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Passive/Aggressive: Agency and Rejection of Gender Roles in Angela Carter’s "The Company of Wolves"

by Ava Dennis


Angela Carter’s “The Company of Wolves” takes the story of “Little Red Riding Hood” and subverts this common narrative to allow the protagonist to possess agency over her body and her choices to be a sexual being.

Historically, fairy tales have been rewritten from folklore to uphold cultural norms of dominant western society, primarily a patriarchal upper class. Women were written into subservient positions by men, lacking any substance or depth. Sexual relations between men and women were portrayed solely through a male lens, with women’s sexuality existing only within the context of the man for his pleasure. Angela Carter’s “The Company of Wolves” takes the story of “Little Red Riding Hood” and subverts this common narrative to allow the protagonist to possess agency over her body and her choices to be a sexual being. Through this rewriting, Carter interrogates the sexist notions perpetuated in modern western culture that confine women—and men—to a single identity, encouraging women to think about themselves as individuals that exist outside a patriarchal system. However, there are limits to who can identify with the character Carter has created. Thus, on the one hand, Carter’s female protagonist represents a limited (Eurocentric) view of women’s sexuality, and on the other, this character is also one who challenges oppressive notions of feminine desire (or lack of desire) and refuses to be placed in a position that completely ignores her sexuality. She becomes, in a sense, a wolf herself.


Folklore versions of “Little Red Riding Hood” that existed before the well-known versions by Charles Perrault and the Grimm brothers end with the girl keeping her life and portray her as smart and cunning (Zipes 35); Carter brings back these elements in “The Company of Wolves.” The unnamed girl Carter creates is “strong-minded” (113) and does not let herself become fooled by the wolf. For example, Carter says “she has her knife and she is afraid of nothing” (114); she is not a helpless girl whose naiveté leads to her downfall, or a girl who is responsible for her rape, as depicted in the Perrault version (Zipes 35). When she encounters the handsome man who is actually the wolf, she chooses not to believe him when he says he follows the compass through the woods instead of the path. Furthermore, Sun-Jin Lee argues that “The werewolf’s male authority does not affect her decision to take 'the winding path'…. What drives her is … her desire for him” (134). While Charles Perrault’s “Little Red Riding Hood” depicts the girl as naïve and dawdling on her way to her grandmothers to pick flowers, Carter’s girl chooses to take the winding path because she desires the wolf, and wants him to win the bet. Some could view this as her not wanting to challenge his dominance, but the fact that she makes these choices herself is what gives her power and makes her an independent and self-aware individual.


When she throws her shawl on the fire, this is an act of banishing dominant notions of how she is expected to behave like a woman—she is “straying from the path” that patriarchal society has chosen for her.

The girl that Carter creates rejects common ideas of womanhood and society. She is confronted by the wolf in her grandmother’s house after he has eaten her grandmother. He traps her, and she fears that he will eat her like he did her grandmother. Instead of being afraid, she decides to undress. When she throws her shawl on the fire, this is an act of banishing dominant notions of how she is expected to behave like a woman—she is “straying from the path” that patriarchal society has chosen for her. The narrator says, “…[She] took off her scarlet shawl, the colour of poppies, the colour of sacrifices, the colour of her menses…” (117). The descriptions of the color of her shawl are tied into expectations for how women should behave, like making sacrifices. Sacrifices would be in terms of what women sacrifice in terms of physical and emotional labor for men and their wellbeing. This choice to shed the shawl—an oppressive patriarchal ideology—is a turning point in her transformation from innocent virgin to sexually aware individual, and her rejection of the confining role of mother/wife that is expected of her. Lee argues that her removal of the shawl “celebrates the transgression of the code that denies women their sexual drives and imposes modesty, passivity, and obedience upon women” (132). The shawl was given to her by her grandmother, who is described as a “pious old woman” (115). She represents the Christian, respectable society in which women are expected to behave as obedient, passive individuals. In the description of her house, it is mentioned that she has a Bible she is constantly reading, and two porcelain spaniels. These could be symbols of domesticity, for the domesticated dogs are in direct contrast to the wildness of the wolf, and the Bible can be seen as a tool that further enforces gender roles and expectations of what is “proper” behavior in society. By making the choice to have these objects, the grandmother “keeps the wolves out” (115). This idea of keeping the wolves out literally refers to the wolves that ravage the town, but metaphorically refers to the wildness that they represent, and these symbols of domestic dogs and the Bible are tools to repress this inherent wildness, or freedom from oppression. The grandmother is complicit in perpetuating oppressive ideas about women, and this could be why she is eaten.


