Elements of the Gothic - Notes from 'The Company of Wolves' from 'The Bloody Chamber'

THE COMPANY OF WOLVES

Blurring Boundaries

Innocence and Corruption:

1.       “the ominous if brilliant look of blood on snow” – the purity of snow is tainted with blood

2.       “[the scarlet shawl] was as red as the blood she must spill” – the symbol of childhood innocence (the shawl) in the original stories now is connected to the blood that she must ‘spill’ after she consummates her relationship with the wolf

3.       “her hair looked white as the snow outside”

Man and Beast:

1.       “his torso is a man’s but his legs and genitals are a wolf’s” – transformation of the man into  a beast, where the unknown is finally revealed

Setting

Carter immediately defamiliarises the reader from the setting as it a region of “mountain and forest” and it is typically Gothic as she deals with “contemporary locations” (Smith, 2009). We can see that there is isolation, as there is “one beast and only one” which also could be interpreted as that ‘beast’ being the commander of the God-equivalent of the forest.

Narrative

In “The Company of Wolves” by Angela Carter, it is the woman who tempts the man and the man can be seen as a victim in the relationship: thereby every hint of rape as a criminal act is eliminated from the text. The story is a fable about rape. While Perrault’s girl is helplessly naive, gullible and defenceless, the Grimms added the sin of disobedience to the girl. Carter’s girl, on the other hand,
“has just started her women’s bleeding”, and this Little Red Riding Hood is fully conscious of her femininity and sexual desires. When asked for a kiss, she understands the meaning and blushes.

Violence and Fear

Lycanthropy is the belief that wolves and men have the ability to transform into one another and Carter deals with this. Wolves as “threatening figures” (Botting) are introduced as “carnivore incarnate”; they are “cunning” and “ferocious” predators; “forest assassins”. The idea of using quotes such as “so a wolf he instantly became”, and “and then no wolf at all lay in front of the hunter but the bloody trunk of a man” would instantly chill the hearts of traditional readers who lived in the “northern country” at the time in which the story is set – however, to the modern reader, this violence and fear becomes a parody and fails to affect the reader in the intended way.

 

Male/Female Roles

The Dominant Female – Little Red Riding Hood

Though the text emphasises the protagonist’s virginity, the girl seems to know how to make her virginity interrelate with the hunter’s masculinity. When the hunter transforms into a werewolf, the girl bursts out laughing. To her, he is nothing but a “handsome young one”. It is the grandmother who sees the beastliness in the werewolf, whereas to the girl, the wolf’s manliness is emphasised by his “huge genitals”.

The girl in Carter’s version voluntarily undresses herself, and tames the wolf. She successfully gains control over both their sexual desires. The image of the werewolf laying his head on the girl’s lap and her picking lice from his pelt paints the apparently in-control werewolf as a pet cat, and the image objectifies the man rather than the woman. In Perrault, virginity is to be consumed by masculinity while in Grimms, femininity is to be managed by patriarchy. However, in Carter, femininity and masculinity learn to co-exist in peace. Carter changes the role of the female from a mere victim of rape to a self-assertive being who sexually matures in this confrontation. In so doing, Carter allows the transformation of woman as a virgin to femme fatale, who tempts men into sexual intercourse.

The Passive Male – The Werewolf (Hunter)

In “The Company of Wolves”, the werewolf lets his eyes shine, slavers his desires and utters some menacing words, but he stands motionless as if at a loss for how to express his urges. In striking contrast, Little Red takes the sexual initiative herself and thus the story justifies “male myths of rape” where men can be helpless victims of temptation, too. In this, Carter perhaps goes against her initial aim, where she strengthens the negative image of womanhood, where woman as Eve the Temptress is the primary cause of original sin.