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The Bloody Chamber

795 Words4 Pages

The Bloody Chamber and The Collector are both influenced by variations of the French folktale Bluebeard, Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber based on Charles Perrault’s Barbe bleue (Bluebeard), and John Fowles The Collector influenced by the opera Bluebeard 's Castle by Béla Bartók. Both The Collector and The Bloody Chamber use captivity narratives to drive the plot with the clear influence of the Bluebeard tale. In this is essay I will analyse how in both of the texts the female protagonists become surveyors of themselves, and how the surveyor within herself is male. I will further apply my understanding of Laura Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze to critically analyse both texts, additionally demonstrating the techniques used within both and …show more content…

The descriptive sightings of Miranda and the dreams he has of a future together shows an unhealthy obsession. Miranda exists in Clegg 's mind she is an idealised projection, he looks upon her as he does his butterflies a specimen to be trapped and pinned down for his observation. Clegg goes beyond simply looking at her, he begins to imagine unlikely outcomes and whimsical futures in which he holds a place of power above Miranda, he even admits that ‘I let myself dream I hit her across the face’ (7), indicating that ‘To gaze implies more than to look at - it signifies a psychological relationship of power, in which the gazer is superior to the object of the gaze’ (J. E. Schroeder, Consuming representation: a visual approach to consumer research, 1998, 208). Mulvey’s theory indicates that the male gaze denies women human identity, relegating them to the status of objects to be admired for their physical appearance, since Clegg has no

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