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Title: Notes on The Erl - King, from 'The Bloody Chamber'
Description: These notes include, a summary, main themes and messages, main images and symbols, gothic features and key quotations from within the short story. This will really help you to gain a better knowledge of Carter's story and more evidence.

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The  Erl  –  King  
 
Brief  summary:    
 
•   A  teenage  girl  is  walking  through  a  deserted  wood    
•   She  is  seduced  by  the  Erl  –  King    
•   She  falls  in  love  with  him    
•   He  takes  her  in    
•   She  realises  he  plans  to  cage  her  like  he  has  his  previous  women  he’s  seduced    
•   She  strangles  him  with  his  own  hair    
•   Then  she  sets  the  birds  (women)  free  
 
Main  messages/themes:    
 
•   Gender  representations    
•   Power    
•   Gothic  setting    
•   Aggression/murder    
•   Nature    
•   Innocence  and  guilt    
•   Transgression    
•   The  liminal  experience    
 
Main  images  and  symbols:    
 
•   Eyes  –  represent  how  the  male  consumes  the  female    
•   Masks  –  the  vortex  eye    
•   Hair  –  symbol  of  masculine  strength    
•   Birds  –  represent  freedom,  trapped    
•   Ring  around  birds’  neck  –  represents  entrapment    
 
Gothic  features:  
 
•   Weather  and  setting  –  the  wood  is  isolated  and  personified,  Erl  –  King  can  ‘tie  up  
winds  with  his  handkerchief’    
•   Dominant  males  –  childlike,  less  predatory  
•   Supernatural  –  he  has  a  ‘bird  call’    
•   Religion  –  he  says  the  devil  spits  on  them    
 
Key  quotations:    
 
•   ‘tender  butcher’  
•   ‘I  feel  my  heart  pulse,  the  wither’    
•   ‘Eyes  green  as  apples
...
’  
•   ‘lies  half  dreaming,  half  waking’    

 
 
 
 

•   “Mother,  mother,  you  have  murdered  me!”  
•   ‘He  strips  me  to  my  last  nakedness’    
•   ‘his  dress  of  water,  this  garment  that  drenches  me,  its  slithering  odour,  its  capacity  
for  drowning’    


Title: Notes on The Erl - King, from 'The Bloody Chamber'
Description: These notes include, a summary, main themes and messages, main images and symbols, gothic features and key quotations from within the short story. This will really help you to gain a better knowledge of Carter's story and more evidence.