Detailed and comprehensive notes of 'Wolf-Alice' 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.
Wolf-Alice
Context
References LRRH, Alice in Wonderland and The Jungle Book
Youth, adolescence, navigating the world without adult protection, Alice is the
child of third wave feminism, Carter’s end goal of the anthology
Rational glass – represents genuine humanity and stripping back to the core. This
notion allows a rational view of the self, as a way of shaping who you are.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: psychological, safety, love/belonging, esteem, self-
actualization. We need all of these to reach the final level. Wolf-Alice is the only
female who reaches this where the others fall short on other steps.
Critical Interpretation
- “The rational humaneness that both Wolf-Alice and Duke reach by virtue of Wolf-
Alice’s caring I identified in this tale as a genuine humanity that is to be contrasted
with what is, in fat, the incomplete humanity of the people who have shunned and
persecuted them. The central demythologising orientation of these telling’ S of fairy
tales in The Bloody Chamber was to resurface” (Aiden Day)
Analysis
“bubbling, delicious, like that of a panful of fat on the fire”
“she is not a wolf herself” – liminal being between beast and man
“her poor eyesight does not trouble her” – lack of dominating gaze does not hold her
back
“there is nothing human about her except she is not a wolf” – merely not being a
predator is not enough, actively strive for societal change instead, child from the
previous story.
o Not tied to human concepts such as the patriarchy and capitalism.
o She can’t “go beyond the present tense” – Carter says we have no knowledge
of what’s to come, only the readers have the power to determine the future
“her pace is not our pace” – she is socially ahead of us and the current wave of
feminism
“if she were treated with a little kindness she was not intractable” – society should
be driven by this
The child of the previous heroine is naked, after mother burnt the clothes – liberated
Urinates all over the chapel, against the Bible similarly to TCOW
“the Duke” – his name and status connotes him with the Marquis and the Count,
given salvation by the child of suffering
He “ceased to cast an image in the mirror” – no place for him in the future due to his
titled and ties to predatory men in the anthology, mirror casts back what society
wants (Lacan theory), mirror now a source of power and liberation
“Somnambulists” (sleep walker) – the Duke is a vampire-esq character
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