The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

“The Erl-King” and “The Snow Child” are both stories that experiment with structure and form. Each blends traditional stories to create something new, in the process exploring how sexuality can turn predatory under the influence of patriarchal power imbalances.

“The Erl-King” opens in an unusual second-person point of view. The first character to be introduced is the woods themselves, rendered in atmospheric detail. It’s not until several paragraphs in that the narrative switches to a first-person point of view: “The trees threaded a cat’s cradle of half-stripped branches over me so that I felt I was in a house of nets” (92). Despite the intimacy of this voice, the narrative also shares details about the setting that would not be accessible to a traditional first-person narrator. This blending of points of view creates a slipstream sensation and gives the sense that though the protagonist is a singular woman—“I”— she is also all women. While second-person stories position the reader as the main character, this story positions the reader as one aspect of a much larger identity.

The erl-king is a mythic figure popularized by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s poem “Erlkonig.” He is an archetypal fairy king whose name translates to “Alder King,” and he represents the untamed world. The narrator enters this world “as trustingly as Red Riding Hood [going] to her granny’s house” (94)—an allusion that in itself foreshadows trouble ahead—and soon finds herself in a trap. This movement from innocence into a dangerous wildness echoes traditional fairy tales, including “Little Red Riding Hood,” that are concerned with The Suppression of Wildness. Here, the movement from innocence into wildness is overtly synonymous with Virginity and Sexual Awakening. A broken fiddle hangs on the Erl-King’s wall, and the narrator wonders what songs she might play on it—“lullabies for foolish virgins, perhaps” (96). At this point, near the end of the story, she has learned that the birds the Erl-King keeps in cages were once girls like herself, and that he intends to do to her what he has done to them.

The abusive, unbalanced relationship between this aged or ageless wild figure and the youthful protagonist is both unreal and entirely true to life. When the Erl-King undresses the narrator, early in their romantic entanglement, he says, “skin the rabbit!” (94), an intimation that the relationship will become more overtly predatory over time. He teaches her, she says, that “the price of flesh is love” (94), suggesting a sense of entitlement—he believes he has a right to her body simply because she has a body. Despite this dynamic, however, the heroine sympathizes with her lover and calls him “an excellent housewife” (94). She admits that her captivity, at least at first, is voluntary: “I come, like any other trusting thing that perches on the crook of his wrist” (95). Even when the protagonist recognizes the fate he has planned, she finds herself caught between love and self-preservation. The Erl-King cares for the birds in his captivity lovingly, and is never shown to be a harsh jailer. He has grown so accustomed to his place in the natural order that he likely doesn’t recognize the harm he is doing. In recognizing this ignorance on his part, the narrator inverts the hierarchy of innocence and experience, making him the innocent one: “In his innocence he never knew he might be the death of me, although I knew from the first moment I saw him how the Erl-King would do me grievous harm” (96). This illustrates how oppressive patriarchies have become so deeply woven into the human consciousness that men in power aren’t necessarily propagating these practices consciously—they’re as trapped within a flawed system as women.

In the story’s final paragraphs, the narrative perspective moves from first person to third person, present tense to future tense. The ending enters a dream-like state as the heroine imagines how she will kill her oppressor and rescue her sisters from their cages. Because these events are narrated in future tense, as plans and hopes rather than as events that have come to pass, the story ends without revealing whether the narrator will escape the trap she is in.

“The Snow Child,” the shortest story in the collection, makes a similar experiment with its voice. The majority of the story (the first four paragraphs) are told in present tense, up to the point of the snow child’s death. Once she is removed from the story, the narrative moves into past tense. The story combines elements of Snow White, The Snow Child, and a secondary stream of Cinderella stories in which the heroine’s father pursues an incestuous marriage with his daughter. Even the language used to introduce the main characters—“The Count and his wife” (99)—suggests the story’s interest in Marriage as an Economic Exchange: The man is described by station and in capital letters, while the woman is written in lowercase and with a possessive adjective. Both her social status and her identity derive from her position as the wife of the Count. Unlike more traditional fairy tales, it’s the father figure, rather than the mother, who wishes for a child. The Count echoes the famous “white as snow, red as blood” refrain and in return is given a young woman part way between a daughter and a mistress. The child is vulnerable and unclothed, an embodiment of innocence in contrast to the countess, who is dressed in jewels and furs that serve not only as markers of status but as an armor against vulnerability.

Initially, the countess is jealous and vindictive toward the young girl. She seeks to harm her three times, echoing the three murder attempts from Snow White’s stepmother. It’s only once she’s dead—once she’s no longer a threat to her marriage—that the countess impassively allows her husband free rein with the child’s body. In this moment, the snow child is stripped of her humanity and rendered an impersonal object. Once the Count is finished with her, she ceases to exist and disappears from the world completely. The only remnant of her is the rose, which attacks the countess with the only power it has left. However, the wealthy couple continues onwards without consequence. The story acts as a critique of the extravagance and entitlement of the ruling class.