the title of the story itself, such as in “The Cask of Amontillado,” in which the wordcask or wine barrel is a huge clue about the role drunkenness plays in the story. We see something similar at work in “The Snow Pavilion,” where the “snow” in the title is a decided warning about the role of snow in the fate of the “dilettante poet” who is the narrator of the story.

In a story filled with foreshadowing, we must pay close attention to every detail as it occurs because it anticipates the climax: despite the lushness of her language and rich descriptions, no detail is unnecessary in Carter’s short fiction. Every element has a part to play. The coils of the narrator's married girlfriend Melissa’s “honey-coloured hair,” her collection of porcelain dolls, his “claustrophobia” in Melissa’s presence, and his frequent uneasy memories of his late grandmother are all deliberate placeholders for future events. Each of these will find an echo in the narrator’s fate.

As the details build up, so does the suspense in the story. The narrator finds himself seeking refuge in a fabulous, luxurious mansion after his car breaks down in a snow drift. Inside the mansion’s lit-up, all-white interiors, he feels mocked by an invisible, childish presence. We wonder what will happen next as the narrator plays hide and seek with the child, the sole occupant of the mansion—which is like the “snow pavilion.”

The tale deliberately leaves many questions unanswered, such as the identity of the child and the unexplained presence of the old woman the narrator encounters. What happens to him in the end is strongly suggested but never spelled out, adding to the air of menace in the story. We know something terrible has happened, but what exactly? To get a more definitive interpretation, I found it useful to consider the story as a fairy tale.

Fairy tales typically involve a comeuppance: in one version of “Cinderella,” for instance, the evil stepmother is forced into red-hot iron shoes and made to dance to her death. Characters meet their just ends: punishment is absolute. In “The Snow Pavilion,” the narrator is somewhat unsympathetic and draws our attention to his many flaws. Early on he glibly declares:

I was young and handsome and full of promise; my relations with husbands rarely prospered. Wives were quite another matter.

The narrator is overtly fond of luxury and fickle in his attention. At the start of the story he has concocted an elaborate lie about needing to leave Melissa’s house to buy a book of “snowy verses.” The truth is he simply needs to get away from her for a while, feeling claustrophobic in her exquisitely-decorated house with its collection of "blasted dolls." Ironically, he judges her for having the very same fine tastes that are a part of his attraction for her. Once inside the snow-covered mansion where he has sought refuge from the snowstorm, he plays hide and seek with a little girl, already dreaming of wooing her absent mother.

All the same, if I indulged the fancy of the child I’d seen in the mirror, perhaps I might engage the fancy of her mother, who must be still young enough to enjoy the caress of a bearskin bedstead.

Just like in Melissa’s house, the narrator is simultaneously seduced by the glamour of the mansion and repelled by its extravagance. Spotting a porcelain parrot the little girl has left behind, he exclaims:

How the rich indulge their children! Not a doll so much as a little work of art; the cash register at the back of my mind rang up twenty guineas at the sight of this floppy Pierrot with his skull-cap, his white satin pyjamas with the black buttons down the front, all complete, and that authentic pout of comic sadness on his fine china face.

Significantly, when he does catch up with the little girl, she is fast-asleep, like a drugged princess of fairy tales. He notes her similarities to such a creature, when he says, “She had fairy-tale, flaxen hair and eyelids so delicate the eyes beneath them almost showed glowing though.”

The snowy interiors of the mansion recall the world of “Snow White” and her time in the glass casket. Except in “The Snow Pavilion,” it is not a girl but a man—the narrator—who finds himself inside a glass coffin. In the end, it is suggested he meets a fate that brings together all his worst nightmares: the presence of his severe grandmother, his hatred of dolls, and his fear of being once and forever trapped. His identification with Pierrot, the doll-like parrot, is complete, in whose face he sees his own—overfed on bread and margarine and whose salt tears he can taste. However, despite the macabre fate she has the narrator meet, I don’t think Carter is necessarily playing a moralist here and punishing him for his love of luxury, language, and the ladies. She is simply following the fairy-tale-logic of the story to its conclusion.

It is also very interesting that the tables get turned in this fairy tale and it is a man who find himself in danger. In her introduction to Carter’s short story collection The Bloody Chamber (1979), Helen Simpson notes that Carter takes “traditional fairy tales and used them to write new ones.” The classic fairy tale mostly sees girls and women under threat—whether it be Red Riding Hood trapped by the wolf or Rapunzel locked up in a tower—but at least they get saved. Here, the narrator is both the heroine of his fairy tale and also the condemned anti-hero.