The Bloody Chamber

Some of them are plainly sick, not for the faint-hearted. （警告：部分句子黑暗）

…my burning cheek pressed against the impeccable linen of the pillow and the pounding of my heart mimicking that of the great pistons ceaselessly thrusting the train that bore me through the night, away from Paris, away from girlhood…

pounding, thrusting, bore等词的使用……

My satin nightdress had just been shaken from its wrappings; it had slipped over my young girl's pointed breasts and shoulders, supple as a garment of heavy water, and now teasingly caressed me, egregious, insinuating, nudging between my thighs as I shifted restlessly in my narrow berth.

描述主人公新婚时生涩的欲动。最妙的是teasingly这个词的使用。---------------------------------------------------------

But his strange, heavy, almost waxen face was not lined by experience. Rather, experience seemed to have washed it perfectly smooth, like a stone on a beach whose fissures have been eroded by successive tides.

对villain的外貌描写，有Dracula的感觉。--------------------------------------------------------

His wedding gift, clasped round my throat. A choker of rubies, two inches wide, like an extraordinarily slit throat.

Creepy! ---------------------------------------------------------

Enough! No; more!

no; more! 有趣的文字游戏。-------------------------------------------------------------

‘My little nun has found the prayerbooks, has she?' he demanded, with a curious mixture of mockery and relish; then, seeing my painful, furious bewilderment, he laughed at me aloud, snatched the book from my hands and put it down on the sofa.

Villain发现主人公在翻阅他的sadistic pornography后的病态反应。----------------------------------------------------------------------

'Oh, and you'd find it such a dull little room! But you must promise me, if you love me, to leave it well alone. It is only a private study, a hideaway, a "den", as the English say, where I can go, sometimes, on those infrequent yet inevitable occasions when the yoke of marriage seems to weigh too heavily on my shoulders. There I can go, you understand, to savour the rare pleasure of imagining myself wifeless.'

Villain用带有反讽的语气轻描淡写自己那所恐怖变态密室；看完后文再重读这段，冷得让人发抖。---------------------------------------------------------------

I lay in bed alone. And I longed for him. And he disgusted me.

主人公新婚后对villain的感受。And he disgusted me。短短一句，表达了许多东西。-----------------------------------------------------------------

I had the brief notion that his heart, pressed flat as a flower, crimson and thin as tissue paper, lay in this file. It was a very thin one.

有趣的类比。-------------------------------------------------------------------

The corridor wound downwards; there was almost imperceptible ramp to the thickly carpeted floor. The heavy hangings on the wall muffled my footsteps, even my breathing. For some reason, it grew very warm; the sweat sprang out in beads on my brow. I could no longer hear the sound of the sea.

主人公在通往密室的路上。氛围的渲染很出色。------------------------------------------------------------------

The key slid into the new lock as easily as a hot knife into butter.

暗示这扇门经常被开启。---------------------------------------------------------------------

One false step, oh, my poor, dear girl, next in the fated sisterhood of his wives; one false step and into the abyss of the dark you stumbled. I closed the lid of her coffin very gently and burst into a tumult of sobbing that contained both pity for his other victims and also a dreadful anguish to know I, too, was one of them. The candles flared, as if in a draught from a door to elsewhere. The light caught the fire opal on my hand so that it flashed, once, with a baleful light, as if to tell me the eye of God – his eye – was upon me. My first thought, when I saw the ring for which I had sold myself to this fate, was, how to escape it.

主人公发现villain前妻的尸体被夹在Iron Maiden里后的心理活动。----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Assistance. My mother. I ran to the telephone; and the line, of course, was dead. Dead as his wives. A thick darkness, unlit by any star, still glazed the windows. Every lamp in my room burned, to keep the dark outside, yet it seemed still to encroach on me, to be present beside me but as if masked by my lights, the night like a permeable substance that could seep into my skin...

离开密室稍微镇静点后的心理感受。-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Time was his servant, too; it would trap me, here, in a night that would last until he came back to me, like a black sun on a hopeless morning. And yet the time might still be my friend; at that hour, that very hour, he set sail for New York.

通过对时间的矛盾呈现来展示主人公忐忑的心理。--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I opened the lid of the piano; perhaps I thought my own particular magic might help me, now, that I could create a pentacle out of music that would keep me from harm for, if my music had first ensnared him, then might it not also give me the power to free myself from him? I set myself the therapeutic task of playing all Bach's equations, every one, and, I told myself, if I played them all through without a single mistake - then the morning would find me once more a virgin.

