• Objectification
In "The Courtship of Mr. Lyon," Beauty becomes an object when her father uses her as payment for his debt to the Beast. Even though Beauty lives luxuriously both at the Beast's and in London, like the heroine in "The Bloody Chamber" she is seen as property. In "The Tiger's Bride," the heroine's father considers her one of his belongings, which is why he wagers and then loses her to The Beast. While she is human, the heroine is seen as merely "a pearl" or "a treasure," prized for her beauty and nothing else. She escapes objectification by rejecting the role of woman entirely and turning into a tigress.
"The Snow Child" The Count simply wishes her into existence based on his ideas of attractiveness. she does not speak and does only what she is asked to do. When she dies, the Count rapes her corpse as if he created her only to be a sex toy. When she dies, she disappears into a collection of objects.
The only heroine who manages to objectify a man instead of being objectified herself is the Countess in "The Lady of the House of Love." She is condemned never to be happy with a man because, like a werewolf, her insatiable hunger causes her to kill her potential mates. The Countess's story lets us see the other side of objectification; it harms the objectifier as well as the object. The Countess can never really be happy because she can see men only as objects. All she wants is fulfilling love, yet all she can conceive of is objectifying lust.
Carter does not give men all the blame; she suggests repeatedly that women are complicit with their own objectification. The heroine in "The Bloody Chamber," as well as her mother, see marriage to the Marquis as a transaction to raise them out of poverty. The young woman in "Puss-in-Boots" no doubt married Signor Panteleone for money and status. In "The Erl-King," the narrator is conscious that she is walking into a trap by consorting with the Erl-King, but does so anyway. Carter's heroines all have in common...