INTRO
Sex. Pure unadulterated sex. When we think of sex, it is not usually in the context of a fairytale. Fairytales are for children, virgin ears. Over the years, fairytales have been “cleaned up” for young ears- we have become accustomed to the bland Disney versions of tales. How many of us can recount a version separate from the animated classics of our childhood? It is truly hard to believe that sometimes there are much more racy versions of these same tales.
Today, I ‘d like to share one such variation of Little Red Riding Hood called In the Company of Wolves, written by Angela Carter. I will recount ancient folklore of werewolves, introduce the sexually charged characters as I walk with you through the seemingly familiar yet much more raw path to grandmother’s house, and take you on a journey from virginity to womanhood.
TR*: We should begin by introducing some key werewolf folklore…
BODY
There was once a woman who married a man who vanished on her wedding night. The bride lay down on the bed and the groom said he was going out to relieve himself. She waited and waited but he didn’t return…all that was heard was howling coming on the wind from the forest. No remains were ever found, and the woman found herself another husband and had many children. One freezing night there was a knock at the door, and as she opened it she recognized him immediately. His clothes were in rags and his hair was long and filled with lice. Seeing she had remarried and had another man’s children, the first husband wished to be a wolf again so that he could teach “this whore” a lesson. After being killed by the second husband, the werewolf’s pelt was peeled off and he was just as he had been when he left his marriage bed.
They say there is an ointment that the Devil gives you that turns you into a wolf, or that one born feet first and had a wolf for a father will be born a werewolf, with a man’s torso and the legs and genitals of a wolf. And a wolf’s heart.
Seven years is said to be the span of a werewolf, but if you burn his clothes, you condemn him to wolfishness for the rest of his life.
TR*: When Little Red Riding Hood sets out on her journey, it is midwinter, the worst time in all the year for werewolves.
Little Red, a strong-minded child insists on going off through the wood to bring her beloved grandmother some gifts. Her breasts have just begun to grow and s...
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...it into the fire. The bones under the bed clattered but she paid no mind. She would lay his fearful heard in her lap and pick out the lice from his pelt and put them in her own mouth and eat them, as she would do in a savage marriage ceremony.
All was silent and still. Snow shows the confusion of paw prints. Sweet and sound she sleeps in granny’s bed, between the paws of the tender wolf.
SUMMARY
So now you know that there are some very different versions of tales then we are accustomed to.
You have heard some ancient folklore about werewolves, been introduced to the sexually charged characters, walked through the seemingly familiar yet much more raw path to grandmother’s house, and taken a journey from virginity to womanhood.
Perhaps this story is not really about real wolves. We have all at times seen the animal within ourselves, so perhaps the image of the wolf is used to represent what we try to suppress about our nature.
When Red throws his clothes into the fire, she is condemning him to wolfishness forever. She has embraced what we fear.
So I urge you to remember next time you watch a Disney movie with a child, that not is all as it seems in the land of fairytales.
In There Will Be Wolves, Ursula, which is the protagonist, is a healer. But due to the old Christian rules, women were not allowed to heal, but Ursula did. So they say Ursula was a witch and wanted to punish her. The bishop was a powerful person. He sentenced Ursula and brought her to the trial and tried to burn her, but her father Master William saved her. They then brought her to the cell. Until one day, her father came to the cell and released her, she was pardoned by the god, she had a chance to compliment her sin, as long as she help the Crusade free Jerusalem.
As he slouches in bed, a description of the bare trees and an old woman gathering coal are given to convey to the reader an idea of the times and the author's situation. "All groves are bare," and "unmarried women (are) sorting slate from arthracite." This image operates to tell the reader that it is a time of poverty, or a "yellow-bearded winter of depression." No one in the town has much to live for during this time. "Cold trees" along with deadness, through the image of "graves," help illustrate the author's impression of winter. Wright seems to be hibernating from this hard time of winter, "dreaming of green butterflies searching for diamonds in coal seams." This conveys a more colorful and happy image showing what he wishes was happening; however he knows that diamonds are not in coal seams and is brought back to the reality of winter. He talks of "hills of fresh graves" while dreaming, relating back to the reality of what is "beyond the streaked trees of (his) window," a dreary, povern-strucken, and cold winter.
of the wolves and finds that they are more than the savage and merciless hunters
“A grin was on the face of the monster; he seemed to jeer as with his fiendish finger he pointed towards the corpse of my wife” (173).
