Detailed and comprehensive notes of 'The Werewolf' 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 Werewolf
Context:
1. Based on ‘Little Red Riding Hood’
2. Originally by Charles Perrault (1697) – Little Red Riding Hood is successfully devoured
by the wolf and provides the concluding didactic message:
“Moral: Children, especially attractive, well-bred young ladies, should never talk to
strangers, for if they should do so, they may well provide dinner for a wolf. I say
“wolf”, but there are various kinds of wolves. There are also those who are
charming, quiet, polite, unassuming, complacent, and sweet, who pursue young
women at home and in the streets. And unfortunately, it is these gentle wolves who
are the most dangerous ones of all”.
3. The Brothers Grimm (2nd influence): LRRH is saved by a heroic huntsman – rendering
her a passive object of male heroics.
4. Parallels with Stoker’s Dracula (St. John’s vs St. George’s) in opening passage of
detached narrative: based on heavy Eastern European stereotypes – condescending,
typical of Late Victorian Gothic. Carter mocks Stoker and the Gothic canon more
broadly, drawing a strong line between this and the subversive female Gothic.
5. Looks at breakdown/interlinking of stereotypes -> liminal werewolf
Critical Judgement:
“There is a significant male absence, that of the girl’s father… not needed to perform the
traditional male role as protector of the female. The child has her father’s hunting knife and
she ‘knows how to use it’. The knife is, of course, a phallic symbol, a symbol of male power.
However, what it represents here is not male sexual power but power pure and simple” –
Tony Cavender
Analysis:
1. Detached narrative – begins with setting which is unrelated
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