The story "The Company of Wolves" written by Angela Carter taunts the reader's imagination by elaborating on their idea and point of view of gender roles.

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The story “The Company of Wolves” written by Angela Carter taunts the reader’s imagination by elaborating on their idea and point of view of gender roles. Angela Carter’s characters portray these roles very similar to the way modern day Americans view gender roles. Males and females are both

Collection of grown-up fairy tales.
I first read this book in college and it has become one of my all-time favourites. In this collection of short stories, Angela Carter takes the fairytales, nursery rhymes, and the images and themes they contain and perverts/illuminates them. What is most striking about this collection is Carters writing style. Her language is simultaneously poetic and profane. The stories are heavy with her purple language, which is what makes them so satisfying to read. In additon to the exquisite language, Carters re-telling of classic tales such as "Snow White," "Red Riding Hood," "Puss in Boots," etc., never fails to pay off. Carter creates a world in which Red Riding hood is the savvy hunter, not the innocent hunted. These stories make us focus on the overly simplistic (and often slanted) messages we were taught as children when these tales were first presented to us. In particular, Carter makes us question what fairytales have taught us about gender roles, marriage, and sex. For a trip into the fantasic that will make you laugh and make you really THINK, read this book!  


To begin, with the exception of the eponymous story at the beginning, these stories are the stylistic masterpieces of a miniaturist virtuoso. These renarrated fairy tales are nuanced stories that give the reader pause to reconsider his or her sexuality and the inherent violence and danger attendant upon it.-And then, perhaps, to reflect that the fairy stories in their original form were less explicit forms of the same thing for children....As the writer Djuna Barnes puts it in Nightwood, "God, children know something they cant tell; they like Red Riding Hood and the wolf in bed!"

The first story is, to my taste, the only failure here. It’s a bit too heavy-handed and obvious, and the imagery and phraseology borrow too much from Poe, particularly from his "The Fall of The House of Usher." They leave you straining for an impact, which is just not there. That said, the rest of the stories are erotic/metaphysical gems in which the reader can peer into his or her own sexuality in its many (mostly crimsoned) facets.

There is a subtle but deep undertone here that, in some way, our sexuality makes us all otherworldy ghouls and outcasts from the civilized world. As the narrator puts it in "The Lady of the House of Love," "The end of exile is the end of being."-In other words, our sexuality metamorphoses (one of Carters favourite words and themes)us into vampires, werewolves and sadistic murderers, if only in our imagination, and frequently in life.

An exqusite book to pique anyones interest into his or her sexuality and its implications, both in the realms of action and imagination

Before it was trendy to adapt fairy tale themes into adult fiction, there was Angela Carter.

In _The Bloody Chamber_, Carter works with a variety of fairy tale and folkloric themes, crafting them into very adult stories written in a style all her own. Somehow, her prose manages to be hauntingly strange and deliciously earthy at once. I didn't like all of the stories in this collection, but I very much liked some of them, and I'm glad I read the book. I especially enjoyed the title story (a retelling of "Bluebeard"), and "The Lady of the House of Love", quite possibly my favorite vampire tale ever. In it, the tragic lady Nosferatu reads her Tarot cards every night, and every night draws cards signifying death--until one night she draws Les Amoureux, the Lovers, and everything changes. Splendid.

There is more here--a raunchy "Puss in Boots", two takes on "Beauty and the Beast", several stories dealing with werewolves and/or Red Riding Hood, and much more.

This is an incredible collection of short fiction which unleashes Carter's wit on some old fairy tales, including her retakes on Puss in Boots and Little Red Riding Hood, filling them all up with eroticism and dark sexual tension, pushing back towards the vein in which these stories were originally intended. One of my favourites is the opening tale, the folktale of Bloody Chamber, based on the fairy tale of a woman forbidden to enter a single room that her husband always keeps locked. I can remember the original story, but I can't remember the title. There is not a weak moment in this whole collection and it is definitely highly recommended.

