Foreshadowing In The Bloody Chamber

“The Bloody Chamber” is Angela Carter`s retelling of the classic grim fairy tale “Bluebeard”. The passage analyzed in this essay is used in the story to identify the strange dynamic between the Marquis and his soon-to-be bride. In it the young heroine recounts the Marquis`s visage, his past wives and their wedding night. In order to establish the heroine and the Marquis`s abnormal relationship, Carter uses key literary devise such as theme to establish the idea of the Marquis`s dominance over the heroine, imagery to show an owner versus object exchange and foreshadowing to allude to the tale`s bloody end. Theme is used to portray the Marquis`s complete control over the heroine akin to an adult child dynamic. “I was seventeen and knew nothing of the world” (9): This self reflection by the heroine provides us with the knowledge that she is just on the

“sometimes he seemed to me like a lily…funeral lilies whose white sheaths are curled out of a flesh as thick and tensely yielding to the touch as vellum” (9): Lilies as stated are typically a flower given to the family of the deceased at a funeral. The heroine compares the Marquis to a lily, foreshadowing that a funeral or death is imminent. As is common among many fairy tales, the story includes a crone, who usually is an old witch like woman who tells the protagonists their future or events that will happen. “My old nurse, who stilled lived with my mother and me, squinted at the ring askance: opals are bad luck, she said” (9): Examples of crones in other stories can be seen in “Cinderella” the fairy godmother is a crone, and in “Snow White” the evil queen when she transforms into the old woman is a crone. “His wedding gift, clasped around my throat. A choker of rubies, two inches wide, like an extraordinarily precious slit throat” (11): This imagery is used to foreshadow that the method of our heroine`s demise will be a beheading or something of the