The Lady Of The House Of Love

"The Lady of the House of Love" is loosely based on the story of Sleeping Beauty, and incorporates vampire legends as well as the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. The Countess represents unreason. Reason states that death is definite, but she defies this law because she is the walking dead. She lives in dark, which represents mystery and ambiguity. Carter refers to her room as to indicate that just as Juliet was alive in the look of death, the Countess is dead in the look of life. Legend tells that vampires die when they are exposed to light because their bodies cannot bear the light. It is not only light that kills vampires and exposes them but also enlightenment that they cannot withstand. The Countess's existence gives her huge power,

But for the soldier, virginity and sexual desires are sources of power. Narrator explains, "he has the special quality of virginity, most and least ambiguous of states; ignorance, yet at the same time, power in potentia, and, furthermore, unknowingness, which is not the same as ignorance. He is more than he knows." and "he is immune to shadow, due to his virginity". According to narrator, the soldier's transformative and sexual power is so great precisely because it is untapped. Like the great force of the water behind a dam, his stored potential is more powerful than the actual potential already released. Indeed the solider is "more than he knows," because he is able to convert back the Countess into a human by kissing her. His reason or "lack of imagination" is heroic and overwhelms her unreason. We can say that the "resurrected" rose redeems the positive aspect of magical or illogical things. Even as the soldier overcomes the Countess with reason, he redeems some part of her, somewhat illogically, with reason and love. In ultimate sentence of the story, the narrator reminds us that soldier is still human being despite his huge power, and that the reason he exemplifies goes hand-in-hand with mortality. He may have been killed fighting in France. Ending of the story needs not be seen as ominous, however, because as a participant in the First World War, the soldier also depicts the opportunity for change, righteousness and