My Perspective on Angela Carter's The Company of Wolves

The Company of Wolves

Throughout history, women and girls have been assigned the gender roles such as passivity, purity, innocence, submitting to men, being silent, being objectified and being men’s property. Angela Carter’s adaptation of “Red Riding Hood,” “The Company of Wolves,” challenges the role of the young and naïve heroine who “has been too much loved ever to feel scared” (Carter 215). Although she lives in a severely cold region where children are forced to grow up quickly and live short, difficult lives, she is “so pretty and the youngest of her family” and her family has indulged her and sheltered her from the harsh realities of life in her “savage country” (215). Her family has civilized her, creating her into the ideal gender role of a protected, kind and trusting girl. Her innocence imperils and rescues her; she is entrusting enough to believe the hunter's (wolf’s) good intentions, but compassionate enough to comprehend his torment and marry him.

The heroine wears her sexual desire on her sleeve; her red shawl, resembling “blood on snow,” is an announcement of her sexual willingness (Carter 215). The color symbolizes her “woman’s bleeding” (menstrual blood) and shedding of blood once she loses her virginity (215). The shawl’s red shade is “the color of sacrifices,” reminding the reader that the heroine resides in a world where women are weaker than men and submit to men in sex and marriage (219).

The narrator believes that wolves (and werewolves) are evil, they are so evil that their howls are “in itself a murdering” (Carter 212). “The wolf is carnivore incarnate,” no more than a beast whose sole desires are to slay and devour (217). “[…] of all the teeming perils of the night and the forest, ghosts, hobgoblins, ogres that grill babies upon gridirons, witches that fatten their captives in cages for cannibal tables, the wolf is the worst for he cannot listen to reason” (212). Wolves are the most animalistic of the frightening figures. Wolves are subjected to werewolf animalistic urges such as luring innocent, young, trusting girls and devouring their flesh.

The narrator attempts to discourage readers from sympathizing with the human side of wolves by stating that men decide to become wolves. Existence for wolves is parallel to torment and “melancholy” (213). Wolves never “cease to mourn their own condition” (213). Transforming is a conviction. Their howl has “some inherent sadness in it, as if the beasts would love to be less beastly if only they knew how any never cease to mourn their own condition” (213). Although men who choose to turn into werewolves, these men might regret their decision due to the misery. The heroine’s sympathy for the werewolf and his “company of wolves” that causes her to join them (218).

The fully-clothed handsome huntsman the heroine encounters in the dark woods (wolves’ territory) is the lustful wolf. She shows no fear of him due to being confident her own sexuality. He slowly seduces her (his prey) leading her to give him her weapon, her knife; robbing her of her power. She promises him a kiss if he arrives to her grandmother’s house first, taking the basket and knife with him. She hopes she will lose the wager so she can kiss him; her sexual desires are budding.

Girls and women are warned not to fall for the wolf in sheep’s clothing. “Fear and flee the wolf; for, worst of all, the wolf may be more than he seems” (Carter 213). Protected, kind and trusting girls are the wolves’ easiest prey. Rapists and other sexual abusers use their charm, good looks, cunning smiles and other forms of seduction to lure their victims into dark and secluded areas to “devour” their flesh. Rape is a form of bestial dominance. The “wolves” desire power over their victims. The wolf is waiting for the right moment to dominate the heroine. The victims are the ones blamed for the crimes.

Although the wolf assumes the heroine will surrender to him once trapped in her grandmother’s house, her sexuality defends her from harm. Her sexual act does not become sacrificial, a woman’s traditional role. “She stands and moves within the invisible pentacle of her own virginity. She is an unbroken egg; she is a sealed vessel; she has inside her a magic space the entrance to which is shut tight with a plug of membrane; she is a closed system; she does not know how to shiver” (215). Her shawl and hymen protect her from learning or experiencing too much. She does not believe in her village’s anti-wolf tales. She is unable to shiver-fear wolves and other supernatural evils-due to not believing in them. She is capable of embracing the wolf’s tradition and embrace the wolf.

The heroine’s virginity is an accumulated power, prepared to overpower her impending devourer. While the wolf is ready to literally consume his captor by killing and devouring her, the heroine uses her human pity and massive sexual power to transform the exploit of devouring into a sexual one. She survives the wolf due to her ignorance and power of her virginity.

The heroine stripping naked and burning her clothes sentence her “to wolfishness for the rest of” her life (Carter 214). Prior to “becoming a wolf, the lycanthrope strips stark naked” (214). She undresses to reveal the beast within, liberating her from her parents’ assigned gender role of innocence for her. She relinquishes her identity as a townsperson of definite dominance to beasts. The heroine burning her red shawl symbolizes sacrificing her innocence, naivety, and virginity. She has transformed into a woman. When the wolf tells the narrator that he will eat her, she laughs at him because "she knew she was nobody's meat” (219). She offers the wolf herself as flesh, not meat through acting out her sexual desires. Her once virgin flesh becomes the wolf’s desired “immaculate flesh” (219). She takes control of her body and the wolf’s body; he becomes submissive to her (feminine role) through laying “his fearful head on her lap” (219). The heroine takes the ingenuity to be reborn as a sexual being who owns herself and her body.

While the townspeople associate wolves and their transformations with making a pact with the Devil, Carter compares the transformation to the birth of Christ. “It is Christmas day, the werewolves’ birthday” (Carter 220). Wolves’ birthday being on Christmas day implies that they are connected to God. Carter implies to readers that all humans are part “beast.” We are only genuinely ourselves or close to Christ when we appeal our “bestial” desires.

The heroine’s “savage marriage ceremony” with the wolf allows her to tame him and keep her life and body without defeating him (Carter 219). She and the wolf become one. She is liberated from her parents and their control over her mind and body. She is a woman who has her way with her body and sexuality.

                               

Picture Credit: The Gothic in Angela Carter (https://y13englishrevision.weebly.com/the-company-of-wolves.html)

Below is the PDF link to "The Company of Wolves."
The Company of Wolves
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1U12bgaP7sSvm12VbQkJVpVbokktjDEPT/view?usp=sharing

Works Cited

Carter, Angela. “The Company of Wolves.” Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories. New York: Penguin Books, 1995. 212-220. Print.