1. A Short History of Little Red Riding Hood
Literary Analysis week 14 – Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber (2)
Dr Jamie Bernthal

2. Stories Evolve Oral traditions Numerous written versions
Early accounts (see Zipes)
Charles Perrault (17th century) – see moral
Grimm brothers (1812) – Christianisation
‘As tales were told and written down, one could argue, particular motifs were retold and rewritten as if they needed to be set in a plot that would enable their survival and enable them to become highly communicative and memorable. They gradually had to be congealed in a stable form to become canonical, so to speak’ (Jack Zipes, 2006, Why Fairy Tales Stick: The Evolution and Relevance of a Genre, London: Routledge)

3. Carter’s 1977 translation of Perrault’s ‘Little Red Riding Hood’
Source: British Library

4. Carter, Men, and Wolves 1977- translation of Perrault
The Sadeian Woman
1979 – The Bloody Chamber
‘To be the object of desire is to be defined in the passive case.
‘To exist in the passive case is to die in the passive case – that is, to be killed.
‘That is the moral of the fairy tale about the perfect woman.’ (Carter, in The Sadeian Woman)

5. New Tales for Old?
‘She took traditional fairy tales and used them to write new ones.’ (Simpson, 2006, ix)
Carter on fairytales: ‘fantasies and wish-fulfilment [….] informal dreams dreamed in public’
Carter draws from conflicting traditions to create her new tales.

6. Wolf Stories
I was taking the latent image – the latent content of those traditional stories and using that; and the latent content is violently sexual. And because I am a woman, I read it that way.’ (Angela Carter, quoted in Cristina Bacchilega, 1997, Postmodern Fairytales: Gender and Narrative Strategies, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press)

7. Postmodern Feminism?
Christina Bacchilega, Postmodern Fairtales: Gender and Narrative Strategies (1997)
Carter’s texts are self-reflexive
They have no single thesis
Bacchilega disagrees with other feminists, e.g. Duncker.
Critics rarely agree!
Fairy tale history is not narrow and patriarchal
‘Carter’s archaology is of a genealofical kind, which exposes the struggles of one story’s attempt t devour another stry, as each teller tries to become “the” teller’ (1997: 61)
Bacchilega in her chapter title calls the wolf stories ‘not re[a]d once and for all’.
Bacchilega argues that Duncker is wrong, but Duncker would argue that Bacchilega is wrong.

8. Bacchilega (cont.) Dialogue with folklore traditions
Invocation of plural versions, interconnected and self-referencing
Re-evaluation of gender & sexuality (economic and narrative)
Discussion point: conflicting versions of events in Carter’s three stories, and points of comparison.
Just look at the language and imagery Carter uses – the insane violence of her wintered world. The men are just as violent as the wolves, and with less animal needs. In ‘Wolf-Alice’, Carter suggests that civilisation is not natural, and Alice does not become her full self until she has embraced animal instincts.
Image shows the first page of Carter’s corrected manuscript for ‘Wolf-Alice’. Source: British Library.

9. Group work ‘The Company of Wolves’
p.136 (‘He strips off his shirt’ down to ‘beside the bed in granny’s nightcap.’)
p. 138 to 139 (‘What big teeth you have!’ to ‘the paws of the tender wolf.’ [the end])
Language. Imagery. What is Carter saying?
Compare to a more conventional retelling that might be considered feminist.