Detailed and comprehensive notes of 'The Company of Wolves' from Angela Carter's anthology 'The Bloody Chamber'. These A* level notes select key quotations from the story and analyse them in depth, in a clear layout, making up all the foundations for a powerful essay.
The Company of Wolves
Context
1943 Warner Bros. “Red Hot Riding Hood” – directed by Tex Avery – Wolf embodies the
male gaze, presented as a foolish character. Phallocentricism with long car and shot glass.
Grandma reads female pornographic magazine – homosexuality.
From Little Red Riding hood by Charles Perrault
Critical interpretations
“at the heart of this story is the hideous coercion that needs no violence, as the girl already
knows what the ‘tender wolf’ is capable of” (Bidisha)
“willing martyr to his abuse” (Bidisha)
“the ending could be interpreted as the girl’s virginity is actually special, but special to heer.
It’s not any man’s decision to tell her whether it’s right for hr to giveit up or not, it’s her
decision alone” (Massiet)
The unholy trinity – “Rape, genocide and war naturally exist in a world in which phallocentric
power is celebrated” – beyond God the Father
o Women “are by patriarchal definition, objects of rape”
o “If god is male then the male is god” (Mary Daly)
Polysemic = ambiguous
Analysis
“one beast and only one howls”, “aria of fear” – sung by one voice only, one wolf at the
beginning of the story
“cold and unnatural green eyes”
“HE knows HE must run” – men in danger
“wolves grow lean and famished”
“winter and cold weather” reference to The Werewolf
“the wolf is the worst for he cannot listen to reason” – predators so dogmatic they are worse
than any beast
“you are always in danger in the forest” – 2 nd person voice – message to Carter’s female
voice – modern reader is men should fear being such figures
“carnivore incarnate” ”eaten up the old man who used to… sing to Jesus all day” – wolf an
antichrist, perversion of religion is key in Gothic
“in her own kitchen” – not safe anywhere even in her own domestic space
“a big one, a heavy one” – phallocentricism
“headless, footless, dying dead” progression = destruction of patriarchy
“she waited and she waited and then she waited again” – links to Bloody Chamber –
madonna whore
“never cease to mourn their own condition” – men must make an active change “grace
could not come to the wolf from its own despair, only through some external mediator”
(feminism), “half welcomes the knife that dispatches him” – necessary for society to be
rebuild
“first good man” – yet turns into a wolf and calls her a whore – are any men in society truly
good
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