The Bloody Chamber Collection Key Quotes

Personal Transformation in TBC

"i swear to you, i had never been vain until i met him" page 8

Marital Transformation in TBC

"into marriage, into exile" page 7

Sexual Transformation in TBC

"We should have a formal disrobing of the bride, a ritual from the brothel." page 11, "I sense in myself a potentiality for corruption" - page 6

Escape From Poverty in TBC

"the dress i had for first communion" page 10

Loss of Virginity in TBC

"a dozen husbands impaled a dozen brides" page 14

Vulnerability in TBC

"I hid behind my furs" page 8

Objectification of Women in TBC

"and so my purchaser unwrapped his bargain" page 11

The Protagonist as a Victim in TBC

"I clung to him as though only the one who had inflicted the pain could comfort me" page 14

Childishness in TBC

"The white dress; the frail child within" page 6 "I was only a little girl, I did not understand" page 15

Youth in TBC

"married three times within my own brief lifetime" page 5

Female Sexuality in TBC

"I felt a strange , impersonal arousal at the thought of love" page 11, "I seemed reborn in his unreflective eyes..." - page 17, "I lay in bed accompanied by, a sleepless companion, my dark newborn curiosity." page 19, "I lay in bed alone. And I longed for him. And he disgusted me." page 19

Female Strength in TBC

"this spoiled child did not know she had inherited nerves and a will from the mother..." - page 26, "my husband stood stock-still, as if she had been Medusa" - page 40, "Now, without hesitation, she... put a single, irreproachable bullet through my husband's head." - page 41, "I inherited, of course, enormous wealth" - page 41

The Marquis' Monstrosity

"The atrocious loneliness of that monster!" page 35

Shame in TBC

"yes, shame, but also a terrible, guilty joy" page 36, "I saw the heart-shaped stain... like the caste mark of a brahmin woman. Or the mark of Cain." - page 36, "I am glad he cannot see it... because it spares my shame." - page 42

Degradation of Women in TBC

"You wicked woman" - page 38, "Give it me back, wh0re." page 39, "I have a place prepared for your exquisite corpse..." - page 39

Blood in TBC

"the flashing crimson red jewels round her throat, bright as arterial blood" - page 7, "i had heard him shriek and blaspheme at the orgasm; i had bled" - page 14, "we do not hang the bloody sheets out of the window to prove to the whole of Brittany you are a virgin" - page 16, "it dropped into the forming pool of her blood" - page 28

Death in TBC

"The opera singer lay, quite naked, under a thin sheet of very rare and precious linen... he had embalmed her... I could see the blue imprint of the strangler's fingers... the dead lips smiled." - page 27, "this skull was strung up by a system of unseen cords...disembodied..." - page 27, "She was pierced, not by one but by a hundred spikes" - page 28

Physical Transformation in TCoML

"...that pearly skin of hers was plumping out, a little, with high living and compliments." - page 52, "Her face was acquiring, instead of beauty, a lacquer of the invincible prettiness that characterises certain pampered, exquisite, expensive cats." - page 52, "you could not have said that her freshness was fading but she smiled at herself in mirrors a little too often, these days, and the face that smiled back was not quite the one she had seen contained in the beast's agate eyes" - page 52

Female Sexuality in TCoML

"She flung herself upon him, so that the iron bedstead groaned..." - page 54, "she felt his hot breath on her fingers. the stiff bristles of his muzzle grazing her skin, the rough lapping of his tongue and then, with a flood of compassion, understood: all he is doing is kissing my hands" - page 50

Female Victimhood in TCoML

"...Miss Lamb, spotless, sacrificial..." - page 48, "For she knew with a pang of dread... that it would be so and her visit to the Beast must be... the price of her father's good fortune" page 48

Female Agency in TCoML

"Do not think that she had no will of her own..." - page 48, "she was possessed by a sense of obligation to an unusual degree" - page 48, "she experienced a sudden sense of perfect freedom, as if she had escaped from an unknown danger" page 51, "The Beast sunk his great head onto his paws. You will come back to me? It will be lonely here, without you" page 51

Emotional Transformation in TCoML

"She no longer felt the slightest apprehension at her nightly interviews with the Beast" - page 50,