Carter writes the girl as strong and brave. She was not afraid of going into the woods by herself and stayed brave when she is confronted by the wolf in her grandmother’s house. She bursts out laughing when the wolf says, “All the better to eat you with” (118), which signifies her refusal to be threatened by him, and her refusal to become a victim. She does not take seriously the threat that she might be eaten because she is not intimidated by the wolf’s supposed authority, hence her laughter. “She was nobody’s meat” (118) is her refusal to belong to any oppressive ideology that seeks to subjugate her to a certain role, essentially confining her to being an inanimate object—like meat—as opposed to a living, breathing individual. In “Carter’s Feminist Revision of Fairytale: The Narrative Strategies of ‘The Company of Wolves,’” Jie Wu points to the French feminist Luce Irigaray’s argument that the three main archetypes for women are virgin, mother, and whore. These archetypes only serve to continually perpetuate stereotypes about women (58), and Carter’s girl does not fit into any of these roles. She exists as a new, liberated woman. Through writing the girl taking control of her sexual experience with the wolf, Carter is encouraging us to resituate our ideas about women in society as objects to whom sexual experiences happen and instead think of them as active individuals (subjects) who can take part in their sexual experiences.

Just as Carter rewrites the girl to be a more powerful character, she rewrites the wolf to criticize the idea that men are animals. Her choice to change the wolf to a werewolf—something that is part human and part beast—suggests that men should be able to bear the responsibility for their actions, instead of the age-old excuse “boys will be boys.” Lee argues that “…Carter suggests that werewolves’ animality is an imposed one, which means male sexuality as aggression is another gender ideology like the view of women as victims or objects” (139). This would contradict the idea that men are animals and can’t control their behavior, as is suggested in the Perrault version of “Little Red Riding Hood.” In the beginning of the story the narrator spends some time discussing wolf folklore. The narrator mentions the wolf’s howl, suggesting there is a level of sadness to it, saying, “…the beasts would love to be less beastly if only they knew how and never cease to mourn their own condition” (112). The fact that they are essentially grieving (mourning) their beastliness suggests that they feel that there is no way they can change their nature, that they have no control over themselves. In the girls act of “taming” the werewolf, and in her choice to sleep with him, she is becoming part animal herself. Carter creates this transformation to encourage us to think about the line between civilization and nature, perhaps suggesting that ideas about inherent aggressiveness/passiveness in men and women are not natural, and that women can also be werewolves. Civilization can be oppressive, and choosing the bestial over what is considered proper is a liberating act and frees the girl from a patriarchal ideology that seeks to subjugate her.


I believe instead that Carter chooses not to call this girl “Little Red Riding Hood” in an attempt to distance her from the stigma associated with the name of a girl—Little Red Riding Hood—who has been depicted as weak [...]

While Carter’s character is revolutionary in many ways (some of which I have mentioned), she can still be viewed as adhering to mainstream ideas about women’s beauty and sexuality that are primarily Eurocentric, heterosexual, and centered on cisgender women’s bodies. The girl is white, blonde, and heterosexual, and these characteristics are highlighted as part of her desirability. Her cheeks are described as “emblematic scarlet and white” (113) which could be symbolic of a certain type of woman (a white woman). Not all women look like her, and she represents an ideal that has been set as the standard of beauty in western society. She is also not addressed as “Little Red Riding Hood” but instead as “the girl.” Wu makes their interpretation of this choice:


Since names and titles are symbols of identities, identities without them will lose their very foundations. In a patriarchal society, women deprived of their names are subject to a marginalized position. Therefore, this namelessness of the girl reveals the oppressive elements of a patriarchal society that treats women as inferiors (58).

I believe instead that Carter chooses not to call this girl “Little Red Riding Hood” in an attempt to distance her from the stigma associated with the name of a girl—Little Red Riding Hood—who has been depicted as weak and responsible for her rape, and instead tries to create a “universal woman” by making her identity anonymous. But this is not a “universal woman.” The experiences of the girl in Carter’s story do not necessarily reflect a universal experience for all women, and she surely does not represent all women. Women of color may have a vastly different experience surrounding their sexuality that may stem from stereotypes, such as hypersexualizing and fetishizing which further plays a role in violence perpetuated towards them. For example, Holmes argues that black women’s bodies are continually fetishized as an extension of slavery, which kept them in hypersexualized roles as a result of the economic function of providing children who would then also work for the slave owners (1, 3). This experience is specific to black women, and Carter’s character won’t be able to represent these experiences due to the fact that she is white. This story is also one that depicts a heterosexual romance, which we know does not represent all women’s sexual orientations or desires.


In many ways, Carter's work still exists in the realm of a hetero-patriarchal society, but she is inhabiting a space that has historically excluded women and is taking control of a narrative, which can be powerful in its own way.

