How Is Imagery Used In The Bloody Chamber

Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber is a collection of short stories that illustrates the underlying theme of sexuality and violence involved in the traditional fairy tale. In “The Bloody Chamber” Carter uses stylistic devices to highlight the correlation between violence and romantic experiences which develops a theme of darkness. The stylistic devices the author uses are imagery, similes, and allusions.
In “The Bloody Chamber” Carter effectively uses blood imagery to convey how bloodthirst and passion intertwine. In the passage, the narrator discusses the French Revolution:
After the Terror, in the early days of the Directory, the aristos who'd escaped the guillotine had an ironic fad of tying a red ribbon round their necks at just the point where the blade would have sliced it through, a red ribbon like the memory of a wound. (11)
The author uses the allusion of the French Revolution to connect the French girl to a
The narrator alludes to the French artist, Redon: “Her face is common property; everyone painted her but the Redon engraving I liked best, The Evening Star Walking on the Rim of Night” (10). This allusion to Redon signifies that like the artist, her husband also has a dark side. Redon’s “Noirs” collection is described to be especially dark, like the Marquis. The Marquis supresses his dark side from the bride until she can find it out for herself. The Redon paining in the Marquis’ castle symbolizes that the castle is a place for pain. The narrator also alludes the opera Tristan: “The night before our wedding--a simple affair, at the Mairie, because his countess was so recently gone--he took my mother and me, curious coincidence, to see Tristan” (10). This opera is tragic romance. The opera, like the bride’s marriage will end unhappily. These allusions effectively develop the theme of brutality and tragedy that is unavoidable in the narrator’s