughty monkey; such potent and bizarre charm, of a dark, bright, wild yet worldly thing whose natural habitat must have been some luxurious interior decorator’s jungle filled with potted palms and tame, squawking parakeets.”
-A lectern, carved like a spread eagle…”
-“A dozen husbands impaled a dozen brides while the mewing gulls swung on invisible trapezes in the empty air outside.”
-“I would always share these sheets with a man whose skin, as theirs did, contained that toad-like, clammy hint of moisture…”
-There was a Marquis, once, who used to hung young girls on the mainland: he hunted them with dogs, as though they were foxes.”