Blood as Femininity Anonymous 11th Grade

Blood is an important aspect in ‘The Bloody Chamber’ due to its connotations with many different elements, specifically to do with the human body. Blood is shown as impure and something that stains women and objects. This is symbolic of the thinking of the time that blood is something that corrupts people and especially women, due to their first menstruation cycle being when they transform from a girl to a woman, this blood corrupts the girl and changes her to a woman. This reinforces the beliefs of the era as the change from religious to scientific beliefs were still undergoing in the form of the Enlightenment.

Blood is an essential substance and is used to power life but the key aspect of it is that it stays in the body most of the time. This is significant as without any outside influences, the blood of males does not leave the body. This is in contrast with the blood of females which does leaves the body during the act of menstruation each month and also when the hymen is ruptured. In context, the rupturing of the hymen was an important aspect in those days and to some extent, is still an important aspect when judging the purity of a female. This idea is seen in the Bloody Chamber but due to the decrease in cultural norms...