Psychosexuality and De-patriarchy in Angela Carter’s “The Company of Wolves” Sherry GAO College

“Little Red Riding Hood” can be viewed as one of the most popular and famous bedtime fairytales. Based on the original counterpart, Angela Carter remolds this story by adding sexual elements through her work “The Company of Wolves”, in which the narrator describes the red of the heroine’s cape, which resembles “blood on snow” and “color of sacrifices” (Carter 145), is an advertisement of her sexual readiness. Carter’s revision also deals with the perception of the heroine, as a young girl, towards her virginity and moral sexuality, as well as unconscious exploration of self. Moreover, Carter shows her concern on exploring the gender identities through retelling those fairytales which are seemingly innocuous. She ever said that what she has done is to debunk myth (38), which can be regarded as kind of criticism and rebellion towards patriarchy society which dominates traditional values and norms. This paper will, therefore, examine the heroine’s actions driven by the self-desire and psychosexual urge, as well as the hidden meaning of her final triumph over the werewolf in “The Company of Wolves” from two categories: Freud’s psychoanalysis and Jung’s archetypal images.

As the central figure in “The Company of Wolves”, the...