English analysis and notes on The Bloody Chamber texts
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Module
English Bloody Chamber text analysis (ENG)
Institution
Braeburn School
English in depth analysis and notes on The Bloody Chamber texts, helpful for revision, essay structuring, quotes included and personal perspectives which grant valuable points in IB essay writing. These notes awarded me GRADE 7 in my comparative essays.
Set in an old castle in Transylvania, Romania, where lives the great, beautiful young
countess (queen of vampires). She is accompanied by ghosts and a caged lark and wears
her dead mother’s wedding dress around. She is let out at nighttime by her mute governess
to kill her prey for the evening, she then feasts on her male victims who she craves. Because
of the isolated and haunted life she lives, she spends her time playing with her tarot cards
trying to read her future, hoping to see her future as a human.
Even though her fate is inevitable, one day her cards read ‘love’, she is astounded and
immediately intrigued as she does not know that the soldier has just crossed into their land.
The soldier is enchanted by the land of vampires and rides his bike around the country. He
approaches the abandoned village and stops at the fountain to refresh himself. The
governess spots him and invites him into their ominous castle. There is a meal laid out for
him which he indulges in, and then proceeds to follow the governess up into the girls dark
and dilapidated room. The soldier is stunned by her beauty but astounded by her state of
living. With the sight of the soldier, the countess cries out and tumbles out of her chair with
her tarot cards falling behind her. The soldier collects the cards and hands them to her, his
touch revives her and she then offers him a coffee.
The young countess speaks the actions that will follow, informing the man, in French, that
she intends to kill him and suck his blood. The soldier does not believe in the supernatural
and does not fear her, he is protected by his virginity and, lack of imagination. She leads the
soldier to the chamber but has seizure at the sight of the morbid bedroom. The countess
begins to cry and breaks her glasses, the glass cuts her and she is fascinated by her blood.
The soldier kisses her wound and falls into a trance while the countess experiences the pain
of becoming human. When he wakes from his trance, the curtains are drawn, the caged lark
has escaped and the countess seems to have disappeared leaving only her dress and a rose.
The soldier walks back to room where he hopes to find the countess so he can take her to a
doctor, but instead finds her dead on the table with her tarot cards. She is holding a rose
which he takes, before he is ushered out the house by the governess. After his long journey
back to Bucharest, he realizes he still has the rose in his pocket, he puts it in water and by
the time he gets back it has flourished into a beautiful, big red rose. The next day he is off to
war.
Similarities Symbolic rose: represents her vagina after she has died,
proving she has died a virgin
Symbolic kiss: he kisses her wound which transforms her, like
Courtship of Mr.Lyon when beauty kisses the beast and he
transforms into a man
Her face is as falsely human as the beasts face in Tiger’s Bride,
she is so beautiful it seems unreal
Sex and violence: the young countess brings the men to her
bedroom to then kill, Bloody chamber
Theme of transformation: usually eats men, but when the man
comes she is rather transformed by him. Their sexual
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