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Study 046 - The Bloody Chamber - Part 2 (Patreon)

Published:
2023-06-15 11:00:14
Imported:
2026-06
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Unlock the door and discover the horrors in The Bloody Chamber as we conclude our coverage of this Angela Carter classic.

Special thanks to our reader, Michelle Sawyer!

Here's that Spoon song we referenced: The Underdog!

Comments

Quantumchaos

"Looks over at the Galaga machine in the corner"

Richard Horsman

I think the phone is there to underlie that the ritual is stronger than modernity. It doesn't matter that modern tech and contemporary mores exist. The ritual is still going to play out. Carter underscores this by having the bride bring up Bluebeard automatons. This makes it explicit that the Bluebeard folktale exists in the world of The Bloody Chamber, but still the story unfolds, beat by beat. This is also what makes Carter unpopular in some strands of feminism: she loves the lure of the unhealthy, and the lived value found in it, whether it's a tool of patriarchy or not. Carter once told a student "My work cuts like a steel blade at the base of a man's penis," and that fits The Bloody Chamber. The ritual of marriage, deflowering, discovery, and condemnation is needed to give that moment of Bluebeard's execution true meaning. You could do a "cozy horror" version of Bluebeard I suppose, where a contemporary empowered woman saves herself, gets Bluebeard to trial, and puts him through a restorative justice process where he learns to truly understand his guilt and responsibility. It would go over well with the crowd that reads The Mary Sue, but it wouldn't be what Carter was interested in here. Her work is absolutely feminist, but like Joanna Russ talking about youth sexuality and other semi-forbidden subjects, it's a feminism that gets rejected a lot in the current wave.

Jason Thompson

DeSade is really interesting, and I’d say you should cover him on the podcast except that his work is totally pornographic and extremely disgusting. I’ve been curious to read Carter’s defense of Sade. If Dworkin really called Sade a murderer, that’s like calling Robert E. Howard a murderer because Conan killed people; Sade’s work is full of sexualized murder and torture porn, but there’s no evidence he ever did anything like this in reality. On the other hand there is stronger evidence he was a rapist, though Grant Morrison carried water for him in “The Invisibles”, like Carter, making Sade a fighter against establishment values.

Jason Thompson

I love the ending of this where the mother appears and kills the sex predator. How could anyone object to that or call it antifeminist? Mothers have the power to create and destroy life, it’s perfect, it’s beautiful. I now preemptively dismiss any anti-mother arguments

Jason Thompson

Oh! Last comment I swear. You should read Carter’s “The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffman” which is amazing. But probably not for the podcast because each sex act in the book is increasingly objectionable.

Ryan Thomas

All this referencing of DeSade has prompted my mind to play Smooth Operator. As Bluebeard focused on his Sweetest Taboo, he failed to consider the familial protection of No Ordinary Love.

Anna-Elizabeth

Are we saying that the piano tuner has Pianist Envy?

Anna-Elizabeth

I really appreciate the analysis as in not "this is what the story MEANS", but "this is what this story means, to ME". I've been criticized for liking Heinlein's "Starship Troopers". For me, the novel makes me think, and when I first read it at age 18, RAH helped me form an idea of why voting is an important act. That doesn't mean I'm endorsing the systems in the novel, or that I want to live as an M.I., but it does mean I read or listen to the novel about once a year and still enjoy it and get something out of it. Is "The Bloody Chamber" feminist? I don't know. Is it intriguing and entertaining, and does it give me something to think about? Yes. I will have to look into more of Angela Carter's works.

Drix

It was probably all that Iron Maiden talk but I definitely had The Trooper blasting in my head at the end of this episode when her mom rolls up like the badass she is and ends it.

Illegal_Structures

I haven’t read the story, but just based on the podcast, the arrival of the mother (while definitely cool) comes as a total deus ex machena, which, upon reflection, might be an intentional allusion to Medea, one of the first works to use such a device. There are some interesting inversion of the Medea story at work in the Bloody Chamber: while Medea kills her children to spite Jason, the mother in this story kills the predator to save her daughter. The aura of myth-making which surrounds the mother helps legitimate this connection, in my humble opinion.

Akeel1701

He didnae really come across as an Iron Maiden fan, but it takes all sorts, I guess...

It's a Ghost.

It definitely crossed my mind that there only ever was one Marquis and that he was impersonating his descendants when the narrator found the book with interesting pictures in it, followed by the passage: “The Adventures of Eulalia at the Harem of the Grand Turk had been printed, according to the flyleaf, in Amsterdam in 1748, a rare collector’s piece. Had some ancestor brought it back himself from that northern city?” I was like, “I’ve read enough of these stories to know HE IS THE ANCESTOR!”

