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Story summaries

The stories within "The Bloody Chamber" are explicitly based on fairy tales. Carter was no doubt inspired by the works of author and fairytale collector Charles Perrault, whose fairy tales she had translated shortly beforehand.

The Bloody Chamber

(based on Bluebeard)

A teenaged girl marries an older, wealthy French Marquis, whom she does not love. When he takes her to his castle, she learns that he enjoys sadistic pornography and takes pleasure in her embarrassment. She is a talented pianist, and a young man, a blind piano tuner, hears her music and falls in love with her. The woman's husband tells her that he must leave on a business trip and forbids her to enter one particular room while he is away. She enters the room in his absence and discovers the full extent of his perverse and murderous tendencies when she discovers the bodies of his previous wives. When the Marquis returns home he discovers that she has entered the room. He is angered and attempts to kill her. The brave piano tuner is willing to stay with her even though he knows he will not be able to save her. She is saved at the last moment at end of the story by her mother, who arrives and shoots the Marquis just as he is about to murder the girl.

The Courtship of Mr Lyon

(based on Beauty and the Beast — the concept of the Beast as a lion-like figure is a popular one, most notably in the French film version of 1946)

Beauty's father, after experiencing car trouble, takes advantage of a stranger's hospitality. However, his benefactor — the Beast — takes umbrage when he steals a miraculous white rose for his beloved daughter. Beauty becomes the guest of the leonine Beast, and the Beast aids her father in getting his fortune back. Beauty later joins her father in London, where she almost forgets the Beast, causing him to wither away from heartache. When Beauty learns that he is dying, she returns, saving him. Beauty and the Beast disclose their love for one another and the Beast's humanity is revealed.

The Tiger's Bride

(also based on Beauty and the Beast)

A woman moves in with a mysterious, masked "Milord," the Beast, after her father loses her to him in a game of cards. Milord is eventually revealed to be a tiger. In a reversal of the ending of "The Courtship of Mr Lyon", the heroine transforms at the end into a glorious tiger who is the proper mate to the Beast, who will from now on be true to his own nature and not disguise himself as a human.

Puss-in-Boots

(based on Puss in Boots)

Figaro, a cat, moves in with a rakish young man who lives a happily debauched life. They live a carefree existence, with the cat helping him to make money by cheating at cards, until the young man actually falls in love (to the cat's disgust) with a young woman kept in a tower by a miserly, older husband who treats her only as property. The cat, hoping his friend will tire of the woman if he has her, helps the young man into the bed of his sweetheart by playing tricks on the old husband and the young woman's keeper. Figaro himself finds love with the young woman's cat, and the two cats arrange the fortunes of both themselves and the young man and woman by arranging to trip the old man so that he will fall to his death.

The Erl-King

(an adaptation of the Erlking in folklore; a sort of goblin or spirit of the woodlands)

A maiden wanders into the woods and is seduced by the sinister Erl-King, a seeming personification of the forest itself. However, she eventually realises that he plans to imprison her and so she murders him.

The Snow Child

(based on an obscure variant of Snow White. ^[4])

A Count and Countess go riding in midwinter. The Count sees snow on the ground and wishes for a child "as white as snow". Similar wishes are made when the Count sees a hole in the snow containing a pool of blood, and a raven. As soon as he made his final wish a young woman of the exact description appears at the side of the road. The Count pays immediate attention to her, much to the chagrin of the Countess. At the Countess' command, the girl picks a rose but is pricked by a thorn and dies, after which the Count rapes her corpse. After this, her cadaver melts into the snow, leaving nothing but a bloodstain on the snow, a black feather and the rose that she had picked.

The Lady of the House of Love

(loosely based upon Sleeping Beauty)

A virginal English soldier, travelling through Romania by bicycle, comes across a mansion inhabited by a vampiress. She intends to feed on him, but his purity and virginity have a curious effect on her.

The Werewolf

(based on Little Red Riding Hood)

A girl goes to visit her grandmother, but encounters a werewolf on the way, whose paw she cuts off with a knife. When she reaches her grandmother's house, the paw has turned into a hand with the grandmother's ring on it, and the grandmother is both delirious and missing her hand. This reveals the girl's grandmother as the werewolf, and she is stoned to death. The girl then inherits all of her grandmother's possessions.

The Company of Wolves

(closer adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood)

A girl meets an apparently charming young man whilst wandering through the forest towards her grandmother's house. She arrives at her grandmother's home, unaware that the same young man has got there before her and killed her grandmother. The young man, who is really a wolf in disguise, instructs her to remove and burn her garments one by one as she makes remarks reminiscent of those in the classic fairy tale, such as "What big teeth you have!" When he replies, "All the better to eat you with," she laughs at him fearlessly. The story ends with "See! sweet and sound she sleeps in granny's bed, between the paws of the tender wolf."

Wolf-Alice

(based on an obscure variant of Little Red Riding Hood ^[5] and with reference to Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, this tale explores the journey towards subjectivity and self-awareness from the perspective of a feral child)

A feral child, whom some nuns have attempted to civilize, is left in the house of a monstrous, vampiric Duke when she does not develop the appropriate social graces. She gradually comes to realise her own identity as a young woman and even displays compassion for the Duke.