The Bloody Chamber

The Bloody Chamber Summary | Detailed Summary

An impoverished 17-year-old Frenchwoman, a professional pianist, is betrothed to a much older man. The much older man is an extremely wealthy Marquis, whose home is a castle in Brittany, located on the ocean. The Marquis has been married three times to women of some renown, all of whom have died. His most recent wife died only three months before he became engagement to the Frenchwoman. The engagement ring is set with a fire opal the size of a pigeon's egg, which had been; his mother's, his grandmother's, and his great grandmother's. The ring had once been a gift to his family from Catherine de Medici. All of his previous brides have worn the ring. The Marquis's wedding gift to the French woman is his grandmother's two-inch wide choker of rubies which was created after the French Revolution, as a gesture of defiance, to signify that she had escaped the guillotine.

The bride mother was the daughter of a rich tea planter in Indochina but her husband had died in the war and left her impoverished. The Bride's mother was a very brave woman who had, "outfaced a junkful of Chinese pirates, nursed a village through a visitation of the plague, [and] shot a man-eating tiger with her own hand," all before she was 17 years old. She had sold all her jewels, including her wedding ring, to bring her daughter up and to pay for her daughter's musical education.

Following the wedding, husband and wife embark by train for the castle in Brittany. The newlyweds sleep separately as they wish to postpone the consummation of the marriage until they are in their matrimonial bed. Because the Marquis has business to attend to, he again postpones the moment of consummation. He does; however, undresses her in the their bedroom, which is lined with mirrors, before he leaves her alone. After he finishes his business in his study, he takes her to the bedroom and requires that she wear the ruby while they have intercourse. She bleeds, the first of his wives to come to him a virgin, he tells her. She realizes that it is her innocence and lack of experience that has attracted him to her.

Her husband is called away to the United States on business and must be gone for six weeks. He gives her a ring of keys to all the rooms in the castle, including rooms containing costly artwork, silver, and other valuables, and he tells her that she may go into any room in the castle. The Marquis gives her one final key which opens a room in the basement where he asks her not to go because it is his private place. He has provided a piano for her and, at her request; he has hired a blind piano tuner. The piano tuner is a blacksmith's son from the village who had been trained by the priest so that he might have a livelihood.

Once he has departs, she is bored because she has nothing to do and she calls her mother. She bursts into tears for no reason as they speak. She goes into his study and looks through his papers and books. The French woman finally yields to the temptation so she descends to the basement to visit her husband's private room. There is no electricity in this section of the castle so she carries matches and candles. In the room, she finds a torture chamber and the bodies of the three previous wives, one of whom is embalmed and laid out on a catafalque surrounded by candles. Another body's skull is suspended like a Christmas tree ornament from the ceiling and his third wife is in an iron maiden and was so recently impaled that the blood runs out when she opens the door. She realizes that the Marquis' third wife was alive all the time he was been courting her. The French woman is so shocked by this horror that she drops the key in the pool of blood. She picks it, wraps it in a handkerchief, and rushes from the chamber.

She knows she needs help but she is afraid to turn to the servants because they may be in league with him. She tries to call her mother, but the phone lines have been cut. She knows that her husband has departed for New York so she feels that she has some time and so she plays the piano. The piano tuner stumbles over the ring of keys, that she dropped outside the study, and he brings them to her. She faints and when he comforts her, she pours out the story of the visit to the chamber. He tells her that there have always been stories in the area about the castle and that the old name for it was the Castle of Murder.

Then she sees, out the window, the approach of her husband's big black car. The piano tuner and her decide to put the key to the chamber back on the ring, but it is covered with blood. She tries to wash it, but she can not get it clean. She sends the piano tuner to his room, disrobes, climbs into bed, and pretends to have been asleep when her husband comes into the room. He demands the keys. The blood on the key to the chamber has assumed the shape of a heart. He presses the key to her forehead and the image of the heart is permanently transferred from the key to her skin, leaving the key shining clean again. He tells her that her martyrdom will be by decapitation.

He has sent all the servants away, so they are alone in the castle except for the piano tuner, who waits with her in the music room for her husband to call her. At that moment, the sight of a horse and rider is seen out the window; her mother. The French woman goes to the courtyard to meet her husband, despairing that her mother will arrive in time. Her husband holds the sword that, "his great-grandfather had presented to the little corporal, in token of surrender to the Republic, before he shot himself." He takes the opal ring off of her finger saying that, "It will serve me for a dozen more fiancées."

He lifts her long hair from her neck with one hand and twists it into a rope while wielding the sword with his other hand. Just as the sword is about to fall, there is a pounding at the gate. The French woman runs to her mother, accompanied by the piano tuner. They are chased by the wild man with a sword. Her mother shoots him in the head with her dead husband's service revolver and it is all over in an instant.

The French woman gives her enormous inherited wealth away to charities and she turns the castle into a school for the blind. She marries the piano tuner and they run a little music school on the outskirts of Paris. Her mother had come to rescue because, she said, she had never heard her daughter cry before. Her mother had taken the same train that the bride and groom had taken after their wedding and had borrowed the horse from a farmer.

Nothing can mask the mark on her forehead but the French woman takes comfort from the fact that her husband can not see it.