14. Explain the meaning of the red mark on the narrator's forehead in “Bloody Chamber”

We, as the readers, may perceive this mark as a manifestation of heroine's triumph over both death and misogyny. The key that made the mark was a kind of “key to her selfhood”. Although she doesn't consider the mark as a badge of success; to the heroine, it is a permanent reminder that she let herself be lured, bought, and mistreated. It may also mean her weakness and moral corruption which was initiated in the consummation of marriage.

15. In what way the portrayal of Jeanne Duval in “Black Venus” is influenced by postcolonial criticism?

The criticism boils down to the destructive influence of the colonial system. Jeanne is a real example of a “child of the system” of those times. She is deprived of family, history and homeland. Actually, Duval doesn't have an identity in its full sense. She doesn't know her mother, not to mention the completely unknown father; her grandmother sold her for couple bottles of wine. Jeanne doesn't show any feelings because no feelings were shown to her. She is a product of the world where only needs and desires count. Her life is sentenced to the moral collapse; being humiliated and mocked. In fact she is `immoral' because no one taught her how to distinguish the good from the evil and what being a moral person means and involves. Jeanne hasn't received any kind education, speaks Creole so the dialect; she can barely speak French. She is unable to stabilize; always dependent on sb. Duval leads the only life she knows.

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