‘She smiled at herself in the mirror too often these days.’
What do you think is the significance of mirrors in the Bloody Chamber?

Mirrors are used in The Bloody Chamber, The Courtship of Mr Lyon and The Tiger’s Bride as a very effective plot device. The way that they are used differs between the three stories but all have a slight magical quality in keeping with the fairy tale theme.
Within all three short stories there is an existing theme of metamorphosis. The first mention of mirrors within The Bloody Chamber is within the intimate scene between the Marquis and the heroine of the story. The bed chamber is surrounded by mirrors, amplifying all of the intense emotions of the scene. This is because the mirrors repeat the scene 12 times over ‘a dozen husbands impaled a dozen wives’ the violent and emotive language used makes the reader feel uncomfortable and highlights the connection between sexuality and violence throughout the book. In the use of the mirrors throughout this scene Carter succeeds in heightening the horrific nature of the scene through the addition of more reflected couples to the scene.
The mirrors also create a pornographic element to the scene, making it appear as though the Marquis and the girl are being observed by onlookers. In using mirrors throughout this scene some of the Marquis perverse sexual desires are revealed to the readers, helping to foreshadow what is to come later on in the story. As the protagonist has discovered the books that the Marquis keeps in his library the readers are aware of some of his perverse sexual nature, but the reflection of the couple as characters within one of the Marquis’ books ‘I saw, in the mirror, the living image of an etching by Rops from the collection he had shown me’. The protagonist sees herself as a character within his books and Carter makes the allusion to pornography herself ‘the most pornographic of all confrontations’. This also serves to emphasise the metamorphosis that the girl goes through, she turns from a timid little girl in front of her husband into venturing into the bloody chamber alone. Through the allusion to pornography we see the protagonist compare herself to a ‘child with sticklike limbs’ foreshadowing her passive nature later on in the novella when she is faced with confrontation with the Marquis. The language used to describe the mirror adds to the feeling that the Marquis brought the protagonist with his money and power ‘in stately frames of contorted gold, that reflected more white lilies that I had seen before’ as well as providing more information about the money that the Marquis has spent on the protagonist to convince her to marry him; the motif of the lilies is also amplified and is made unforgettable which marks the theme out even more and highlights the connotations of death that are attached to the Marquis. Throughout this novella Carter uses mirrors to develop and exaggerate the themes that are present in the book anyway. It also serves as a reminder of the wealth and power that the Marquis has over the protagonist and we can also see the change of the characters through the mirrors as their true characteristics are emphasised.
The Courtship of Mr Lyon only briefly mentions mirrors but they play a key part in the plot. Mirrors are mentioned when Beauty spends her time in London and becomes corrupted by the society there. Through a third person observation ‘She took her earing off in front of the mirror; Beauty’ the reader is made aware of the vanity that Beauty has developed through spending her time with people in London. This shows the key theme of metamorphosis that is present throughout all of Carter’s short stories and novella in this collection. The reader sees Beauty change from a kind and considerate young women to one obsessed by her physical appearance and that of the physical. The mirror plays a key role in revealing the change in Beauty as we see the emotional and characteristic change that is displayed very clearly in a subtle physical transformation brought to light by observation’s that Carter makes in her writing.
This feeling of metamorphosis and physical change through the emotional differences is highlighted by the metaphor that Carter uses when furthering her description of Beauty from the mirror. ‘Her face was acquiring, instead of beauty, a lacquer of the invincible prettiness that characterizes certain pampered, exquisite, expensive cats.’ By using this metaphor Carter creates juxtaposition between Beauty and her beast. While Beauty is the one who looks human she is also displaying bestial qualities in her vanity, reversing the situation between the two. Here we can also see the mirror as a reflection of how wealth plays an important role in Carter’s portrayal of these stories. It is a symbol of how these mirrors and therefore wealth have converted Beauty into a ‘Beast’. This change can be compared to the corruption of the protagonist from The Bloody Chamber by the Marquis ‘I swear to you, I was never vain until I met him’ as Carter takes the view that wealth corrupts the good in people, and uses mirrors as a way of expressing it.
The Tiger’s Bride uses mirrors in a more magical sense than the other two stories do. The first mention of them is within the first scene. As the reader sees the scene from a first person perspective the way that Carter is able to put mirrors into the writing is altered. The protagonist’s first mention of mirrors occurs when ‘[her] father lost me to the Beast at cards’. As the story is written in the past tense we are able to see her reflection on the scene and it clear that she is quite bitter. ‘A king, a queen and an ace. He thought he could not lose me.’ She sees the cards through the mirror, this makes it clear that she should not have seen it. In allowing us this insight into what odds her father was willing to bet her against Carter uses the mirror to show that the protagonist in the story only has value to her father in the monetary value that she possess.
Later on in the story, she is presented with a magical mirror by her clockwork maid in which she is able to see her father. At first she says ‘as if I had put on his face when I arrived at the Beast’s palace’ this comparison that the daughter makes to her father enables to reader to perceive that she is truly miserable with the Beast at the beginning. Yet her disdain for her father’s state ‘What, you self-deluding fool, are you crying still? And drunk too.’ shows that she has no sympathy for him and blames him entirely for what he has done to her. We are also able to see the daughter changing slightly, although the entirety of the story is told retrospectively we are enabled to see the way she looks at her father changes. At this point she has no qualms about insulting him, showing the readers her true feelings, yet at the beginning it appears as though she has resigned herself to her fate.
Through the father’s metamorphosis from rich to poor to rich again we can see that the protagonist develops a distaste for wealth as she sees the evil that is brings in the corruption of her father. When the protagonist sees her father through the mirror again he is ‘counting out a tremendous pile of banknotes’ emphasising the evil that the protagonist associates with wealth. The differing perspective emphasises Carter’s point as we see someone whose life has been ruined by wealth rather than lack of it. Her disdain for her father’s greed and her reluctance to join him demonstrates to the reader her personal development as she is able to see the tiger for good and her father for bad, which shows how Carter’s reversal of stereotypical roles changes the stories.
Overall mirrors are used to facilitate the development of other key ideas and themes throughout the stories. Personally I find that they are very useful in helping Carter to convey her key ideas through self-reflection of the characters or the narrator and allowing the theme of metamorphosis to develop rapidly as it shows the physical manifestation of change within the character.