Comments on The Bloody Chamber

"His wedding gift, clasped round my throat. A choker of rubies, two inches wide, like an extraordinarily precious slit throat." - page 11

This necklace is used to great symbolic effect in The Bloody Chamber, and this particular line foreshadows its use as a representation of the vampire husband's perverse fascination with murdering ingenuous little girls. When I read this line, I wasn't sure if the reference to slit throats was stylistically emo or if it actually meant something. However, the title of the story and the increasingly creepy happenings later on brought me back to the figure of the ruby choker. Why was the vampire husband so intent on the girl wearing it all the time? Why did the text keep mentioning that it hurt her when she wore it? And why was it only mentioned when he was exercising his iron grip of control over her? The juxtaposition of slightly gaudy beauty and extravagance with sadism and impending death mirrored the style of the story perfectly.