Amanda Fisher

Kylee Pastore 

FIQWS 10105 

20 September 2022 

The Break of the Fairytale Glass ceiling  

Think of the fairytales you heard of growing up Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty. These fairytales were one of the many that reinforced the idea that the young and beautiful women are helpless and naïve. The blatant sexism in these stories didn’t only stop at the lack of character development in these women, but it also stifled the sexual freedom of these characters. In Little Red Riding Hood, the main character is mostly perceived as naive and childlike despite her mostly being a young woman.The message of a young woman is displayed greatly in many fairytales, it is a tool to teach young girl and women how they are expected to act in the world. The stereotypes of the past kept many characters as weak prey while men got to play the sexual being, which is a right of all people. Over the years there have been retellings of one of the most famous fairytales, Little Red Riding Hood. Angela Carter, the novelist and known feminist wrote a collection of stories, The Bloody Chamber. These stories shattered the glass ceiling on female and male characters and their gender roles. In Angela Carters short stories about Little Red Riding Hood, she challenges the roles that female characters usually have and gave the audience the dose of reality that was needed. In this essay we will review some credited sources that review The Bloody Chamber and how it helps break the glass ceiling for female fairytale characters by exposing their sexual liberation. 

               Charles Perrault, one of the prevalent fairytale writers enforced the ideas that women shouldn’t be outspoken of their sexual needs. In Carter’s short collection the bloody chamber, the story The Company Wolves is one of the examples in which Carter redefined the gender roles. In Carter’s Feminist Revision of Fairytale: The Narrative Strategies of “The Company of Wolves” by Jie Wu she talks about how Angela Carter recognized Perrault as sort of a grandfather in fairytale literature yet stepped outside his perceived roles of women and men. So “rather than reinforcing dominant male fantasies, Carter’s erotic tales aim to lay bare the cultural fetishization and sexualization of young women” (Wu). In many versions of Little Red Riding Hood, the women are seen objects, not subjects within their own right. Charles Perrault on the other hand displayed the idea that young girls should be aware of their inappropriate sexual behavior. This reinforced the idea that women were objects to be desired after and not subjects to have their own desires. Carter’s intention to “reconstruct female sexuality prioritizes women’s sexual agency as subjects rather than objects” (Wu). Young women in Fairytales are always seen as innocent being with no signs of sexual liberation. Many authors like Perrault made Little Red Riding Hood seem like they were a character with no feminine or sexual desires. Carter on the other hand completely flipped the script. In the company of Wolves, the young woman that plays little red riding hood uses her sexuality to survive. She doesn’t behave like a passive character with no depth, she even shows interests and lust after the big bad wolf. Jie Wu recognizes the change in roles from the earlier versions of Little Red Riding Hood to a more active female that Angela Carter depicts in The Bloody Chamber especially in the short story The Company of Wolves. 

In the Company of Wolves, the character of little red riding hood uses her sexuality to show her attacker that she’s not afraid but to show that she is not just another passive character. In Reading, Translating, Rewriting: Angela Carter’s Transitional Poetics, it talks of how Carter made sure that her female characters in The Bloody Chamber were active characters. In Perrault version of Little Red Riding Hood, the main character is ignorant of danger, which makes her easy prey for the wolf. Whereas in Angela’s versions “the girl has a greater agency: she is either armed, fearless and prepared to face the wolf, or playful and knowing in the game of seduction with her male counterpart….”(Rochere, 73-74). Angela Carter made sure that in all three versions of Little Red Riding Hood, the main character had a chance to not only survive but not be short- handed from the beginning. Perrault and older authors used their rewriting to support the idea that women are attacked because of themselves and that women are defenseless creatures that are bound to be saved or just eaten by wolf’s aka men. The wolf’s actions in most Little Red Riding Hood revisions are seen as a story of sexual assault or rape, especially when it comes to the wolf eating the grandmother and little red riding hood. The Company of Wolves “openly addresses and tackles the sexual subject of the tale. However, instead of blaming the girl’s behavior or even indicting predatory masculinity, the story becomes an occasion to explore female sexual desire and beastly attraction” (Rochere, 74). In the company of wolves, the main character finds herself attracted to the wolf masquerading as a man, the fact that a woman openly expressed her want and sexual desire goes against the glass ceiling that held female characters back.  

Angela Carter’s re-writing of Little red riding hood especially the company of wolves really depicts many feminine messages that didn’t apply to just women but also men. In an article Analysis of Angela Carter’s, the company of Wolves, it addresses not only the rendition of the character little red riding hood but the importance of the in-depth characterization of wolves in the beginning of the story. The people in the company of wolves aren’t unprepared for wolves unlike the other citizens in many of the revisions of little red riding hood. There is a world of fear “created by the wolf and the descriptions of the “grave-eyed children “who “always carry knives” to protect themselves from these creatures, is werewolf lore, tales of humans who have been transformed into humans”(Mambrol). The children in this version were carrying knives and were aware of the danger that lurked outside. While the company of wolves follows most of the interpretation of little red riding hood, the plot twist comes when the main character in little red riding hood “performs a striptease for the wolf instead of becoming the wolf victim”(Mambrol).  The wolves that portray the male danger in the world were described as more than a predator, they also had a back story about they felt about being turned into a wolf. The main character in this version uses her beauty and sexuality to survive another day. 

While all the previous sources fall under the umbrella of exploring the feminism that was displayed in the bloody chamber, each source spoke of different things. The first text spoke of Angela carter laying bare the fact that female characters up until a certain point were viewed as and treated like objects. Carter used her female characters to break this barrier and refer to the women as subjects with their own desires. The second source speaks more of the fact that the Little Red Riding Hood did not have the necessary tools to even hold a chance against the wolves. Carter on the other hand made sure to structure little red as a character capable of surviving. The last sources talk about little red using her body and skills to survive while also forcing the male characters to have more depth. With a focus on Little Red Riding Hood these authors proved Angela Carter’s work opened a new door for not only female characters and their development but also forces the male characters to have back story.  

                                                               Work Cited  

  Rochere, Martine Hennard Dutheil de la. Reading, Translating, Rewriting: Angela Carter’s Translational Poetics. Wayne State University Press, 2013. 

Reading, Translating, Rewriting : Angela Carter’s Translational Poetics 

  Wu Jie. “Carter’s Feminist Revision of Fairytale: The Narrative Strategies of ‘The Company of Wolves.’” Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences, vol. 10, no. 1, 2017, pp. 53–67, https://doi.org/10.1007/s40647-016-0162-7. 

 Carter’s Feminist Revision of Fairytale: The Narrative Strategies of “The Company of Wolves” 

Mambrol, Nasrullah. “Analysis of Angela Carter’s the Company of Wolves.” Literary Theory and Criticism, 20 June 2022, 

Lavery, Bryony, and Angela Carter. The Bloody Chamber. Methuen Drama, 2021.