Female Oppression In The Bloody Chamber

Both A Streetcar Named Desire and The Bloody Chamber portray one or more individuals in a state of oppression. They also share a common theme of the persecuted characters being female – this has come to be represented as the ‘female gothic’, a term coined by Ellen Mors in Literary Women (1976). Whilst different mediums of literature have been used by Carter and Williams (a collection of short stories and a play, respectively), they both fall under the broad genre of the gothic and illuminate the power struggle of women within a patriarchal society. The dominance of men within this social construct is the most obvious way in which females are oppressed. However, Marxist and psychoanalytic readings can offer alternative perspectives into the ways females are persecuted. Carter’s feminist writing in ‘The Bloody Chamber’ will serve as a contrast to superiority of the patriarchal society. Her presentation of the female characters subverting the role of victim encourages readers to examine the constructs of the patriarchal society that serve to oppress females. It is the undeniable relationship between Gothic literature and female oppression that makes the exploration of female characters in the genre so valuable.

Dominance of Men The most common form of female oppression is centred on the dominance of men. In the titled story of the collection, ‘The Bloody Chamber’, the Marquis is a controlling figure who treats the female protagonist like a child as he compares giving her a bunch of keys to “giving a child a great mysterious treat”. The association of the female figure as a child represents the power disparity of genders within a patriarchal society. Carter could be commenting on the female protagonist’s dependence on the male figur...

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...ude without her dress” in response to his removal of his “mask” to reveal his “naked…feline, tawny shape”. The sexual equality between the ‘lamb’ and the ‘tiger’ allows the heroine to feel “at liberty for the first time in her life”. The critic Merja Makinen reads her new-found independence as ‘the sensual desires that women must acknowledge with themselves… which when embraced gives them power, strength and a new awareness of both self and other. ’. The heroine’s liberalisation from the social constructs of her father’s civilisation is represented by her anthropomorphic transformation into a tigress by “stripping off [her] own underpelt” to reveal “a nascent patina of shining hairs”. As Helen Simpson writes in the introduction to the collection, the heroine in the story is ‘struggling out the straight-jackets of history and ideology and biological essentialism.’