It is winter, and a Count and Countess go riding through the snowy wilderness. The Count admires the snow and wishes for a “girl as white as snow.” Then they come to a hole in the snow filled with blood, and the Count wishes for a “girl as red as blood.” Then the Count sees a raven, and wishes for “a girl as black as that bird’s feather.”
This story is based on a short tale about a wife telling her absent husband that she was impregnated by a snowflake, and then the husband later killing the child and saying that it “melted.” The bloody hole in the snow is a literal “bloody chamber” in this short story. The stark imagery heightens the Gothic tone.
Themes