An Argument of "The Company of Wolves"

An Argument of “The Company of Wolves”

Angela Carter’s “The Company of Wolves,” version of “Little Red Riding hood” is quite different from that of other versions. Like all fairy tales, over time the stories change because of different cultures, generations, religions, and societies need to spread lessons, values and morals. Some differences in Angela’s version are that it is set in the “dead of winter” (Carter pg. 131) when the wolves are most famished and dangerous. The young lady included a “carving knife and harsh liquor” (Carter pg. 314) in her basket. Throughout the story she uses her “sexuality as part of her survival skills and the wolf is never really in charge” (Carter pg318-319). That seems fittest as it was published in the height of hippy 70’s and written by a so called feminist, yet there seems to be quite an abundant amount of underlining Paganism throughout the story. The main focus of this essay will show how throughout the story there seems to be characters, settings, and magical objects that refer to or are related to the Pagan religion.

One of the first things is the underlying meaning of the “Grey Wolf” (Carter pg. 313) character. In the Pagan religion when a grey wolf comes, it is a sign of a hidden lesson, like the moral of this story, a sign of transformation as in “becoming a woman” (Carter pg. 315), self-courage like “the strong-minded child insisting to go through the woods alone” (Carter pg. 314), standing ones ground “I’m nobody’s meat” (Carter pg. 318), defending boundaries and trusting insight. Another

example is that in a wolf pack the leaders are both the Alpha male and Alpha female, were as in the Pagan religion the alpha females play a very important role and her opinion is respected more than in most other religions. One of the female’s main duties is to control the impulses of the males and the situations thereof. You can see this throughout the story as the young lady seems to be quite in charge, as “she is the one taking...