这两段对弹钢琴的描写都有传统童话故事的感觉。---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When I came back into the bedroom carrying the bunch of keys that jangled at every step like a curious musical instrument, he was sitting on the bed in his immaculate shirtsleeves, his head sunk in his hands. And it seemed to me he was in despair. Strange. In spite of my fear of him, that made me whiter than my wrap, I felt there emanate from him, at that moment, a stench of absolute despair, rank and ghastly, as if the lilies that surrounded him had all at once begun to fester, or the Russian leather of his scent were reverting to the elements of flayed hide and excrement of which it was composed. ... I held my life in my hands amongst those keys and, in a moment, would place it between his well-manicured fingers. The evidence of that bloody chamber had showed me I could expect no mercy. Yet, when he raised his head and stared at me with his blind, shuttered eyes as though he did not recognise me, I felt a terrified pity for him, for this man who lived in such strange, secret places that, if I loved him enough to follow him, I should have to die. The atrocious loneliness of that monster! The monocle had fallen from his face. His curling mane was disordered, as if he had run his hands through it in his distraction. I saw how he had lost his impassivity and was now filled with suppressed excitement. The hand he stretched out for those counters in this game of love and death shook a little; the face that turned towards me contained a sombre delirium that seemed to me compounded of a ghastly, yes, shame but also a terrible, guilty joy as he slowly ascertained how I had sinned.

这几大段对villain的描写（摘录有省略）实在是微妙复杂且出神入化。--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When my husband saw my companion, he observed: 'let the blind lead the blind, eh? But does even a youth as besotted as you are think she was truly blind to her own desires when she took my ring? Give it me back, whore.' The fires in the opal had all died down. I gladly slipped it from my finger and, even in that dolorous place, my heart was lighter for the lack of it.

"But does even a youth as besotted as you are think she was truly blind to her own desires when she took my ring?" 这句话说到了点子上，villain的行为令人发指，但不得不说他的洞察力上佳；主人公不能说是完全无辜的受害者。Wikipedia的一段分析：According to the writer Marina Warner, Carter "deconstructs the arguments that underlie The Bloody Chamber. It's about desire and its destruction, the self-immolation of women, how women collude and connive with their condition of enslavement. She was much more independent-minded than the traditional feminist of her time."-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

'Don't loiter, girl! Do you think I shall lose appetite for the meal if you are so long about serving it? No; I shall grow hungrier, more ravenous with each moment, more cruel... Run to me, run! I have a place prepared for your exquisite corpse in my display of flesh!'

Villain的一段话，极端病态, not for the faint-hearted. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A little green moss, growing in the crevices of the mounting block, would be the last thing I should see in all the world.

主人公将死的感受，以景衬情的经典。----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You never saw such a wild thing as my mother, her hat seized by the winds and blown out to sea so that her hair was her white mane, her black lisle legs exposed to the thigh, her skirts tucked round her waist, one hand on the reins of the rearing horse while the other clasped my father's service revolver and, behind her, the breakers of the savage, indifferent sea, like the witnesses of a furious justice.

这段对她母亲的描写酷极了。-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On her eighteenth birthday, my mother had disposed of a man-eating tiger that had ravaged the villages in the hills north of Hanoi. Now, without a moment's hesitation, she raised my father's gun, took aim and put a single, irreproachable bullet through my husband's head.

母亲杀死villain的段落也很有型，干净利落。-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

No paint nor powder, no matter how thick or white, can mask that red mark on my forehead; I am glad he cannot see it – not for fear of his revulsion, since I know he sees me clearly with his heart – but, because it spares my shame.

