I remember how, that night, I lay awake in the wagon-lit in a tender, delicious ecstasy of excitement, my burning cheek pressed against the impeccable linen of the pillow and the pounding of my heart mimicking that of the great pistons ceaselessly thrusting the train that bore me through the night, away from Paris, away from girlhood, away from the white, enclosed quietude of my mother’s apartment, into the unguessable country of marriage.

And I remember I tenderly imagined how, at this very moment, my mother would be moving slowly about the narrow bedroom I had left behind forever, folding up and putting away all my little relics, the tumbled garments I would not need any more [… second sentence is longer(?) than the first] 

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I had a great response to Issue Number Six.

Lots of people wanted to talk about my cold reading of Jane Eyre – many of them, I think, ‘Jane-ites’. Some felt I hadn’t given her enough of a chance, whilst others felt I hadn’t been able to resist the pull of information I knew from beyond those First 100 Words.

By the way, if you didn’t work out that I think Jane is brilliant, I succeeded!

Thank you – I think I have replied to you all individually by now, but if I haven’t give me a nudge. And you gave me some real enthusiasm to approach this week’s very different piece.

I hear sirens, in both senses of the word … someone’s in trouble, and I suspect it might be the next unsuspecting man who bumps into our narrator or underestimates her. There’s something alarmingly provocative and ‘knowing’ about her.

Keats’s “La Belle Dame sans Merci” comes to mind … and that didn’t end well for the knight …

Close Reading

Nearly all of the texts so far have referenced a person in the title (the exception being Nineteen Eighty-Four); that has undoubtedly shaped some of my cold readings –  when you’re working with so little material, you have to take some leaps not quite knowing where you’re going to land. 

Today’s title suggests a location – ‘chamber’ feels old-fashioned, not quite archaic but on its way there. ‘Bloody’, though? Put the two together and you get all kinds of connotations, all pointing me in the direction of a book destined for the horror shelves.

Otherwise, I arrive at the text with a slightly cleaner slate than usual.

What do we have? Well, a mature woman looking back on what Cleopatra would call her ‘green and salad days’.¹ But, like the Egyptian Queen, I’m not sure we’re dealing with a stereotypically naïve Gothic heroine here – as this girl leaves home for the unknown.

I think the thing that strikes me first is the length of that opening sentence. Seventy-three words, if I counted correctly. A woman who can write like this – with this level of control over syntax and phrasing – is intelligent, and likely educated. But I’m going to go back to the word control: I think our narrator is going to be very deliberate in what she tells us. No awkward or embarrassing missteps or revelations.

And if we were to savour that remarkable first sentence as if it were a fine wine or single malt? Romantic love is in there, certainly. But quite apart, and almost overpowering, there is sex, too.

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For a seasoned reader of classic literature – a male one, to boot – the hairs on the back of my neck are (metaphorically) rising. Remember, a cold reading disqualifies knowledge of the text, but not of other things you’ve read. And I’m going to suggest that in Literature there’s little more challenging, and frightening to men than the sexually voracious woman.

Just a couple of quick Gothic examples. In Dracula, the Count’s brides are appalling creatures – but the really shocking section, often overlooked, is when Mina Harker suddenly begins to act in a ‘voluptuous’ manner (Stoker’s word), demonstrating that her transition to vampire is almost complete. Elsewhere, it’s only a few days since I wrote about J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s terrific creation, Carmilla – again, frightening because of her overt and bold expressions of desire.

But there’s another reason I’m suddenly aware of my own reaction here. 

There’s nothing remotely unusual about talking about sex in literature – I’ve been doing that for many years. What IS unusual is talking about it to an audience of strangers. You would laugh if you could see my expression as I type this article, knurled into a frown of discomfort, almost embarrassment. I’m suddenly very conscious of being a middle-aged man writing about a woman expressing sexual desire.

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And perhaps that is part of what makes the opening so provocative, and challenging.

We usually figure Paris as a city of love and romance, but look again at that anaphoric triplet in the middle of the sentence:

away from Paris, away from girlhood, away from the white, enclosed quietude of my mother’s apartment’

This narrator is leaving the city of love behind, leaving childhood innocence behind, and leaving her chaperone, too.

The adjective ‘white’ here is suggestive of goodness and purity, but ‘enclosed’ tells me that she’s found her mother’s apartment restricting – rather suffocating than safe.

Then there’s the slow relish of the rest of that languid, deliberately drawn-out sentence. Because this is a close reading as well as a cold reading, I’m drawing the worst possible conclusions as I see phrases like ‘delicious ecstasy’, a ‘pounding’ heart’, or ‘pistons ceaselessly thrusting’.

Cue that embarrassed expression again. You and me, both!

Our narrator, even a girl as she was, is looking forward to linen that is crumpled, not ‘impeccable’, as she travels; she bids a ‘tender’ farewell to the functional ‘narrow’ bed she has left behind, which she will now be trading for a wider one.

So far, so knowing. So provocative.

It’s interesting that she talks about the ‘unguessable country’ of marriage. A typical heroine might lie awake all night as she travels there, but usually through trepidation, not anticipation and ‘excitement’. I wonder at that adjective, ‘unguessable‘. It makes me wonder how well she and her betrothed are acquainted. Back to Keats, in some ways …

If the answer is hardly at all, he might be in for a surprise.

I think he’s expecting a girl. What he’s going to meet? A woman.

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Things To Look Out For

The power dynamic between the couple: perhaps especially at first meeting. Do sparks fly?

The interplay between love and sex: how does it play out? Which wins, if any?

That transition between girl and woman: has it happened as abruptly and completely as the opening suggests? Do I need to review my ideas, and think of the story as a simple bildungsroman? Can you switch off childhood as if it were a lightbulb?

Of course, where is the ‘Bloody Chamber’: and why is it important enough to be the title?

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References

1. William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, ed. John Wilders, Arden Shakespeare Third Series (London: Arden Shakespeare, 1995) ↩︎