The Snow Child
Quotes
- ‘midwinter - ‘invincible, immaculate’
- ‘the Countess hated her’
- ‘a feather…a bloodstain…and the rose’
- ‘It bites!’
- ‘the whole world was white’
- ‘a masculine fantasy’ - Cristina Bacchilega
Characters
- Snow Child
- ‘as white as snow’
- ‘as black as that bird’s feather’
- ‘as red as blood’
- ‘the child of his desire’
- ‘high, black, shining boots
with scarlet heels’
AO2 - language, form and structure and how they shape meaning
- Language
- Alliteration of ‘invicible, immaculate’ exaggerates the extremity of
the weather
- Rose is a symbol of femininity or the vagina
- Snow Child bleeds, symbolising menstruation
- Bite symbolises the suffering that accompanies being female -
childbirth, hymen breaking, menstruation
- Form
- Vignette - a small, literary sketch
- Structure
- Written in the 3rd person but from the perspective of the
Count
- ‘So the girl picks a rose; pricks her finger on the thorn; bleeds;
screams; falls.’ - isolated paragraph, one sentence, uses idea of ‘three’
AO3 - connections between texts and different interpretations
Gothic Features
- Weather/setting
- Bloody Chamber = Snow Child’s vagina
- ‘White’ setting and snow symbolises purity and virginity,
- Dominant males
- Masculine control of female identity
- Count = Marquis from BC
- Creates both women - Countess cannot exist without a Count
- Passive females
- Countess belongs to Count - she is only a Countess because of him
- Price of being the Countess - subservience and a loss of identity
- Neither female can exist without the Count - he gives them their
power
- One must die for the other to survive
- Literal objectification of women - Count undresses and dresses
Countess as he pleases, creates Snow Child
- Incestuous rape - she was not expected to receive pleasure in having
sex, she was his sexual object
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