The Werewolf:
Little Red Riding Hood - A Feminist Icon?
Angela Carter explicitly draws inspiration from ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ in ‘The Werewolf’ though, predictably, she
subverts the original and adorns the story with her own themes. Carter had been,
only two years before writing The Bloody
Chamber, was commissioned to translate the fairy stories of Charles Perrault from French into English and according to Jack Zipes, The Bloody Chamber was written in sync with the translations(ix)[1]. No doubt Carter, as a
feminist, would have harked at the morals Perrault wrote to accompany his fairy
tales and that which follows his ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ exemplifies the
thought of marginalised gender;
Though the message is obviously allegorical, Zipes notes in his text, Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion; “In other words, they must exercise control over their sexual and natural drives or else their own sexuality will devour them, in the form of a dangerous wolf.” (40) [3]
. As Carter writes it, the child not only immediately defends herself against the wolf but she maims him by cutting off his paw which the wolf responds to by “[letting] out a gulp, almost a sob, when it saw what had happened to it; wolves are less brave than they seem.” (128)[4]. If one takes the werewolf to be a metaphor for the predatory male, then once the child removes his phallic paw, he no longer feels he holds any power over her even though, technically, he could continue his attack. Upon returning to her Grandmother’s house, the child quickly realises that it was not, like tradition would suggest, the wolf who imitates the Grandmother but the Grandmother was her attacker, the werewolf. Thus, in ‘The Werewolf’ Carter imagines a scenario in which the child not only fights off her attacker, but exposes the witch and becomes economically independent by taking the house as her Grandmother, the witch, is chased off to be killed. By subverting the moral of the original tale, Carter proposes that by dismissing inherent preconceived notions of male power, one is able to prosper (129)[4].
N.B Download my edit of Charles Perrault's 'Little Red Riding Hood'.
. As Carter writes it, the child not only immediately defends herself against the wolf but she maims him by cutting off his paw which the wolf responds to by “[letting] out a gulp, almost a sob, when it saw what had happened to it; wolves are less brave than they seem.” (128)[4]. If one takes the werewolf to be a metaphor for the predatory male, then once the child removes his phallic paw, he no longer feels he holds any power over her even though, technically, he could continue his attack. Upon returning to her Grandmother’s house, the child quickly realises that it was not, like tradition would suggest, the wolf who imitates the Grandmother but the Grandmother was her attacker, the werewolf. Thus, in ‘The Werewolf’ Carter imagines a scenario in which the child not only fights off her attacker, but exposes the witch and becomes economically independent by taking the house as her Grandmother, the witch, is chased off to be killed. By subverting the moral of the original tale, Carter proposes that by dismissing inherent preconceived notions of male power, one is able to prosper (129)[4].
N.B Download my edit of Charles Perrault's 'Little Red Riding Hood'.
1] Zipes, J. (1994). Fairy Tale as Myth, Myth as Fairy Tale. Kentucky. The University Press of Kentucky.
2] Perrault, C. (2009). Charles Perrault: The Complete Fairy Tales. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
3] Zipes, J. (2006). Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion. Oxen: Routledge.
[4] Carter, A. (2006). ‘The Werewolf’. In The Bloody Chamber. London: Vintage.
2] Perrault, C. (2009). Charles Perrault: The Complete Fairy Tales. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
3] Zipes, J. (2006). Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion. Oxen: Routledge.
[4] Carter, A. (2006). ‘The Werewolf’. In The Bloody Chamber. London: Vintage.