Mr Lyon's Transformation in TCoML

"Her tears fell on his face like snow and, under their soft transformation, the bones showed through the pelt, the flesh through the wide, tawny brow. And then it was no longer a lion in her arms but a man" - page 54

Predator in TCoML

"on the eyes green as agate, on the golden hairs of the great paws that grasped his shoulders so that their claws pierced the sheepskin as he shook him like an angry child shakes a doll" - page 46, "head of a lion; mane and mighty paws of a lion; he reared on his hind legs like an angry lion" - page 47, "she could not control an instinctual shudder of fear when she saw him, for a lion is a lion and a man is a man" - page 47,

Transformation in Tiger's Bride

"When I break off a stem, I prick my finger and so he gets his rose all smeared with blood." - page 61, "Am I in such reduced circumstances that I may not have a lady's maid?" - page 66, "I felt I was at liberty for the first time in my life" - page 72, "...all I saw was a pale, hollow-eyed girl whom I scarcely recognised." - page 73, "My earrings turned back to water and trickled down my shoulders; I shrugged the drops off my beautiful fur." - page 75

Female Empowerment in Tiger's Bride

"Ripped petal by petal apart", "My rose had lost all its petals", "Perform the part of father's daughter"

Female Sexuality in Tiger's Bride

"You must not think that my father valued me at less than a king's ransom, but, at no more than a king's ransom" - page 59, "I have lost my pearl, my pearl beyond price" - page 60, "I prick my finger so he gets his rose all smeared with blood" - page 61, "My masters sole desire is to see the pretty young lady unclothed, nude, without her dress" - page 64, "Let in the white light of the snowy moon" - page 75

Victimhood in Tiger's Bride

"My father lost me to The Beast at cards" - page 56, "staked his daughter on a hand of cards" - page 59, "lion lies down with the lamb" - page 56, "the tiger will never lie down with the lamb" - page 71, "I was a young girl, a virgin" -page 70, "he will gobble you up" - page 74, "the beast and his carnivorous bed of bone and I, white, shaking, raw" - page 74, "my cell" - page 72

Predator in Tiger's Bride

"What a burden all those possessions must have been to him... he is in such a passion to donate all to the beast" - page 56, "His huge crest of tiger rampant on it" - page 57, "This white rose, unnatural, out of season, that now my nervous fingers ripped, petal by petal" - page 57, "a place uniquely suited to public executions, under the beetling shadow under that malign barn of a church" - page 58

Transformation in The Snow Child

"now the Countess was as bare as a bone and the girl furred and booted" - page 105

Victim/Predator Dynamics in The Snow Child

"the Countess had only one thought: how shall I be rid of her?" - page 105, "unfastened his breeches and thrust his virile member into the dead girl" - page 106

Blood in The Snow Child

"I wish I had a girl as red as blood" - page 105, "pricks her finger on the thorn; bleeds; screams; falls." - page 106, "a bloodstain, like the trace of a fox's kill on the snow" - page 106

Transformation in TLotHoL

"light and air streamed in; now you could see how tawdry it all was" - page 123, "In death, she looked far older, less beautiful and so, for the first time, fully human" - page 124

Female Sexuality in TLotHoL

"I shall wait for you in my bride's dress in the dark" - page 119, "a wh0re's mouth" - page 117,

Victim/Predator in TLotHoL

"She is so beautiful she is unnatural" - page 108, "she would like to be human but she does not know if that is possible" - page 109, "Spiked wall that incarcerates her in the castle." - page 110, "She seemed inadequately powered by some slow energy of which she was not in control" - page 118, "Suivez-moi. Je vous attendais. Vous serez ma proie." - page 121, "She has no mouth with which to kiss, no hands with which to caress, only the fangs and talons of a beast of prey." - page 121

Blood in TlotHoL

"disorders of the blood, diseases of the imagination" - page 109, "whimpering, with blood smeared on her cheeks" - page 110, "She will drop the deflated skin from which she has extracted all the nourishment with a small cry of both pain and disgust." - page 111, "all day she lies in her coffin in her négligé of blood-stained lace" - page 111, "the bridegroom bleeds on my inverted marriage bed." - page 121, "She has never seen her own blood before, not her own blood." - page 122

Transformation in The Werewolf

"wrapped up the paw in the cloth in which her mother had packed the oatcakes" - page 127, "squawking and shrieking like a thing possessed" - page 128