用这段话结尾堪称完美。虽然获救，那段经历的伤疤和羞愧将永留其心。

看到一篇分析The Tiger's Bride's take on the objectification of women Like the heroine of "The Bloody Chamber," the heroine of "The Tiger's Bride" tells her own tale in retrospect, therefore claiming control of both her life and the literary tradition. The first theme that arises is the objectification of women, with the heroine's father losing her to The Beast at cards. Arguably, we have seen a similar transaction in "The Courtship of Mr. Lyon," where Beauty's father is forced to give her to the Beast because he stole the rose. However in that story, the father agrees to 'trade' his daughter's company out of fear whereas in this story, the father wagers her carelessly, as though she were a mere possession. Carter uses diction to emphasize that this transaction, while seeming outdated and unlikely, is not far from the objectification of women seen in our own society. How often does a woman blush happily to hear herself called "pearl" or "treasure?" These words are considered compliments, but Carter reveals their objectifying overtones by having both the heroine's father and The Beast use them, respectively, in the context of her sale. From the story's beginning, we are aware that the heroine is seen as an object that can be bought, sold, and leveraged for her owner's pleasure and advantage.The heroine's objectification continues throughout the story, culminating with the surprise ending. When out riding, the heroine contends that men see women as soulless, just as they see animals as soulless; she says, "the six of us, mounts and riders both-could boast amongst us not one soul ... Since all the best religions in the world state categorically that not beasts nor women were equipped with the flimsy, insubstantial things." For this reason, she feels closer to Beast, the valet, and their horses, than she ever has to a man. Instead of wishing for a soul, she denigrates them by calling them "flimsy" and "insubstantial"; after all, the men who claim to possess souls consider her no more than an item of physical worth.Carter surpasses the heroine's comparison to animals by likening her to the soubrette. Not only is the soubrette a doll, but she powders the heroine's cheeks so that she resembles one. This symbolism is not lost on the heroine, who ponders, "that clockwork girl who powdered my cheeks for me; had I not been allotted only the same kind of imitative life amongst men that the doll-maker had given her?" Moore points out that the soubrette is a "social creation of femininity"; she embodies the vanity and vapidity that characterize society's idea of a woman. The soubrette needs someone to wind her up so that she can perform her maid's tasks; so too, women are thought unable to think and act for themselves. Once the heroine begins to claim her own desires, she says that she no longer resembles the soubrette. Since she can no longer submit to society's female stereotypes, she plans to send the soubrette home in her place: "I will dress her in my own clothes, wind her up, send her back to perform the part of my father's daughter." Carter tells us that this view of women weakens their character and prevents them from fulfilling their potential.In "The Courtship of Mr. Lyon," Beauty is unspoiled and content when she lives in the country, away from society's influence. But when she moves to the city, she transforms into a petulant young woman obsessed with her looks and belongings. Until the spaniel reminds her of her authentic self, she is content with living as a 'social construct of femininity.' The heroine in "The Tiger's Bride" realizes that men treat her like the soubrette, that no matter how hard she tries to equal them, they will always see her as a poor 'imitation' of a person. Suddenly, she is no different from The Beast, who wears his mask painted with a man's face in order to pretend he is a man. The perfection of this mask "appals" the narrator because it represents the model of perfection, civility and tameness to which she is bound. She does not want to be an object and therefore is disgusted that he looks like one. The heroine again expresses her hatred of objectification when she throws her present of diamond earrings into a corner.The surprise ending to "The Tiger's Bride" takes Carter's feminist bent farther than the ending to "The Courtship of Mr. Lyon." In the latter story, Beauty must accept the Beast in order for him to become a person, so that they can live happily in the human world. In "The Tiger's Bride", the heroine and The Beast must accept the animal nature in themselves and in each other so that they can be free of the human world with its social constructs and assumptions. Women, Carter conveys through the tale, must break free of their weak, doll-like social identities and embrace the parts of them that are strong, alive with desire, and 'ugly'; "the lamb must learn to run with the tigers." It is not that women are lambs and must learn to be tigers; they are tigers who are made to think they are lambs. After all, the heroine has been a tiger underneath her skin for all her life. Instead of Beauty and Beast being opposites, they are wed into one stronger identity at the end of "The Tiger's Bride."Sex and sexual desire are the catalysts for the heroine's transformation into a beast. We see this fact foreshadowed by symbols early in the story. The rose that the heroine gives her father when she leaves him represents her virginal self because it is white and beautiful. When she pricks her finger on it and hands it to him "all smeared with blood," she foreshadows her own loss of virginity and her transformation from whiteness, the absence of lust and life, to blood-redness, the embodiment of those things. The heroine also refers to The Beast as a "clawed magus," magus meaning an ancient priest with supernatural powers; even though she fears him, the heroine has some sense that he has the power to transform her. It is not just anything sexual that causes the narrator to transform-it is her desire and willingness to be sexual. When she first refuses to disrobe in front of The Beast, she hurts him. She does not know at the time that his wish to see her is not mere voyeurism; he also deeply wants her to accept him. If The Beast were a mere voyeur, he would accept the heroine's offer to lift up her skirts for him while hiding her face. He is not interested in the heroine's body so much as he is in her true, animal self.The heroine's transformation into a tiger combines the acts of sex and birth into one. When she takes off her clothes, she can already feel herself changing; she feels as though she is "stripping off [her] own underpelt"; but she needs The Beast's action to help her change. He rips off her skin by licking her, which can be seen as a sexual act, but this gives way to the act of birth; the heroine is reborn as a tigress with "a nascent patina of shining hairs." In this act, The Beast and the heroine reclaim sex as a collaborative act of creation, casting aside the idea of sex as an act of fetish and control wherein the man objectifies and claims the woman. The heroine here, in fact, is claiming herself. Carter makes it clear that coming into one's selfhood is a painful and arduous act that calls for more than the wave of a wand. It requires the heroine to endure the excruciating pain of giving birth (to herself) in order to attain the relief and freshness of being reborn.出处：http://www.gradesaver.com/the-bloody-chamber/study-guide/summary-the-tigers-bride

Wow, this is ... disturbing, to say the least. I've had nightmares about it. And despite myself, I had an urge to re-read the whole thing right after my finishing it. The idea is nothing new – an "innocent" girl and a serial killer – it's a re-write of the traditional Bluebeard like fairytale (the physical description of the villain reminded me of Dracula/Vlad the Impaler), but there's something about the writing that makes it so compelling, so dark and gripping. (Angela Carter said: "My intention was not to do 'versions' or, as the American edition of the book said, horribly, 'adult' fairy tales, but to extract the latent content from the traditional stories.") The language is exquisite and ... sensual, even. It was plainly wrong to feel anything erotic reading so twisted a tale like this, even though the sexual part was at the beginning of the story, not when the villain showed his true face (that part was so chilling that my skin crawled). It's still wrong. Utterly wrong. I'm feeling guilty ...I liked the twist that her mother saves the day. A feminist touch. It was satisfying to see the heroine has learnt her lesson well and becomes independent. In spite of the good ending and all the positive elements, I'm still overwhelmed by the evilness ...