Create a 8 page essay paper that discusses In the Company of Wolves by Angela Carter.Download file to see previous pages... The first thing we note in Angela Carter's version is how the gender roles h

Create a 8 page essay paper that discusses In the Company of Wolves by Angela Carter.

The first thing we note in Angela Carter's version is how the gender roles have changed. In this tale, Little Red Riding Hood is portrayed as a "strong-minded child"(Carter 215) who knows no fear and won't be denied. These traits are generally considered to be masculine attributes. The reason for this switch has much to do with Carter's own female empowerment views as it does with the changing social views of the time. In the olden days women were expected to stay at home and take care of the kids, as well as be responsible for the household duties like cooking and cleaning. They had no place else in society and any female caught doing otherwise was looked down on by society.

This was a point in time when it was generally agreed that people should be punished for their mistakes, a time when forgiveness was an unheard of term. This can be seen in an earlier version of Little Red Riding Hood written by Perrault, where the tale ends with the death of Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother. However, as times changed and women slowly began to move out of the household and into the working world, societies view point began to change as well. As a result, a newer version of the same story arose, written by the Grimm's brothers, in which Little Red Riding Hood was saved by the hunter, signaling that she was being forgiven for her mistakes and given a second chance to redeem herself which she does by working together with her grandmother to plot the death of the second wolf. In this version, it is the wolf which is ultimately punished. His stomach is filled with stones and the hunter removes his skin.

It is possible that he is punished not for eating Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother, but rather for being lazy and falling asleep in the grandmother's bed instead of somewhere else. This probably reflected the view of the times, one where it was forgivable to be naive and trusting, but where laziness was looked at as a punishable sin. Carter's version is yet another step in the ever-changing view of society, a view that seems to suggest perhaps Little Red Riding Hood's actions are not wrong at all. After all, the only person punished in this version is the grandmother, and this could stem from Carter's own strict upbringing as a Catholic. In the story, the grandmother tries to protect herself from the young man by hurling the bible at him but to no avail, suggesting Carter's view that religion alone is not going to save a person from having terrible things happen to them. In both versions of "Little Red Riding Hood", the tale is concerned with the model of feminine behaviour, and draws upon cultural stereotypes to reinforce this view. The tale itself is also aware of the social - and hence tenuous - creation of gender. The fairy-tale genre relies upon binary opposites, and it has been suggested that this is how children view the world.

Equally then, as femininity is idolized in beauty, stupidity and passivity, the masculine is highlighted as predatorial, cunning and sexual. Through the use of the wolf, such male characteristics are made to seem inherent in men.