Separating the Reds from the Whites

We’ve all ,at one point or another, been told to separate the reds from the white. However, it appears that Angela Carter did not get the memo and is compelled to fuse the two together inseparably with the symbol of white roses and snow in contrast to blood in The Bloody Chamber. The various times that snow or a white rose is mentioned throughout the fairy tales, almost immediately there is blood shed. For example, in “The Snow Child”, a count stumbles upon a girl with pasty complexion amidst the frost and cold of winter. It is interesting that it is a Count (the blood-sucking monster that is a vampire), who encounters the young girl, who is naked and completely vulnerable to the elements of the cold, “by chance”. We then see that the pale girl pricks her finger on the thorn of a rose and melts (Melts….she melts. Yeah, you read that right). As soon as, for the lack of a better wording, the “reds mix with the whites”, a vile scene soon follows. This is perhaps symbolism of the violation of purity and innocence that is represented by the color white, which is in this case is the obedient little girl, by the bold and brashness that represents the color red. It was perhaps also necessary that the individual who encountered the little girl be the Count, as the pasty girl’s blood would only be desired by creatures such as the Count himself. Additionally, the Count treasured the girl more than his own wife, but breaks free from his fake chivalry as he “unfastened his breeches and thrust his virile member” (94)  into the lifeless cast of the girl’s body. Not only are the Count’s intentions finally revealed as rape, but as a morbid obsession of necrophilia. In the end, the innocent girl is deduced to nothing but “a bloodstain, like the trace of a fox’s kill on the snow” (94).