This essay explores the blurring of gender roles within Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Angela Carter’s The Lady of the House of Love, focusing on the presentation of a sexually assertive female and its threat to the patriarchal society, and the duality of the female characters as they are presented as enticing and thrilling, but also dangerous and somewhat repulsive.
Early settlers, all the way back in the 1700s, tried to rid these marvelous creatures from the North American continent, which almost lead to their extinction. They poisoned, trapped, furred, shot and killed all the wolves that posed a threat to their lands and livestock. The settlers seemed to be getting their way in the beginning of the 1700s because as human population increased in America, unfortunately, the wolf population plummeted. They pushed the wolves out of their original habitats and the settlers made their habitats their home. The wolf population could have plummeted for many reasons, but the main reason was the fear the humans had of the wolves. Occasionally, the wolves would hunt in the fields where the settler’s livestock would graze and at the right time, the wolves would ambush the livestock for food. The wolves hunted the cattle because the horses were to much work to kill: the horses had strong hind legs that were a threat to the wolves. Farmers and Settlers also saw these wolves a...
“St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” is a short story written by Karen Russell and published in 2006 as part of an anthology. Much analysis on this short story presents it as a demonstration of opposites, for instance, “Girls and wolves don't make sense [together] because they belong to different realms” (Malin 172). Some say that this short story is a commentary on humanity’s “civilized existence [and] primitive warfare,” however, a more in depth reading of this story remains (Malin 172). The story is broken into five parts labeled as stages; each stage demonstrates the progression of the girls moving from a werewolf culture to a human culture within a Catholic boarding school, starting with wearing clothes, eating cooked foods, changing language and
The narrator alludes to three plausible legends involving the hunter, the witch, and the bride, who all encountered men who transformed into wolves. She references possible explanations for this phenomenon, citing the Devil tra...
The involvement of social issues in young adult literature is no red flag to modern day society. New Realism, which first occurred around the 1960’s-1970, lead to the evolution of the appropriateness of social issues in the young adult literature genre. (Robinson) In Francesca Lia Block's Wolf, the author addresses the taboos of sexual violence and abuse in the home, and pairs this with the idea of female self-empowerment, and the age appropriateness of young adult literature for young adults.
The wolves’ were hunted in late 1800 s’ and early 1900‘s in the United States because farmers wanted more land for their cattle’s to graze upon. As farmers were moving out west they felt threaten that the wolves would hunt their cattles so the farmers thought that the best solution would be to take them out of the picture. This was possible because at the time there were no government regulations on hunting....
Syracuse University Press, 2002. 221-223. The. Sidky, H. Witchcraft, lycanthropy, drugs, and disease: an anthropological study of the European witch-hunts. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 1997.
The simplicity of fairy tales and non-specific details renders them ideal for manipulation allowing writers to add their own comments often reflecting social convention and ideology. Theref...
Over the years, fairytales have been distorted in order to make them more family friendly. Once these changes occur, the moral and purpose of the stories begin to disappear. The tales featured in the many Disney movies - beloved by so many - have much more malignant and meaningful origins that often served to scare children into obeying their parents or learning valuable life lessons.
Throughout my childhood, my sister loved to write unique fairytales for me that would make my little mind soar. Although I didn’t read modern fairytales, fairytales played an important role in my childhood as they first helped me to read, gain knowledge about the world and understand myself. According to Bruno Bettelheim’s book, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairytales, fairy tales give children much knowledge about their identity, others emotions and their environment. Children gain knowledge by reading about life experiences similar to their own and use this knowledge they gain through out their development, just as I did. Grimm’s Fairy Tales, written by the Grimm Brothers
...the young girl prior to meeting the wolf, how the young girl strays from the ideals of femininity once she meets the wolf, and last, what is inherently not feminine as represented by the wolf and his masculine characteristics. The wolf does not naturalize masculine characteristics within the reader because he still acts somewhat like a wolf, he is used as a tool to further naturalize the ideals of femininity, by standing in stark contrast to them.