Click below to listen to a short section of 'The Lady of the House of Love'.
*Originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
Power, Pornography & the Vagina.
The structural framework of Carter’s ‘The Lady of the House of Love’ is the subversion of traditional sexuality. The tale’s protagonist, The Countess, embodies the paradigm usually associated with the traditionally predatory male as she seeks and violates young males by sucking their blood; “When she takes them by the hand and leads them to her bedroom, they can scarcely believe their luck.” (111). The Countess isn't ruled by the constraints of gender roles or sexual desire and subsequently, the young British officer in the story is described in tones frequently used to describe the traditional Gothic ‘damsel in distress’ character; “He has the special quality of virginity… ignorance…unknowingness, which is not the same as ignorance.” (112)3 and thus, in keeping with traditional Gothic tropes, the Countess is the predatory figure. In her preface, Carter calls for women to reject these restrictive ideological structures; “If women allow themselves to be consoled for their culturally determined lack of access to the modes of intellectual debate by the invocation of hypothetical great goddesses, they are simply flattering themselves into submission (a technique often used on them by men).” (5). In particular, descriptions of and allusions to bodies are a source of criticism by Carter to the way in which women are viewed by men;
“A great, intoxicated surge of the heavy scent of red roses blew into his face as soon as they left the village, inducing a sensuous vertigo; a blast of rich, faintly corrupt sweetness strong enough almost, to fell him. Too many roses. Too many roses bloomed on enormous thickets that lined the path, thickets bristling with thorns, and the flowers themselves were almost too luxuriant, their huge congregations of plush petals somehow obscene in their excess, their whorled, tightly budded cores outrageous in their implications. The mansion emerged grudgingly out of this jungle.” (113-114).
This description intimates the overwhelming sense of distrust that men have in the female genitals and this concept is one which Carter address in her preface; “Woman is negative. Between her legs lies nothing but zero, the sign for nothing that only becomes something when the male principle fills it with meaning.” (4)1. So, if the male is so afraid, or dismissive, of the female genitalia, then why does pornography exist with its overt focus of the female orifices? This I believe can be answered in ‘The Lady of the House of Love’. The Countess, though she subverts the gender role, only manages to illustrate that pornography is merely about power. Once the Countess encounters the officer, she mentally and physically crumbles, she cannot overpower him despite the implied influence available to her from her ancestors. The countess is merely a figure to be looked upon, her rose (symbolic of the vagina) is the only part of her which stays with the officer and he embraces his archetypal patriarchal role in the army.
Cited:
Carter, A. (2006). ‘The Lady of the House of Love'. In The Bloody Chamber. London: Vintage.
Carter, A (1979). ‘Polemical Preface’. In The Sadeian Woman: An Exercise in Cultural History. London (1993): Virago
Carter, A. (2006). ‘The Lady of the House of Love'. In The Bloody Chamber. London: Vintage.
Carter, A (1979). ‘Polemical Preface’. In The Sadeian Woman: An Exercise in Cultural History. London (1993): Virago