1
A Beautiful Object
The powerful vampiress in Carter’s “The Lady of the House of Love” is the embodiment
of a female trapped between authority and desire. Previously Nesferatu’s specific position of
authority had necessitated destruction of the men who came to her, but this story delves into the
moment at which her previously immutable interactions with men are shattered and the
possibility for change is presented. In this story, Carter brings into conflict fairy tale
embodiments of two types in the modern world, the powerful female and the powerful male.
However, the eventual destruction of Nesferatu at the hands of the very man whom she desires
demonstrates that these two types, the strong woman and the strong male, burdened by the
constraining relic of the past, cannot be reconciled and that coexistence of these two opposites
can only be achieved through reduction of the once-strong female to nothing more than a
beautiful object.
Nesferatu regrets her authority because it links her inextricably to a constraining past,
demonstrated in this story by the constant juxtaposition of Nesferatu’s youth with age, the
emphasis on how the decaying landscape imprisons the vampiress, and descriptions of her
authority as an ancestral burden. Her authoritarian role as keeper of her gothic castle brings her
into constant conflict with the past. Part of her role requires her to wear “an antique bridal gown”
making her “both death and the maiden” and linking her physical appearance to past annihilation
and past creation (93). Her position of authority does not just require superficial convening with
the past through her dress but a “perpetual repetition of [the] passions” of her ancestors (103).
Her murders are described as “ancestral crimes,” executed under the “baleful, posthumous
existence” of her ancestors (93). In this way even her actions as “queen of night, queen of terror”
are not completely her own, but rather forced upon her by the past actions of her ancestors (95).
2
She is incarcerated in the “castle of her inheritance,” by “a huge, spiked wall,” which has risen
from “the roses her dead mother planted,” showing yet again how her predecessors, while
bequeathing her power, also reach from the past to constrict her (95). Described by Carter as “the
mistress of disintegration,” Nesferatu’s powerful role as mistress of her castle is inseparable from
the decay and disintegration of the past (94). Nesferatu’s appearance, seat from which she reigns,
and the mode in which she must exercise her power are all infected by the past. Nesferatu, like
modern females, was handed a domain that was already full of “depredations of rot and fungus
everywhere,” and the deterioration of her present condition, wreaked by forces which originated
in the past, represents the struggle of modern females to exercise their power in a world which
everywhere is marked by the stain and decay of past restrictions upon females (94).
The inextricable connection of Nesferatu’s authority to the past, and impossibility of
resolving these past impediments with her present desires, leads her to resent her power.
Although Nesferatu “possesses all the haunted forests and mysterious habitations of [her
ancestor’s] vast domain,” her desires for love and companionship are not satisfied because the
role her ancestors conferred upon her necessitates murder of anyone who could fulfill this desire
(95). She yearns “to be human” (95) and wishes that “love free [her] from the shadows” (103).
These desires, when viewed in conjunction with the countess’s “horrible reluctance for the role”
of ruler which now she holds, indicate that the countess connects inability to achieve humanity or
love with role of vampire queen which has been assigned to her (95). Consequently, “the
countess herself is indifferent to her own weird authority,” because this very authority includes
the daily task of annihilating the humanity and potential lovers that she so avidly seeks (95).
Thus Carter, by depicting Nesferatu’s execution of authority as the daily “destiny she wistfully
attempts to evade,” shows a polarized example of a woman who has grown to resent her
3
powerful role because of how thoroughly it ostracizes her from humanity and male
companionship (94). Modern females who hold positions of power must similarly face the reality
of their gender’s past while also battling obstacles in their relationships with men in the present
that arise from being successful, a task which can create resentment for that very power, as
occurs with Nesferatu.
Carter then brings the female, haunted by the past and her present authority, into conflict
with a young male who represents the humanity and love which the countess so yearns for and
shows their unfortunate irreconcilability. As the young man approaches the castle the narrator
draws a juxtaposition between him and the vampiress, describing the boy, a “being rooted in
change… about to collide with the timeless Gothic eternity of the vampires” (97). This takes into
account Nesferatu’s unique link to the past, while also establishing that this connection with the
past does not afflict the young man now approaching her castle. He is not miserable like
Nesferatu either but preserved in the happy “unknowingness,” (97) of his “pentacle of
virginity,”(99). His rationality, happiness, humanity, youth, unconsciousness of the past,
potential for change, and his gender make him a complete foil to Nesferatu, and when they clash
he feels a strange pity for his opposite. He “would like to take her into his arms and protect her
from the ancestors who leer down from the walls,” (105). He calls her “poor thing,” and wants to
“cure her of all these nightmares,” (107). While he does cure her of her nightmares, he does so
by killing her. In death she is “for the first time, fully human,” (107). However, in achieving her
humanity, in finally severing herself from the burden of the past, she has lost all agency and been
deprived of all power that was afforded her while living. Nesferatu, so constrained by the past, so
miserable in her present, where “all is as it has always been and will be,” when finally brought
4
into conflict with this male object of humanity and love, is destroyed and reduced to a rose
shoved into a pocket.
The only coexistence offered for this male and the female is the concluding image of
Nesferatu’s rose in the military barracks, but this very image represents the compromises that the
female race must make to thrive in a male-dominated world. The image of an all-male military
barracks is one of an environment more male dominated than the average stratum of the modern
world. By placing the rose “plucked from between [Nosferatu’s] thighs,” and thus symbolic of
her, in such an environment, Carter shows the role of the countess in a male-dominated world.
The rose fills “the Spartan quarters” with “the reeling odour of a glowing, velvet, monstrous
flower whose petals had regained their former bloom and elasticity, their corrupt, brilliant,
baleful splendour,” (107-108). This symbol of the countess regains its previous bloom and
elasticity, a metaphoric recovery of youthful beauty. The rose also maintains the mysterious
elements of corruption, monstrosity, and baleful splendor that had been unique components to
Nesferatu’s peculiarly enticing sensuality. Just as the Countess’ “dreadful, balked tenderness”
invokes thoughts of “necrophiliac pleasure” (105) and her splendour is the unique result of a
“hectic, unhealthy beauty” so is the rose perversely, inexplicably beautiful (101). It is monstrous,
yet glowing. It is corrupt, yet brilliant. The rose displays the fundamentals of the Countess’
beauty, without being plagued by the danger, power, and strength which the vampiress had
possessed. The rose can do no more than fill the barracks with scent, and it can only do this
because the young man had “decided to try and resurrect” it (107). Thus when Nesferatu,
represented by her rose, and men are able to successfully live alongside each other it is only
because Nesferatu has been reduced to no more than a beautiful object which possesses all of her
sensual, fragrant qualities devoid of the characteristics which might have threatened male power.
5
Carter’s construction of a beautiful, powerful, female protagonist who is trapped by the
past and longs for a world where her strength as a female does not alienate her from men, though
presented within the bounds of a fairy tale, calls out to all who long similarly in the modern
world. Thus, the final message that a powerful female must be reduced to nothing more than a
beautiful object in order to thrive in a world dominated by men is not just a testimonial to the
fate of this lone vampiress, but a frank statement of the inevitable fate of many strong women,
unless change occurs. However, the story teaches that the future is not irrevocable; it shows that
the Tarot Cards may, after many attempts, offer up a different future than the one previously
dealt. It is this unlikely, unexpected future which Carter urges women to seize.
Works Cited
Carter, Angela.“The Lady of The House of Love.” The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories.
Penguin Books: New York, 1979. 93-108. Print.