Angela Carter's "Bloody Chamber" is a reworking of the traditional fairy tales. Carter uses sensual language and rich imagery to bring to life these well-loved fables, often bordering on the comical. "The Bloody Chambers" itself is especially powerful and seductive

The Company of Wolves (1979)

  • -      Reverts to a mythical past of the original the peasant girl & the werewolf (The Story of Grandmother);
  • -      Shows how a "strong-minded child" can fend for herself in the woods and tame the wolf.
  • -      Strongly sexual, primal urges of the carnivore incarnate: cf. medieval/pagan beliefs in the werewolf = "man-wolf" etymologically - pagan shamans wrapped themselves in a wolf skin to invoke the power & protection of this animal = magical possession. With Christianity werewolves = turned into predators, outsiders, hostile forces = ferocious & aggressive, uncontrollable, untamable yet necessary to the cultural process.

A werewolf is a human being who can dissolve the boundary between civilization & wilderness in him & is capable of crossing over the fence that separates his "civilized side" from his "wild side." A werewolf is a creature who looks "straight into the eyes" of his "animal nature," which is usually kept under lock & key by his culture. Consequently, this creature is the first to develop a consciousness of his "cultural nature." (Hans Peter Durr in Zipes Tr &Tr 68) -

  • -      To learn to run with or howl with the wolves = opening oneself up to the essence on one's nature = to attain greater self-awareness: In order to be able to live in a social order and in order to be tame & self-aware, archaic societies believed that one had to have spent some time in the wilderness.
  • -      Christianity demonizes the wolf and the inner animal as Satanic; werewolves, like witches & Jews, were a threat to the Christian order and to be denied in oneself & eliminated from society. Defined in bestial/ sexual terms as predatory male sexuality/fertility.
  • -      In Angela Carter's story, the werewolf = as yet untamed by Christianity = a time when the cosmic struggle had not yet been determined in favor of the Christian soldier.

 

The story is set on "Christmas Eve”. The malign door of the solstice still swings upon its hinges" open to the werewolves and other spirits. The grandmother is "pious," "she has her Bible for company" but "we keep the wolves outside by living well." When the wolf enters, she is powerless: "you can hurl your Bible at him, granny; you thought that was a sure prophylactic against these infernal vermin...Now call on Christ and his mother and all the angels in heaven to protect you, but it won't do you any good."

One of the ways in which some feminist writers are challenging the traditional or dominant readings of gender in literary texts is by re-telling or re-writing some of their culture's stories. Angela Carter was a writer who produced 're-visions' of many popular fairytales. One story in particular was made into a successful film, The Company of Wolves. This can be read as a re-vision of Little Red Riding Hood, a story which many feminist readings find problematic or objectionable. 

As a class, reconstruct the characters and events of Little Red Riding Hood, one of the fairytales discussed earlier with which we are all familiar. Like all fairy stories, Little Red Riding Hood offers a message to its audience. What might be the lessons of this story?

Read The Company of Wolves in which Angela Carter draws on traditional ideas of men and wolves with some modern twist, then answer the questions that follow.
On your own, keep a record of your reactions as you read the story, and those ideas you formulate after your first or second reading and time for reflection. Use these notes as the basis of group discussion.
 

Here is one 'reading' or interpretation of the fairytale Little Red Riding Hood. Does this suggest why many feminist readers challenge the story?

The story really is a 'cautionary tale'. It warns young girls of the dangers, which await them in the big, wide world - dangers from creatures, which lurk in the dark, away from 'the path'.
It teaches us that good little girls do exactly as they are told and stay on the right track, a path which links mother, grandmother and daughter in fear and obedience. It teaches us that women had better stay inside if they know what's good for them, and that they have no one to blame if they allow themselves to be led 'astray'. Wolves, on the other hand, rule the world outside the home. It is their nature to be cunning, and to prey on little girls. They are not to be blamed for this; it is just the way things are. The only things which can keep a girl safe from them are her own common sense and a man who is handy with an axe.

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wise old grandmother tells her granddaughter a series of cautionary tales about the wolf that lurks within all men. Young women fall prey to heavily eye browed lotharios, babies are found inside stork eggs and all the time wolves are stalking the woods and villages.

Similarly, the werewolf of 'The Company of Wolves' (ibid, 110 - 118), when he appears as a dashing young hunter, is associated with the Narrative Tenses, but the moment of his metamorphosis, when he kills and eats Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother, is told largely in the Simple Present:

In the last ...

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