Abstract
As a tale teller, Angela Carter recognizes that indeed no story is ever the whole story. This essay explores the metonymic capacity of allusion in Carter’s tale “The Bloody Chamber,” her contribution to the oral/literary repertoire of “Bluebeard” stories. Acknowledging the tendency of previous tellers to depict the “Bluebeard” antagonist as an Oriental despot, the essay focuses for the most part on her references to Europe’s other: the legendary East of mystery, luxury, and barbarity. When the status of Carter’s Marquis is considered within an alluded-to gallery of “Oriental” tyrants, the Marquis becomes associated with obsessive desire but also with the monologic, authoritarian processing of experience in terms of a “mythical” core of meaning. Allusion, in all its associative adventurings, intervenes in such centripetalism.
Recommended Citation
Roemer, Danielle M.. "The Contextualization of the Marquis in Angela Carter’s “The Bloody Chamber”." Marvels & Tales 12.1 (1998). Web. <https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/marvels/vol12/iss1/6>.
