41 pages • 1 hour read
Angela CarterThe Bloody Chamber and Other Stories
Angela CarterFiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1979A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Beta“The Werewolf”-“Wolf-Alice”Chapter Summaries & Analyses
“The Werewolf” Summary
The narrator describes a cold northern country in which the people live in suspicion and fear. A child goes to see her grandmother; along the way, she encounters a wolf. The child is prepared with her father’s knife, and she cuts off the wolf’s hand. The wolf runs away, and the child puts the paw in her basket. When she arrives, she finds her grandmother ill. She pulls a cloth from her basket and discovers that the paw has become her grandmother’s hand. When she pulls the blanket back, she sees that her grandmother is missing her hand. She screams for the neighbors, who come in and drive the old woman away and kill her.
“The Company of Wolves” Summary
A fearsome wolf roams the forest. The narrator remarks that wolves often come into people’s homes. Once, a hunter trapped a wolf and killed it to reveal that the wolf was really a man. On another occasion, a newlywed man disappeared on the night of his wedding. His wife remarried. Then one day the man came back; he took the form of a wolf and attacked the woman’s new son, and her new husband retaliated by killing him.
One day, a young girl goes through the woods to see her grandmother. She’s wearing a red shawl her grandmother made her. Along the way she hears a wolf, but meets only a young man. They quickly become friends, and he offers to carry her basket for her. He makes a wager with her over who can reach her grandmother’s house first; if he wins, she will give him a kiss. The girl walks slowly, hoping that the man will win. When he arrives, he attacks the grandmother and eats her. When the girl comes in and sees her grandmother’s hair in the fireplace, she recognizes the danger she is in. More wolves surround the house and begin howling. The man tells the girl to undress and prepares to eat her. However, the girl laughs at him and undresses him in return. They fall asleep together.
“Wolf-Alice” Summary
A young girl named Alice thinks and behaves like a wolf. She was raised by wolves before a group of hunters discovered her and brought her to an orphanage, where she was taught to behave like a girl. Eventually the nuns give up on her and send her to the home of an old duke. She becomes his housemaid. Elsewhere in the village, graves are being robbed and corpses taken. Alice encounters her reflection and thinks it’s someone else; at first she’s suspicious, though she grows excited at the prospect of a friend. When she goes into the hall, she sees the duke carrying a human leg. She begins exploring her new home and her growing body. She finds some old dresses and tries on a wedding dress. Wearing the dress, she goes outside. Unbeknownst to her, the husband of one of the women the duke dug up and ate has vowed revenge; he has gathered a group of churchgoers who have brought guns and holy water to the house. The man shoots the duke, and Alice runs. When they see Alice in the wedding dress, they think she’s the ghost of the dead woman. They run away, and Alice goes to tend to the duke.
“The Werewolf”-“Wolf-Alice” Analysis
“The Werewolf,” “The Company of Wolves,” and “Wolf-Alice” are often collectively referred to as Angela Carter’s “Wolf Trilogy.” They all draw in some way from the tradition of Red Riding Hood stories, which themselves draw from old folk beliefs about werewolves. In France, where this story originates, “werewolf trials” were held in the same way as the more familiar “witch trials” of America and Europe. Carter incorporates this historical motif into these stories as a way to explore the consequences of superstition and The Suppression of Wildness.
The first story, “The Werewolf,” positions the heroine as a young girl defensive about and jaded by the beliefs of her people. Superstition is widespread; as the narrator says upon recounting a series of legends, “Anyone will tell you that” (118). These superstitions can be used to endanger one’s neighbors and even to benefit from accusations thrown upon them. “The Werewolf” is a very short piece of flash fiction, but it raises several questions about the relationship between its two central women. The opening paragraphs position them as loving family members, and yet each turns on the other: the grandmother in the form of a wolf, and the granddaughter in the form of a seemingly helpless child. The grandmother is then slaughtered (after the villagers decide her wart is the mark of a witch), and the granddaughter inherits everything. This suggests that these two powerful women cannot exist and prosper in the same space; as women in a challenging patriarchal environment, each needs to fight ruthlessly for everything they are given. The wolf in this story is a symbol of this violent competition for resources—an impulse normally hidden from view, especially among women raised to perform a patriarchal ideal of polite femininity at all times.
“The Company of Wolves” is more complex, and one of Carter’s most famous and most anthologized stories. The setting is similar to the preceding story’s: wild and merciless. A significant amount of exposition is given regarding folk tales and second-hand legends about men who turned into wolves. All of this creates an atmosphere of struggle and resilience, which contrasts the introduction of the main character: “this one, so pretty and the youngest of her family, a little late-comer, had been indulged by her mother” (124). This suggests that the young girl has not been adequately prepared for the world. When she does meet the werewolf, she is immediately taken by his charms and even ensures she arrives at her grandmother’s last “to make sure the handsome gentleman would win his wager” (126). Once she arrives and takes stock of her situation, she recognizes that she has two choices: be devoured by her adversary, or rise to meet him. In either case, the civilized self she had been is dead. In this way her reaction to the wolf acts as a kind of rebirth from a human to a wild creature, even though the transformation isn’t external as it is in “The Tiger’s Bride.” In “Wolf-Alice,” this transformation happens in reverse: A wild creature is partially tamed and boxed into a civilized persona. She finds a home with the Duke, a monstrous character who is able to live with her in a sort of harmony because they both exist in a state of otherness. The Duke’s affliction is never precisely defined; he shares elements with the werewolf lore in Carter’s previous stories, as well as vampires and ghouls of folklore. It’s explicitly stated that he has no reflection, an element that becomes very important in the story’s final moments.
Alice herself becomes caught between two worlds and two identities. She discovers solidarity with the figure in the mirror (the “looking-glass” of Alice in Wonderland mythos), at which point she very literally embodies two disparate selves. This becomes a coming-of-age ritual in which she discovers her changing body and begins to understand her human nature. However, she instinctively reverts to her animal identity when she aids the wounded duke. Alice recognizes that both of them have been ostracized from society for being who they are, and she feels compassion for him. It’s this act of compassion, just like the one in “The Lady of the House of Love,” that frees the Duke from his curse.
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