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Bloody Chambers
Roses appear in most of the stories of The Bloody Chamber, and they generally symbolize the female heroine of each tale. The rose is a traditional romantic image, a symbol of female purity and the vagina, and the repetitive use of the rose image reflects the book’s gothic tone and archetypal characters. The rose as a symbol of femininity becomes more complex in Carter’s stories, however, as it initially acts as a sign of virginity and purity – Beauty’s father picks a white rose for her in “The Courtship of Mr Lyon” – but the very act of “symbolizing” then becomes a symbol of objectification. When the women of the book are objectified by male power and sexual oppression, they have no more agency than a beautiful but powerless rose. In “The Tiger’s Bride” and “The Snow Child,” however, the thorns of the rose prick the heroine’s finger. This shows the suffering brought about by being objectified (usually through sexual violence), but it also implies some agency in the heroines themselves. They are symbolized by the pure, beautiful rose, but they also have thorns and can “bite.”
Roses Quotes in The Bloody Chamber
The The Bloody Chamber quotes below all refer to the symbol of Roses. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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The Tiger’s Bride
Quotes
And The Beast gave me the rose from his own impeccable if outmoded buttonhole when he arrived, the valet brushing the snow off his black cloak. This white rose, unnatural, out of season, that now my nervous fingers ripped, petal by petal, apart as my father magnificently concluded the career he had made of catastrophe.
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The Lady of the House of Love
Quotes
She is not sleeping.
In death, she looked far older, less beautiful and so, for the first time, fully human.
I will vanish in the morning light; I was only an invention of darkness. And I leave you as a souvenir the dark, fanged rose I plucked from between my thighs, like a flower laid on a grave. On a grave.
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Roses Symbol Timeline in The Bloody Chamber
The timeline below shows where the symbol Roses appears in The Bloody Chamber. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
The Courtship of Mr Lyon
...He doesn’t even have enough money to pay for gas or to buy a white rose for Beauty, the one gift she had requested.
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The father begs the Beast’s forgiveness, saying the rose was for his daughter, and he shows the Beast a picture of Beauty. Observing Beauty’s...
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...starts to seem like a magical place in another life. Beauty sometimes sends him white roses, but because the seasons never seem to change in London she doesn’t notice that winter...
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The Tiger’s Bride
...her past – she was born on Christmas day, and her nurse called her “Christmas rose.” Her mother died when she was young, exhausted of her husband’s gambling and womanizing. Back...
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...flee with them to “the kingdom of horses.” Her father cries and asks for a rose to show that she has forgiven him. The heroine gives him a rose, but she...
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The Snow Child
...girl’s feet. Now the Countess is naked and the girl clothed. They come to a rosebush and the Countess tells the girl to pick her a rose, and the Count agrees....
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...he is done she melts and returns to a bloodstain, a raven’s feather, and the rose. The clothes return to the Countess. The Count hands the rose to the Countess, but...
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The Lady of the House of Love
...follow her. As he leaves the village he is overcome by the strong scent of roses. They are everywhere, and “obscene in their excess.”
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...he will bleed on her “inverted marriage bed.” Then he will be buried under her roses, feeding their rich color and scent.
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...sitting dead at her table, slumped over the Tarot cards. She is holding a last rose for him, and he takes it. The governess then appears and sends the young man...
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...join his regiment and he leaves Romania. Later he discovers he still has the Countess’s rose in his jacket, and that it isn’t dead yet. Remembering the girl’s “unexpected and pathetic”...
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