There is also the fact that Carter spends a great deal of time focused on the virginal aspect of the girl. In the initial description, the girl is described as “…an unbroken egg; she is a sealed vessel; she has inside her a magic space the entrance to which is shut tight with a plug of membrane…” (114). This over dramatized description of her body is mocking the idea that a woman’s appeal is tied into her virginity, that her “magic space” is something to be entered, and separates her as a person from her body. These references to symbols—like an egg—also make fun of the idea that women are historically viewed as objects and not living beings. This focus on the genitalia and virginity of the girl further enforces ideas surrounding biological essentialism by tying her femininity and desirability to her genitalia, but Lee points out that “virginity functions as a measure by which to determine whether a woman has a value as an object of exchange” (130), which Carter is critiquing by using a mocking tone to suggest that the girl’s desirability lies in her virginity. In many ways, her work still exists in the realm of a hetero-patriarchal society, but she is inhabiting a space that has historically excluded women and is taking control of a narrative, which can be powerful in its own way. Carter was writing during second-wave feminism in the 1970s which is notorious for being exclusionary and limited to white women. Valerie Amos and Pratibha Parmar wrote during second-wave feminism that “…white, mainstream feminist theory, be it from the socialist feminist or radical feminist perspective, does not speak to the experience of Black women and where it attempts to do it is often from a racist perspective and reasoning” (4). Mainstream second-wave feminism was primarily a movement by white women, so its interests were always in favor of white women and did not necessarily include the interests of black women. These were white women who were inspired by Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, which focuses on the plight of the housewife, which was more likely going to be white women since black women had to work due to economic hardships (Grady, “The Waves of Feminism, and Why People Keep Fighting Over Them, Explained.”). bell hooks argues in her critique of The Feminine Mystique that, “…Friedan never wondered whether or not the plight of college-educated, white housewives was an adequate reference point by which to gauge the impact of sexism or sexist oppression on the lives of women in American society” (2). Since Carter is a white woman, it makes sense that the character she creates is modeled after her own experience with patriarchy, which we know is not a universal experience for all women. This information is important in understanding the type of character Carter has created, for she is someone who is getting out from under a patriarchal system that expects her to become “domesticated,” just like many of the white women who participated in the second wave of feminism. It is still important to recognize the value of what her work has done to critique the inherent misogyny present in fairytales and popular culture.


...Carter pushes us to examine our own internalized ideas about the roles that have been ascribed to men and women in our society, and suggests that maybe these ideas are perhaps unnatural.

While there are limitations to “The Company of Wolves,” Angela Carter has done a successful job of reinventing a tale that has most commonly depicted women as passive objects and instead creates a character who is able to possess agency and can exist outside of the realm of patriarchal society. In reclaiming this narrative, Carter pushes us to examine our own internalized ideas about the roles that have been ascribed to men and women in our society, and suggests that maybe these ideas are perhaps unnatural. The girl she creates rejects the idea that women do not possess sexual desire, and takes control of her life as opposed to letting it be determined by a wolf.


 

References


Amos, Valerie, and Pratibha Parmar. “Challenging Imperial Feminism.” Feminist Review, no. 17, 1984, pp. 3–19. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1395006. Accessed 20 July 2020.


Carter, Angela. “The Company of Wolves.” The Bloody Chamber. Penguin, 1979. 110-118


Grady, Constance. “The Waves of Feminism, and Why People Keep Fighting Over Them, Explained.” Vox, Vox, 20 Mar. 2018, www.vox.com/2018/3/20/16955588/feminism-waves-explained-first-second-third-fourth.


Holmes, Caren M. "The Colonial Roots of the Racial Fetishization of Black Women." Black & Gold 2.1 (2016): 2.


hooks, bell. “Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory.” Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. Boston, South End Press, 1984: 1-15


Lee, Sun-Jin. “Metamorphoses in and between Charles Perrault’s ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ and Angela Carter’s ‘The Company of Wolves.’” Feminist Studies in English Literature, vol. 20, no. 1, 2012, pp. 117-145. EBSCOhost, doi:10.15796/fsel.2012.20.1.005.


Perrault, Charles. “Little Red Riding Hood.” Histoires ou contes du temps passé, avec des moralités: Contes de ma mère l’Oye. Paris, 1697


Wu, J. “Carter’s Feminist Revision of Fairytale: The Narrative Strategies of ‘The Company of Wolves’”. Fudan J. Hum. Soc. Sci. 10, (2017): 53-67.


Zipes, Jack. “The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood Once Again.” Why Fairy Tales Stick: The Evolution and Relevance of a Genre. Routledge, 2006: 28-39.

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