The Company of Wolves
An inverted version of ‘Little Red Riding Hood.’ In this version, the wolves terrify the sparse
villagers in this remote part of the world. A wolf had been terrorising the livestock of the villagers,
but was cunning enough to evade capture, until a hunter trapped it in a pit, cut off its paws for a
trophy, but the wolf transformed into the carcass of a man. Superstition abounds. Witches are said
to have turned a wedding party entire to wolves. Another tale is told of a woman abandoned on her
wedding night by her husband. She had two children in his absence and re-married. The first
husband returned, claiming he had been a wolf and proceeds to eat the foot of the first born child.
He is beaten and savaged, but returns in death to her first husband, enraging the maiden’s second
husband and earning her a beating.
Little Red enters this culture and folklore, young and virginal. She meets a dashing huntsman who
bets he can get to her grandmother’s house before her, in return for a kiss. He charms his way past
grandma and approaches her bed, naked, presumably devouring her. He impersonates the
grandmother, lures in Little Red and asks her to disrobe. She falls asleep, entwined on Christmas
Day with the wolf.
Textual Reference Exemplification
‘One beast and only one howls in the wood by The eradication of all other beasts of the forest
night. The wolf is carnivore incarnate and he’s raises the wolf’s status to one of a menacing
as cunning as he is ferocious.’ Pg 129 charisma. He has a presence of absence,
because he is talked about before he appears.
‘You are always in danger in the forest, where The sparse inhabitants of the forest are
no people are…They are as grey as famine, they abhuman and impoverished and their lack of
are as unkind as plague.’ Pg 130 physical wellbeing affects their demeanour
towards others. The simile suggests that
sickness is catching.
‘The hunter jumped down after him, slit his The folklore concerning the village’s most pesky
throat, cut off all his paws for trophy. And then wolf’s murder shows the brutality common to
no wolf lay at all in front of the hunter but the the region. The transformation, in death from
bloody trunk of a man, headless, footless, dying, animal to human is a common motif and
dead.’ Pg 131 perhaps supports Carter’s burgeoning
Humanism; that all life is precious.
That long-drawn wavering howl, for all its fearful The onomatopoeia resonates around the forest
resonance, some inherent sadness in it, as if the and suggests a mournful tone of sorrow, that
beasts would love to be less beastly, if only they the wolf has been cursed with his affliction.
knew how.’ Pg 131 Remorse or entrapment of the sinister aristocrat
is a recurring motif. The Beast longs to be
different, as does the vampires in LOHOL
‘The young woman in our village married a man The Feminist gaze would emphasize the
who vanished clean away on her wedding patriarchal abandonment of his children and the
night…she gave him a pair of bonny babies…’ imperative verb commands of the first husband
Pg 131 upon his return shows his presumption and
dominance over his wife.
“Here I am again missus…Get me my bowl of
cabbage and be quick about it.” Pg 132
‘Her breasts have just begun to swell; her hair is The description of appearance of the ingénue is
like lint…she has just started her woman’s very intensely focalised. She is objectified as
bleeding….she stands and moves within the virginal and the imagery of her being an egg
invisible pentacle of her own virginity. She is an reduces her to her ‘biological essentialism.’
unbroken egg’ Pg 133
‘The forest closed upon her like a pair of jaws.’ The monstrous depiction of the forest is a
Pg 133 typical fairy-tale trope and the personification of
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