The Bloody Chamber: The Tiger’s Bride Summary & Analysis

The heroine and her father have traveled from Russia to a city in the south, where the madness of warmth and luxury comes over the father, even though it is still winter. Everyone who stays in this city must play cards with a mysterious “Milord,” who is also called “The Beast.” The father has a gambling addiction, and he gleefully loses everything to The Beast as the heroine watches, angry and frightened.

The heroine describes her past – she was born on Christmas day, and her nurse called her “Christmas rose.” Her mother died when she was young, exhausted of her husband’s gambling and womanizing. Back in the present, the heroine rips the petals off of a white rose as her father keeps losing more of his possessions to The Beast. The Beast is huge and bathed in perfume, with yellow eyes and a face like a beautifully painted-on mask. He wears kid gloves over his clumsy hands.

Finally the father has lost everything except the heroine herself, and so he gambles her. He loses, and then stares silently at the cards as The Beast’s valet makes arrangements to pick up the heroine the next morning. The father grows tearful and remorseful, but The Beast roars and the valet translates for him, saying that the father should have guarded his “treasures” better.

The next day a carriage comes for the heroine, and she looks longingly at the horses, wishing she could flee with them to “the kingdom of horses.” Her father cries and asks for a rose to show that she has forgiven him. The heroine gives him a rose, but she pricks her finger on it and smears it with blood. The valet helps her into the carriage, and he, like The Beast, also seems like an animal in human disguise.

As she rides, the heroine wonders about the nature of The Beast’s “beastliness,” and she remembers her old nurse frightening her with tales of the “tiger-man,” who would come aided by the Erl-King and gobble up the young heroine if she wasn’t good. She remembers other tales of half-men, half-beasts that had terrified and intrigued her in her youth.

The carriage leaves the city and travels through a bleak, wintry landscape. Finally the heroine and the valet arrive at The Beast’s lonely mansion. The heroine enters and sees that the horses eat in the dining room, all the furniture is covered and dusty, and the pictures are taken down from the walls. The valet leads the heroine to The Beast’s room on an upper floor, where there is a fire in the grate and The Beast is wearing a loose robe.

The valet speaks for the silent Beast, saying that his master’s only wish is to see the heroine naked. In exchange The Beast will return all her father’s losses. The heroine laughs and says angrily that she will allow The Beast to “visit” her only once, but she must have a sheet over her face and be in complete darkness. She desires no money unless The Beast pays her what he would a prostitute. The Beast is clearly struck by this outburst, and a tear falls from his eye.

The valet leads the heroine away to her bedroom, and she threatens to hang herself with her bedsheets. The valet urges her not to, as she is a “woman of honour.” He then introduces a maid, who is actually a complex automaton made up to look exactly like the heroine. The valet says that “nothing human lives here.” The maid shows the heroine a mirror, in which the heroine sees her father drunk and crying. The valet then takes the mirror away and locks the heroine in her bedroom. The automaton maid slows down and “falls asleep,” and soon the heroine does so as well.

The next morning the valet brings the heroine breakfast and a single diamond earring. The heroine throws it aside and the valet leads her to The Beast again. He is in exactly the same position as the night before, surrounded by incense. The valet requests again that the heroine disrobe, as her skin is special because “no man has seen” it before. The heroine again refuses, and again The Beast cries a single tear. He buries his head in his arms and the heroine sees that his hands are tiger claws.

A few hours later the valet brings the heroine another diamond earring of “the finest water.” The heroine throws it aside like the other, and then the valet says The Beast has requested to go riding with the heroine. The automaton maid comes to life and retrieves a riding habit, which is exactly the same as the one the heroine used to wear back in Russia. The valet leads the heroine out to the hall where the horses wait.

The heroine mounts a black horse and then is joined by The Beast, who is wrapped in a thick cloak. They ride out into a heavy wind that seems to follow The Beast as if he can control it. The heroine starts to realize that The Beast and his valet are wild animals, not “as other men,” and she is frightened by this, but she also muses that she is just as much a creature and object as the horses or the clockwork maid.

The trio come to a river and dismount, and the valet says that if the heroine will not let The Beast see her naked, then she must see The Beast naked. The heroine grows suddenly terrified, but she nods. The valet covers The Beast with his cloak as he removes his “mask.” The heroine muses that “the lamb must learn to run with the tigers,” instead of lying down together. The Beast emerges as a huge, beautiful tiger.

The valet then moves to cover The Beast back up, but the heroine stops him, and she undresses herself. After a few moments the valet rides off on his horse with the tiger running ahead. The heroine returns to the horses and sees The Beast wearing his cloak again. They return to the house and the valet brings the heroine to an ornately decorated room. The automaton maid is there, and she brings the heroine the magic mirror.

The heroine looks in the mirror and sees her father looking clean and well-dressed and counting out stacks of money. The valet then knocks on the heroine’s door and says that she can leave the palace whenever she likes and rejoin her father. The heroine looks at her own face in the mirror and then sends the valet away. She puts the diamond earrings in her ears. Then she takes off all her clothes, thinking about how unnatural it feels for humans to go around naked.

The heroine finds her way to The Beast’s room and knocks on his door. There is no answer, but the valet appears, naked himself and revealed to be a monkey. He shows the heroine into the room and she sees The Beast’s mask and clothes discarded on the floor and the incense pot broken in pieces. The tiger is pacing back and forth among “gnawed and bloody bones.”

The heroine has a moment of her old fear of the “tiger-man” and the ancient terror of being devoured. But she goes forward, offering herself, and it seems The Beast is more frightened than she is. The heroine stretches out her hand and The Beast approaches and starts to purr. At his thunderous purr the windows break and the house starts to fall apart around them. The Beast licks the heroine’s hands, and she fears his rough tongue will rip off her skin – and it does. Layer after layer of skin disappears, finally revealing fur, and the heroine’s earrings turn to water, and the heroine herself becomes a tiger.