The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

The ruby choker given to the protagonist of “The Bloody Chamber” by her new husband is one of the most vivid images in the collection. The woman compares it to a tradition in French aristocracy, reflecting, “the aristos who’d escaped the guillotine had an ironic fad of tying a red ribbon round their necks at just the place where the blade would have sliced it through, a red ribbon like the memory of a wound” (7). The murderous husband who gifted it to her would most likely have been aware of this trend; here, however, he has inverted it to symbolize not an escaped past but an inevitable future.

Initially, the woman is pleased with the gift and the attention it garners, and she wears it with pride. Later, however, it becomes a prison: “But he would not let me take off my ruby choker, although it was growing very uncomfortable, nor fasten up my descending hair” (16). Overall, the ruby necklace acts as a symbol for the gilded cage of Marriage as an Economic Exchange. Its immediate impression is one of wealth and security, while in truth it represents ownership and confinement.