In the first narrative of 'The Bloody Chamber', it is the narrator who embodies the seductress and trembling victim- for example towards the end of the narrative after the narrator has seen the "bloody chamber" filled with the Marquis dead wives and he has returned home she "forced herself to be seductive" in order to stay alive. It's at this point she understands that to live she must manipulate her husband through the use of her body, as she simply cannot leave as she belongs to him through the tie of marriage. In contrast to the seductress is the innocent virgin, a moment that captures this is when she and the Marquis are at an event at the start of the narrative and she has "his wedding gift" "clasped" around her throat. The "choker of rubies" is significantly symbolic as it is used to foreshadow how the Marquis plans to decapitate her. This is forewarned when the reader learns it was the Marquis' Grandmothers who wore it to show she had "escaped the gulliotine" at the time of the French Revolution. It is that she is blissfully unaware of its irony and more aware of how it "became" her that she is seen as innocent and naieve. Although the Gothic genre typically uses stock characters based on stereotypes due to our patriarchal society and its values of how a gender should be culturally constructed, Cater disregards this Gothic structure towards the end of the narrative by deconstructing the stock character to enable her to exploit her own literary purpose of being a post-modern feminist writer. This is shown through the use of the narrators mother becoming the "avenging angel" which originally in 'Blue Beard' (the fairytale the narrative is based upon) it is her brother, a male who saves the damsel in distress, but Carter may have used the mother for two purposes: to expose the uncomfortable truth of how we have been conditioned to think patriarchally through the use of fairy tales from a young age or to challenge the hegemonic ideology that has entrapped women and men in certain roles and duties within society. By making the normal marginalised and making what was marginalised normal, she is able to exploit what we know and challenge our way of thinking, making us question what we know.
Carter presents the predatory male who pursues the the trembling victim in the Marquis, a powerful man who smells of "leather and spice" and walks on "soles of velvet", a true predator to catch the female prey who are allured to his power and presence. Carter shows the reader how sick and twisted the Marquis is by revealing how he enjoys treating women- like animals. Like for example when the reader learns how he goes away to hunt "young girls" with "dogs". The reason why Carter may be using such strong and upsetting imagery, is to reveal how women are seen- as the weaker sex (as this is a feminist book). And as women are seen as feble and docile, it means that they are prey to male predators who wish to tarnish their purity or simply enjoy the chase. Furthermore the Marquis revels in their suffering as he performs his ritual on the women "branding" their forehead with the "mark of Cain" which orginates from Genesis 4 in the bible. The mark was placed on Cain's head for killing his brother Abel, this mark warned people not to kill or harm Cain as if they did it would come back on theirselves sevenfold. It could be said that the Marquis may perform this act to mentally torture the women, to make them fear and anticipate their oncoming death but it may also be performed to show his ownership of the women- like God owned Cain and isolated him from others the Marquis has done the exact same showing his power and dominance to do a Godly act, it gives their death a formal finality which results in a lack of hope as they cannot defy the power of a God. In addition, when the narrator discovers the "bloody chamber" she also discovers what happened to his past wives. Throughout the narration there was an ambiguity about what happened to his wives, and Carter structurally builds the tension by increasing the prominence of the Marquis sick, twisted and psychopathic traits to the reach the climax of discovering the dead bodies of his wives ornamented in his torture chamber. The women were "strung up", "disembodied" and "denuded of flesh" highlighting how even in death the women were still his possessions, still his prey. This shows how the Marquis is a predatory male who pursues the trembling victims, but Carter takes this stock character further by showing what he enjoys doing after the persuit- stripping away any form of power they may have had.
Although the Marquis embodies the predatory male in Carter's first narrative of 'The Bloody Chamber', it is not completely true that the males presented are wholly predatory. For instance, the Marquis may commit these heinous crimes as he is burdened by the forced legacy that was left by the other males generations before him, i.e his Grandfather, the narrator even "pities" him after seeing the torture chamber and knowing she will be in it next. This shows a different side to the Marquis, it could be said that he himself is a victim as he may not want to hunt or kill the women but feels obligated to continue on the family tradition. Also, a psychoanalytic critic may suggest that as he was brought up with these morals which were enforced by a strong authority figure then he wouldn't have a clear concept if what is right or wrong. But in contrast to the Marquis is Jean-Yves, the blind piano tuner who is the narrator's "lover", he displays what would be classed as a stereotypically feminine trait- for example he is sensitive and his "tender look" makes the narrator feel "faint". This is Carter once again deconstructing the stock character to enable her to challenge the dominant ideology that men should be strong and women should be weak. A Marxist may raise the point that Jean-Yves is presented weaker then the Marquis due to his lower class status, this could be due to Capitilism which is a system that structurally keeps the upper and lower classes separate and gender roles enforced which are taken originally from Religion (e.g women cannot be priests).
It is true that in the first narrative of Angela Carter's collection 'The Bloody Chamber', the women can be presented as trembling victims and the males as predatory pursuers which takes the same form as original Gothic, but in contrast Carter manipulates the Gothic form in order to achieve a feminist perspective on a formally patriarchal fairytale which is embodied in the narrators mother, the "avenging angel" and the "lovely blind humanity" of the piano tuner. Which, in conclusion, shows that this narrative does not wholly present the stock characters that are used in original Gothic genre.