Female Sexuality in The Werewolf

"there will be a crude icon of the virgin" - page 126, "the good child does as her mother bids"- page 127, "the child crossed herself and cried out so loud the neighbours heard her" - page 128

Victim/Predator in The Werewolf

"when they discover a witch...they stone her to death" - page 126, "now the child lived in her grandmother's house; she prospered" - page 128

Female Empowerment in The Werewolf

"she knew the forest too well to fear it" - page 127, "any but a mountaineer's child would have died of fright" - page 127, "she made a great swipe at it with her father's knife and slashed off its right paw" - page 127

Blood in The Werewolf

"It went lolloping off...leaving a trail behind it" - page 127, "There was a bloody stump where her right hand should have been, festering already" - page 128

Werewolf Transformation in TCoW

"then no wolf lay in front of the hunter but the bloody trunk of a man" - page 131, "A witch from up the valley once turned an entire wedding party into wolves" - page 131, "So a wolf he became instantly... the pelt peeled off again and he was just as he had been..." - page 132, "if you burn his human clothing you condemn him to wolfishness for the rest of his life" - page 132, "He strips off his shirt. Hs skin is the colour and texture of vellum." - page 136

The Degradation of Women in TCoW

"Here I am again, missus... Get me my bowl of cabbage and be quick about it." - page 132 "I wish I was a wolf again, to teach this wh0re a lesson!" - page 132

Female Sexuality in TCoW

"Her breasts have just begun to swell..." - page 133, "She stands and moves within the pentacle of her own virginity." - page 133, "Commonplaces of a rustic seduction" - page 135, "she freely gave the kiss she owed him" - page 138, "she ripped off his shirt for him and flung it into the fire" - page 138

Victim/Predator in TCoW

"The wolf is carnivore incarnate." - page 136, "she knew she was nobody's meat." - page 138, "sweet and sound she sleeps in granny's bed, between the paws of the tender wolf." - page 139

Blood in TCoW

"the bloody trunk of a man" - page 131, "The wolf lay bleeding and gasping its last' - page 132, "The ominous if brilliant look of blood on snow." - page 133, "Her cheeks are an emblematic scarlet and white and she has just started her woman's bleeding" - page 133, "There was a faint trace of blood on his chin; he has been snacking on his catch." - page 135, "took off her scarlet shawl... the colour of her menses" - page 138

Transformation in Wolf Alice

"locked half and half between such states, an aborted transformation..." - page 148, "The lucidity of the moonlight lit the mirror prepped against the red wall; the rational glass, the master of the visible" - page 148, "at last as vivid as real life itself... finally the face of the Duke." - page 149

Victim/Predator in Wolf Alice

"they found her in the wolf's den beside the bullet-riddled corpse of her foster mother" - page 141, "The nuns poured water over her, poked her with sticks to rouse her." - page 141, "he is cast in the role of corpse eater" - page 142, "Poor wounded thing..." - page 148

Blood in Wolf Alice

"Her first blood bewildered her" - page 144, "She leapt upon his bed to lick... the blood and dirt from his cheeks and forehead" - page 148

Mirrors in TBC Collection

"in front of the mirror; Beauty. She smiled at herself with satisfaction." - vanity, TCoML, "I took the looking glass from her hand... I did not see my own face in it but that of my father..." - Tiger's Bride, "she tried to nuzzle her reflection... she realised that it gave out no smell.", "her relation with the mirror was now far more intimate since she knew she saw herself within it." - Wolf-Alice

Religion in TBC Collection

"A chignoned priest of the Orthodox faith staked out her wicked father..." - TLofHoL, "you can hurl your Bible at him... call on Christ and his mother and all the angels in heaven to protect you but it won't do you any good." - TCoW, "The nuns poured water over her, poked her with sticks to rouse her." - Wolf Alice

Virginity in TBC Collection

"I sense in myself a potentiality for corruption" - TBC, "I was unaccustomed to nakedness" - Tiger's Bride, "in the invisible, even unacknowledged pentacle of his virginity..." - TLotHoL, subverts gothic conventions, "there will be a crude icon of the virgin" - The Werewolf, "She stands and moves within the pentacle of her own virginity." - TCoW