Steve

Of course 50 Shades is the modern retelling of this.

Jim Cannon

I totally thought the recounting of the mother's youthful adventures was setting up the Narrator to take her destiny in her own hands, finding the steel in her own spine and turning the tables on her victimizer because heroism is in her blood, and so on. So the fact that she was passively going through the motions of her own victimhood surprised me. Mom arriving on a charger with gun literally blazing blew my mind... in a totally awesome way. The heroine is still rescued by an outside force, as in a traditional narrative, but that force is undeniably feminine, which is not at all traditional. The boyfriend is powerless, the husband is the villain, the mom is the rescuer. Sounds feminist to me!

Jason of the K

Not relevant to this story, but I'm watching Star Trek Strange New Worlds and s1ep7(ish) has what MUST be a riff on "Those who walk away from Omelas". I don't listen to "Rachel watches Star Trek" but now I gotta to see if they made that connection (I believe they covered that ep).

Jake Wilson

I read somewhere that one interpretation of the original story is that of an adolescent girl becoming a woman (in olden days rationale) because she's begun menstruating and having to submit to the will of a much older more powerful man and say goodbye to her childhood - sidenote: this, disturbingly, is also the plot of the film Labyrinth - and that's the meaning of the motif of blood on the key that can't be removed. I once heard that the blue of his beard is somehow because of the blood from his previous murders, but I don't know why. From this perspective, the theme of the story seems to me to be anti-misogynist if not feminist (it could be both). Bluebeard is attracted to innocence and what he sees as 'unsullied' beauty. In an unchecked patriarchy that tends to be expressed as a high value on virginity and a disgust towards women who enjoy sex. Bluebeard isn't interested in a sexual relationship with his wife. He only wants to claim her innocence but then leaves long enough for her to think for herself, then returns and inspects the bloody key, transfers the mark to her (she is now a woman with reproductive powers) and tells her she's no longer of any value and must die. The young woman archetype, controlled by a man and denied a sense of self (trapped in his castle at his disposal) goes willingly, helplessly to her death because she accepts his judgement of her, his disgust at the first signs of her growing up as an independent adult, and sees herself as worthless. Her interest in the piano tuner represents her interest in a healthy relationship with mutual attraction, which would challenge the old patriarch so she thinks she must be punished. The timely arrival of the self-actualised, independent, gun-toting mother, with waves crashing behind her to remind us of the pitiless power of nature, is the intervention of a different feminine archetype - the fierce matriarch, the woman without the need for protection who embraces the dangers and joys of life. I don't think it's a coincidence that the mother shot a beast on her 18th birthday, taking blood from the predator and not being a victim. The opposite of her daughter's wedding night where the beast made her bleed and only wanted more blood from her la...ter... Wait... He WAS a Dracula!!!

Jake Wilson

I don't mean to sound nit-picky, but how did the blind piano tuner see the blood on the key? I haven't read the story so maybe he felt it and she told him it was blood. In line with my previous comment, openly discussing the bloody key with him while hiding it from her husband is definitely symbolic.

Stewart

I was kind of disappointed in this story, I was hoping for a more interesting spin on Bluebeard, especially since I'm a big fan of new spins on old fairy tales (I recently read Alix Harrow's A Spindle Splintered/ A Mirror Mended novellas), but it ended up being pretty straightforward. Also while I think Angela Carter was trying to make the Marquis sound perhaps more like a Dracula with all the food metaphors (naked as a lamb chop, etc) it sounded more like she'd skipped lunch and couldn't stop thinking about it. Still, as Chad said, it was very well written, so I might check out some of her other works

Beanz

Don't know if it's already been said, but "curiosity killed the cat," got an addendum: "Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back." According to wiki, the earliest print of this version is from The Titusville Herald newspaper in 1912. Would have been a bit awkward for Lovecraft...

Dan Doody

Really enjoyed the two part episode! May I suggest you cover “The Lady in the House of Love” from the same collection. Carter also did an audio play version of the story entitled Vampirella, which given Chad’s recent foray into the form, may be of interest. https://youtube.com/watch?v=wuERmgnjUak&feature=sharea

James Anthony

Was listening to this episode last night at 2a in the dark as I got home. The sound effects really freaked me out because I couldn't tell if they were in the podcast or something happening outside my apartment

Pam Winkler

I thought the nursemaid died after she got married, not her mom.