Bloody Chamber Essay
Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, uses pornography to critique the inequity of sexual relationships between males and females by focusing on the objectification and violence inherent in normative sexual gender roles. The text analyses and exploits the style and language of pornography to satirize the objectification of women (Barry 1995: 126). Additionally, The Bloody Chamber integrates that if a through the objectification of the woman, she becomes the subject of violence. The only means of change is through self realization and self actualization, when she liberated from the position of dehumanization. Cater utilizes numerous literary devices, such as symbolism, imagery, and satire to scrutinize the relationship between the oppressed and objectified female and the dominant male.
The text uses the occurrence of sex as an act of aggression, erotic brutality, and dominance in which the male partner is seen as sadistic and the female partner is seen as oppressed. This is portrayed by The Marquis’ wives, both past and present, as he objectifies them by placing them on display, enabling him to manipulate and mold them to satisfy his perverse erotic tastes. Additionally, all of the female roles are unnamed, only referred to by jobs for example the Mother, the Opera Singer, the Evening Star Walking on the Rim of Night, and the Romanian Countess (Carter 1990: 4), drawing attention to the idea of gender inequity as the women are not worth of a name (Barry 1995: 126). The act of sexual objectification by The Marquis lends itself to interpretation as The Bloody Chamber depicts the darker side of sexual relationships, exploring the essentialist idea that men and women are different beings. The text symbolizes the inequality between men and women in the ‘[m]ost pornographic of all confrontations’ (Carter 1990: 8), through the satirical images by Felicien Rops, where a fully clothes man is sizing up a naked women as though she is “a lamb chop” (Carter 1990: 8). From the
The text uses the occurrence of sex as an act of aggression, erotic brutality, and dominance in which the male partner is seen as sadistic and the female partner is seen as oppressed. This is portrayed by The Marquis’ wives, both past and present, as he objectifies them by placing them on display, enabling him to manipulate and mold them to satisfy his perverse erotic tastes. Additionally, all of the female roles are unnamed, only referred to by jobs for example the Mother, the Opera Singer, the Evening Star Walking on the Rim of Night, and the Romanian Countess (Carter 1990: 4), drawing attention to the idea of gender inequity as the women are not worth of a name (Barry 1995: 126). The act of sexual objectification by The Marquis lends itself to interpretation as The Bloody Chamber depicts the darker side of sexual relationships, exploring the essentialist idea that men and women are different beings. The text symbolizes the inequality between men and women in the ‘[m]ost pornographic of all confrontations’ (Carter 1990: 8), through the satirical images by Felicien Rops, where a fully clothes man is sizing up a naked women as though she is “a lamb chop” (Carter 1990: 8). From the