Symbolism of Red and White in The Bloody Chamber

Symbolism of Red and White in The Bloody Chamber

1. The Bloody Chamber

   • 'Bright as aetoral blood'
   • Bloody bandage of rubies
   • Crimson water swirled down the basin but, as if the key itself were hurt, the bloody token stuck
   • I scrubbed my forehead with the nail brush as I had scrubbed the key but this red mark would not go away
   • No paint nor powder, no matter how thick or white, can mask that red mark on my forehead
   • cobra-headed, funereal lilies whose white sheaths are curled out of a flesh
   • the white dress; the frail child within it
   • more white lilies than I'd ever seen in my life before
   • crowned with a wreath of white roses, and a veil of lace, the final image of his bride.

2. The Snow Child

   • 'I wish I had a girl as red as blood
   • So the girl picks a rose; pricks her finger on the thorn; bleeds; screams; falls
   • a bloodstain, like the trace of a fox's kill on the snow
   • . The Count picked up the rose, bowed and handed it to his wife;
   • 'I wish I had a girl as white as snow

3. The Company of Wolves

   • the red shawl that, today, has the ominous if brilliant look of blood on snow
   • There is a faint trace of blood on his chin; he has been snacking on his catch.
   • the scarlet shawl she pulled more closely round herself as if it could protect her although it was as red as the blood she must spill
   • her cheeks are an emblematic scarlet and white and she has just started her woman's bleeding
   • It was a white night of moon and snow
   • her hair looked white as the snow outside

4. The Werewolf

   • A bloody stump where her hand had been
   • red eyes and running, grizzled chops

5. Wolf Alice

   • Her first blood bewildered her
   • this white dress made her shine
   • hey saw the white bride leap out of the tombstone

6. The Tiger's Bride

   • My tear-beslobbered father wants a rose to show that I forgive him. When I break off a stem, I prick my finger and so he gets his rose all smeared with blood.
   • This white rose, unnatural, out of season, that now my nervous fingers ripped, petal by petal
   • Where my father had been red as fire, now he was white as the snow that caked the window-pane
   • watching me peel down to the cold, white meat of contract

7. The Lady of the House of Love

   • négligé of blood-stained lace
   • The blood on the Countess's cheeks will be mixed with tears
   • When she kneels to try to gather the fragments of glass together, a sharp sliver pierces deeply into the pad of her thumb; she cries out, sharp, real. She kneels among the broken glass and watches the bright bead of blood form a drop. She has never seen her own blood before, not her own blood
   • a lace négligé lightly soiled with blood, as it might be from a woman's menses, and a rose that must have come from the fierce bushes nodding through the window
   • intoxicated surge of the heavy scent of red roses
   • Her voice, issuing from those red lips like the obese roses in her garden
   • And I leave you as a souvenir the dark, fanged rose I plucked from between my thighs
   • 'the bridegroom bleeds on this inverted marriage bed

8. The Courtship of Mr Lyon

   • the road is white and unmarked as a spilled bolt of bridal satin
   • his Beauty, his girl-child, his pet, the one white rose she said she wanted
   • one last, single, perfect rose that might have been the last rose left living in all the white winter