The Bloody Chamber: The Lady of the House of Love Summary & Analysis

In an abandoned village in Transylvania, Romania, is an old chateau, and in it lives a Countess, the “beautiful queen of vampires.” She is a young girl in an old wedding dress, and she cannot help her bloodthirsty desires, though she hates them. She spends her hours laying out Tarot cards and reading her own inevitable fate, or else strumming the bars of her pet lark’s cage. The house is dark, overgrown, and haunted by ghosts.

The Countess is inhumanly beautiful, with long sharp fingernails and teeth. She is a descendant of Vlad the Impaler of Transylvania. Every night she lays out the Tarot cards, wishing she was human, but her fate is always otherwise. She is attended to by a mute old governess who keeps her away from the sun and mirrors, and lets her out at night to feed on creatures in the garden. If a traveler ever comes through the village square and stops at the fountain to drink, the governess kindly invites him in.

The Countess wishes she could keep the rabbits from the garden as pets, but her hunger always overcomes her. In the same way she cannot resist killing the boys the governess brings her, after she serves them coffee and leads them to her bedroom. The governess then buries the remains in the garden.

One summer a young British soldier decides to travel through Romania on his bicycle, thinking humorously of “the land of vampires.” He has “the special quality of virginity,” and he is very much a historical person – part of the generation that will later die in World War I – but he is about to meet the “timeless Gothic eternity of the vampires.” He is supremely rational, as shown by his choice of a bicycle, which seems like a machine totally opposed to superstition.

Meanwhile the Countess lays out her Tarot cards, and for the first time ever she gets a fate involving love. The young soldier comes to the ominously abandoned village and drinks from the fountain. Then the governess appears, dressed neatly and smiling. She beckons the young man to follow her. As he leaves the village he is overcome by the strong scent of roses. They are everywhere, and “obscene in their excess.”

The governess leads the young man to the mansion. He is momentarily frightened by its dramatic and foreboding appearance, but he follows the governess inside. She takes away his bicycle and he feels his “symbol of rationality” is gone. He steps into the castle of evil, but he is unknowingly protected by the “pentacle of his virginity.” The governess leads him to a room where a meal is set for one person only, and he bemusedly eats and drinks.

After dinner the governess leads the young man to another room, and he assumes he is about to meet the house’s wealthy owner for coffee. They pass through some crumbling, dilapidated rooms with frightening family portraits in them and then come to a door. The governess knocks and then sends the young man in. The room is very dark, but eventually his eyes adjust and he sees the Countess, a pale young girl wearing an old-fashioned wedding dress. He is struck by her extreme beauty and unhealthy appearance.

The governess raises a light to the young man’s face, and at the sight of him the Countess cries out, knocking her Tarot cards to the floor. The governess gives her a pair of dark glasses to put on. The young man picks the cards up off the rotting carpet, noting how morbid they are for such a young girl. The Countess seems to recover when he touches her hand, and she makes some coffee for the young man. The governess leaves the room.

The young man notices that the bestial portraits on the walls resemble the young girl. The Countess serves him the coffee and tells him how lonely she is in her chateau, and that it is so dark because she has an “affliction of the eyes.” She seems like a doll or an “ingenious piece of clockwork” to the man as she speaks. The Countess has an inner dialogue where she thinks of the young man as her long-awaited bridegroom, and prepares to drink his blood, but externally she keeps chattering in French.

Meanwhile the young man begins to realize the truth about this horrible castle, but he is still protected by his virginity and “lack of imagination.” Later he will be afraid during the war, but he is not afraid now. The Countess wants “consummation” but the only kind she knows is death, and she grows hungry. She imagines what will happen next: she will lead the soldier to her bedroom and he will bleed on her “inverted marriage bed.” Then he will be buried under her roses, feeding their rich color and scent.

The Countess leads the young man to her bedroom, and at its morbid appearance he thinks of a story he heard about a necrophiliac brothel. The Countess starts to shake and cry, upsetting her usual ritual of disrobing and murdering. She drops her dark glasses and they break, and when she tries to pick up the splinters she cuts her thumb. It is the first time she has seen her own blood.

The young man goes to her and kisses her bleeding finger, and then he falls asleep or into a trance as the Countess feels the “pain of becoming human.” When the young man wakes up it is morning, and all the curtains are open and the caged lark is free and sitting on the windowsill. The Countess seems to have disappeared, leaving only a dress spotted with blood and a rose. The young man tosses the lark from the window and watches it fly away.

The young man goes back to the room where he had his coffee, planning on taking the Countess to a doctor, but then he sees her sitting dead at her table, slumped over the Tarot cards. She is holding a last rose for him, and he takes it. The governess then appears and sends the young man away, and he finds his bicycle and rides to Bucharest.

The young man gets a call to join his regiment and he leaves Romania. Later he discovers he still has the Countess’s rose in his jacket, and that it isn’t dead yet. Remembering the girl’s “unexpected and pathetic” death, he puts the rose into some water. When he returns to his room later, the rose has grown huge and red again, giving off a potent odor. The next day the soldier’s regiment marches off to war.