Lady Purple
The BDSM mistress of all BDSM mistresses who is the title character of the story-within-the-story of “The Loves of Lady Purple” is herself too complicated a figure to easily whittle down into a concise description. Metaphor conveys her essence quite efficiently, however:
“She visited men like a plague, both bane and terrible enlightenment, and she was contagious as the plague.”
Experience
In what is almost certainly the author’s most famous short story, “The Bloody Chamber,” an interesting metaphor is used to make the connection between aging and experience that cuts across normal conventions:
“He was much older than I…his strange, heavy, almost waxen face was not lined by experience. Rather, experience seemed to have washed it perfectly smooth, like a stone on a beach whose fissures had been eroded by successive tides.”
The Unformed Writer
Eventually, Carter would go on to develop into the kind of writer not just capable of constructing an elaborate metaphor, but the type of writer who demanded it of herself. Her early, formative stories, on the other hand, reveal a willingness to play it safe in order to ensure the point got across. This example from “The Man who Loved a Double Bass” becomes all the more striking when placed in juxtaposition to her later mastery:
“…there could be no doubt that Jameson was mad as a hatter.”
Dick Whittington's Cat
For instance, compare the above attempt to situate the madness of the title character Jameson with this description of a cat in the later story “In Pantoland.”
“Dick Whittington’s cat is the Scaramouche of Pantoland, limber, agile and going on two legs more often than on four to stress his status as intermediary between the world of the animals and our world.”
"The Company of Wolves"
Carter opens this other famous story with elaborate imagery describing the terror of the sudden discovery of finding that you are now in the company of wolves, leading to a metaphorical masterpiece that turns a dreadful chill into poetry:
“…the forest assassins…will be like shadows, they will be like wraiths, grey members of a congregation of a nightmare; hark! his long, wavering howl…an aria of fear”
