Angela Carter's work in the short story collection “The Bloody Chamber” makes frequent use of concrete objects as expressions of abstract concepts, including freedom, slavery, and death in multiple forms, not just physical. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay In the story "The Bloody Chamber", the world in which the protagonist lives is archaic. Although technically timeless, the reader gets the idea that it is set in the Victorian era or shortly after. This idea is reinforced by the clothing of the characters, the behavior of most of the women, and the use of carts and horses as means of transportation, with the “car” as a luxury item. The reader is shocked by the presence of the telephone, revealed for the first time as the protagonist and her new husband have sex for the first time: “A dozen husbands impaled a dozen brides while mewing seagulls swung on invisible trapezes in the empty air. The insistent ringing of the telephone brought me back to my senses" (TBC 17). Carter's use of anachronism highlights the significance of the telephone in the story. In this case, the phone seems to symbolize security or freedom. It is with the phone that he manages to call his mother. That maternal bond between mother and daughter, through the telephone wire, ends up being stronger than the bond with the husband in marriage. Carter's use of concrete objects in place of abstract concepts is not limited to anachronisms. “The Bloody Chamber” and “O Belo Adormecido” use intertextuality as an effective strategy to subvert conventions. Ana Raquel Fernandes argues that Carter bases “The Bloody Chamber” on multiple objects, relevant to the setting, which increase in significance over the course of the story. Among these are the lilies in the bedroom and the ruby ​​choker. Lilies, he says, are a deadly illusion. She also takes note of the association that the protagonist makes between the lilies and her husband: “In this first part of the story, the first-person narrator, the young girl who tells her story retrospectively, describes the marquis focusing on the immobility of his face and comparing it to a lily” (Fernandes 3). The section of text Fernandes refers to is the protagonist's initial description of her lover. absolute absence of light, it seemed like a mask to me... Even when he asked me to marry him, and I said: "Yes", he still didn't lose his heavy and fleshy composure. I know, it must seem like a curious analogy, a man with a flower, but sometimes it seemed to me like a lily” (TBC 8-9). The Marquis himself, therefore, with this comparison to a lily, becomes an object in the story that represents death. Fernandes goes on to explain the recurrence of lilies throughout the story as a harbinger of impending death on multiple levels: “The lilies appear again in the description of the master bedroom… although the lilies are white, they stain the narrator, their scent confusing his senses and later in the story, the roots become: 'dismembered arms, adrift, drowned in greenish waters' (TBC 22), an explicit reference to death, from its first description, the bedroom is a room of death” (Fernandes 4). Choker carries with it a powerful symbolism of both death and the bondage of marriage. As a symbol of death, it refers to both the imminent physical decapitation of the protagonist and the death of himself when the protagonist enters the marriage, therefore, is death. This symbolism is alluded to when the choker is described: “A choker of rubies, two inches wide, like a cut throat exceedingly precious” (TBC 11). The symbolism of death is further exemplified in the.