The Bloody Chamber

TITLE | SUMMARY | KEY QUOTES | The Bloody Chamber | A young girl travels on a train to her husband- the Marquis. While at his French castle, she learns that he takes enjoyment in her embarrassment. She is a pianist- a blind piano tuner hears her playing and falls in love with her. The Marquis tells her that he is leaving on business, forbidding her to enter one particular room. She enters the perverse room, encountering all the dead bodies of his previous wives. The girl realises that the Marquis tricked her and plans to add her to his collection. Her and the piano tuner band together in the hopes of defeating him. The Marquis returns home early to find that she has discovered the room, and tries to behead her. At the seemingly last moment, the girl’s mother arrives, shooting the Marquis and saving her daughter. With the Marquis now dead, the girl, her mother and the piano tuner go on to live together. | 'That magic place, the fairy castle whose walls are made of foam' – naivety of the protagonist, she has unreal expectations of marriage. Isolation and supernatural setting. 'Saw his dolls break free of their strings' – Objectification of women. The Marquis’s control."Are you sure you love him?" "I'm sure I want to marry him." – Distortion of love."Leonine" – motif runs through number of stories, shows men to be predatory and dominant."The monocle had fallen from his face." – represents the falling away of societal graces, revealing his true nature."A dozen husbands impaled a dozen brides." – Violent imagery of stabbing, sexual connotations serve to repulse and shock the reader, adding to the Gothic. | The Courtship of Mr Lyon | Beauty waits at home for her father who has gotten stuck in a snow storm. Car troubles cause the father to approach the beast’s house, in which he is amazed at its apparent ghost door- letting him in and out. Appearing that there is no one home, the father turns to leave. Noticing a pure white rose (of which he promised to Beauty but