How to Stop Being Eaten By Wolves in One Sexually Traumatising Step - The Company of Wolves

The short story collection The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter shocked its readers in 1979, and remained shocking to audiences later in the future largely due to its explicit sexual content, and its address of unsavoury topics through the format and style of well-known and often beloved fairy tales. Indeed, when I found a pirated PDF copy online and read The Company of Wolves (a tale from the collection), I sat back after and just sort of went dang. That's a lot.

The story regales the reader with a series of folk tales regarding wolves and their relation to humans- 'carnivore incarnate' hunters with a taste for human flesh. In the winter, they starve due to lack of prey, and are the most dangerous of predators as they 'cannot listen to reason'. However, the link between wolf and man takes form in the lycanthrope, or werewolf. The lycanthrope is characterised as an insidious, vengeful and perverse creature, as much human as it is wolf through the violence that both beast and man enact on their victims. The misery of their existence is elaborated through legends passed down by the inhabitants of the village. One such story is that of a woman whose husband disappears on her wedding night, only to reappear as a werewolf and attacking her and her children when he sees that she has remarried.

The latter half of the story follows a young pubescent girl bringing a basket of treats through a treacherous wood to her reclusive grandmother (Sound familiar? Good.), only to meet a handsome man who challenges her to a race to her granny's house. He asks for a kiss if he wins, which she accepts as a condition. He reaches the house first, then strips off all his clothing and turns into a wolf. He then eats the grandmother, outright killing her and hiding her bones. When the girl arrives, she sees almost immediately that her 'grandmother' is truly a wolf, but instead of being eaten herself, she laughs in his face, burns her clothing and has sex with him, taming him in the process.

So that's the story. The connection between the story and the tale of Little Red Riding Hood is obvious, but was less intentional. Angela Carter herself said that The Company of Wolves (and The Bloody Chamber as a whole) was more inspired by "sources in the oral tradition, which I have a special relation with, I guess, and which is dying out now". True to her word, The Company of Wolves shares more similarity with an older folktale titled 'The Story of the Grandmother' than the earliest printed version of Little Red Riding Hood by Perrault. 

"Undress, my child," said the bzou, "and come and sleep beside me."
"Where should I put my apron?"
"Throw it in the fire, my child; you don't need it anymore."
"Where should I put my bodice?"
"Throw it in the fire, my child; you don't need it anymore."
"Where should I put my dress?"
"Throw it in the fire, my child; you don't need it anymore."

 The little girl in the old tale meets not just a wolf, but a bzou, a werewolf. Similarly, in Carter's story, it is highlighted that the aggressors are not plainly wolves, but men who turn to wolves to prey on women and children. One thing is certain, however- the werewolf is a metaphor for animalistic hunger and the violence that men enact on women, abusive and sexually perverse.

Representation of Virginity - Ew.

Throughout the text, it is highlighted that adolescent girl is a virgin. A lot. To a disturbing amount. 

"...she has just started her woman's bleeding, the clock inside her that will strike, henceforward, once a month.
She stands and moves within the invisible pentacle of her own virginity. She is 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; she is a closed system; she does not know how to shiver."

Say it with me: ew.  One might say that for an author renowned for feminist literature, this sure seems like an unhealthy and disgusting depiction of a young girl. The ideas of puberty and virginity are wrapped in a series of overly flowery metaphors, and the description of her reproductive organs is grossly juvenile - her 'magic space' (what does that even mean? Is that supposed to be her uterus? Her vagina?) - and anatomically incorrect. 

However, this description is clearly intended to force the reader to view the young girl through the eyes of a predatory and likely male-centric society. The idea of her 'magic space the entrance to which is shut tight with a plug of membrane' is typical of the fundamental misunderstanding of the female sex organs- the hymen isn't a tamper-evident seal on the vagina. Such misconceptions are formed out of an unpalatable blend of misogyny, indifference for the wellbeing of women by men who have no interest in learning about them, and a societal obsession with virginity that labels women who have not had sex as 'new' and 'unbroken'. This aligns with the system of gender-based oppression that is the patriarchy, as defined by Dworkin. By forcing the reader to objectify a young girl, Carter comments on the wider patriarchal society that does so.

Female Sexuality in a World of Men

The feminist writer Andrea Dworkin, in her book Woman Hating (1974) analyses other popular fairy tales (Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty) and notices one key feature- to be characterised as a 'good woman', the protagonists of these tales are passive, waiting to be saved. Indeed, the most well-known version of Little Red Riding Hood has the girl too be eaten by the wolf, with the serendipitous arrival of a hunter saving her and Grandma by cutting the wolf open. Dworkin derisively describes this literary phenomenon as 'The Beauteous Lump of Ultimate Good', where women are characterised by 'passivity, beauty, innocence and victimisation'. 

"The girl burst out laughing, she knew she was nobody's meat. She laughed at him full in the face, she ripped off his shirt for him and flung it into the fire, in the fiery wake of her own discarded clothing."

The Company of Wolves turns this on its head- the girl uses her sexuality to save herself from being killed and eaten. She has agency in her decision to sleep with the wolf, using his desire for sex and 'immaculate flesh' to prevent him from killing her. She sacrifices her virginity in the process, which implies losing her status of 'unbroken' and 'immaculate'. Taming the wolf through her sexuality means she abandons her innocence, passivity and status as a 'good girl', but saves her own life. Through this, Carter states that in a society defined by male sexual desire, female sexual desire is a powerful tool that can be used to control men.

Let's backtrack - Sinister Implications

Despite the apparent message of empowerment and the rejection of the literary standard of the 'good woman' identified by Dworkin, there are still... issues. 

First of all, we can't ignore that even though she consents to the sexual encounter, the girl is still very much a girl, her 'breasts have just begun to swell' and she 'has just started her woman's bleeding', which places her in the range of 10-14 years old. Her age alone makes her consent null and void as children lack the maturity and sexual understanding required to consent to sex. It would be disingenuous to discuss the subversion of the victimisation trope without acknowledging the fact that she is still a victim, she has underage sex to save herself from literally being killed and eaten. 

Taking this harrowing fact into consideration, the tale becomes a lot more sinister than it already was. Throughout the text, Carter has chosen to represent a misogynistic, male-centric society that is hard for young girls to survive in due to predation from grown men. This is a result of societal glorification of virginity and the sexualisation of youth as 'immaculate' and 'unbroken', 'Carnivore incarnate, only immaculate flesh will please him'. In a way, despite the girl '[knowing] she was nobody's meat', she is still preyed on, in a way still offering her body to the wolf. Through this, Carter acknowledges the bleakness of the idea presented; that women embracing their sexuality has power in a world focused on male sexuality, but this may come at the cost of sacrificing the innocence of younger girls. Hence, she laments the idea that women are forced to navigate society by cleverly avoiding their own victimisation by perverted and demanding men.