Carter’s liminal experience in the text works to deconstruct and reposition female sexuality in a male-dominated space. Her more radical statement, however, is that all women are forced to live life as a liminal experience. The two halves of the liminal being’s experience do not seem to make a satisfying whole.

At the same time, he or she is condemned to never live in either state. By existing in two states or being two things simultaneously, the occupant has qualities of both. In literature, liminal spaces traditionally give the occupant both power and torment. This disorient translates to the ambiguity of the King’s identity and the narrator’s intentions. The narrator in the Erl-King describes the sensation of liminality as “vertigo.” When the Erl-King, a liminal creature who is half-human, half-woods, draws her into his “gravity” of in-betweenness, she is unpleasantly disoriented. Carter creates an atmosphere that possesses elements of the ‘bloody chamber’, both power and torment simultaneously, particularly in ‘The Erl King’, a story in which all aspects exist liminally. The concept “bloody chamber” can also refer to the vagina or womb, and Carter uses this fact to underscore the connection between women’s sexuality and the violence they experience. Bloody chambers are often connected with not only the blood of violence, but also with the bloodshed when a woman loses her virginity and when she menstruates.

It is a space of transformation for the heroine that changes her irrevocably. The bloody chamber, as a physical ‘chamber’ can refer to a room where violence and enlightenment occur simultaneously. Liminality pervades Angela Carter’s short story collection, entitled The Bloody Chamber, in her characters, physical settings and even her narrative voice.

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter