There is the use of the pure white snow i.e. the Virgin girl they find, and the sense that she is the husbands new possesion rather than a female. The husband is a greedy man who can be interpretted as beastly in his actions, and Carter deliberately shocks the reader by making the husband become intimate with this girl when she is dead.This is an aspect of the gothic because it is a vulger actio and undesirable. Also you have the wife who is greedy and jelous and doesnt like to be second best and is bitten by her spite from the rose which is symbolic of love and passion and death.