Little Red Riding Hood in Sheep’s Clothing: A Psychoanalytic Reading of Angela Carter’s The Werewolf

Laleh Atashi; Mohammad Hossein Bakhshandeh

doi:10.1515/fabula-2018-0105

Article

Little Red Riding Hood in Sheep’s Clothing: A Psychoanalytic Reading of Angela Carter’s The Werewolf

Laleh Atashi and Mohammad Hossein Bakhshandeh

Published/Copyright: November 14, 2018

Published by

Become an author with De Gruyter Brill

Author Information Explore this Subject

From the journal Fabula Volume 59 Issue 3-4

Zusammenfassung

Dieser Artikel versucht, Angela Carters Kurzgeschichte The Werewolf im Lichte der Lacan’schen Psychoanalyse zu interpretieren, und betrachtet die Reise des kleinen Mädchens in dieser Geschichte als einen Übergangsritus, dessen Ende der Imaginäre Orden ist. Die Initiation des Mädchens als Frau/Mutter findet nicht in dem Moment statt, in dem sie in die symbolische Ordnung eintritt, sondern als sie ihrer Großmutter nachfolgt. Der Werwolf hat starke intertextuelle Verbindungen mit Rotkäppchen. Die archetypischen Verweise auf die weibliche Natur in der Kurzgeschichte können als Versuch Carters interpretiert werden, die Grenzen im Märchen zu verschieben, um eine verschlingende Weiblichkeit– in alten Geschichten gezähmte – wiederzubeleben und sie im Werwolfmotiv zu reinkarnieren.

Summary

This article attempts to interpret Angela Carter’s The Werewolf in light of Lacanian psychoanalysis and considers the journey of the little girl in the story as a rite of passage the final terminal of which is the Imaginary Order. The girl’s initiation into womanhood/motherhood occurs not when she enters the Symbolic Order but when she succeeds her grandmother. The Werewolf has strong intertextual connections with Little Red Riding Hood also known as Little Red Cap. The archetypal references to female nature in the short story can be construed as Carter’s attempt to push the boundaries of the fairy tales in order to resurrect a devouring femininity – tamed in old tales – and reincarnate her into the werewolf.

Bibliography

Andermahr, Sonya/Phillips, Lawrence (eds.): Angela Carter: New Critical Readings. London 2012.Search in Google Scholar

Bacchilega, Cristina: Postmodern Fairy Tales: Gender and Narrative Strategies. Philadelphia 1997.10.9783/9780812200638Search in Google Scholar

Barzilai, Shuli: Lacan and the Matter of Origins. Stanford 1999.Search in Google Scholar

Bettelheim, Bruno: The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. New York 1976.10.1037/e309842005-008Search in Google Scholar

Bonnici, Thomas: Female Desire in Angela Carter’s Fairy Stories. In: Mimesis 18,1 (1997) 7–17.Search in Google Scholar

Carter, Angela: Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories. New York 1995.Search in Google Scholar

Carter, Angela: The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography. New York 1978.Search in Google Scholar

Evans, Dylan: An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. New York 2006.10.4324/9780203135570Search in Google Scholar

Fink, Bruce: The Lacanian Subject. Princeton 1995.10.1515/9781400885671Search in Google Scholar

Homer, Sean: Jacques Lacan. New York 2005.10.4324/9780203347232Search in Google Scholar

Jackson, Rosemary: Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion. London 1981.10.4324/9780203130391Search in Google Scholar

Jowett, Lorna: Between the Paws of the Tender Wolf: Authorship, Adaptation and Audience. In: Angela Carter: New Critical Readings. eds. Sonya Andermahr/Lawrence Phillips. London 2012, 33–43.Search in Google Scholar

Lacan, Jacques: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book II: The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis 1954–1955. ed. J.-A. Miller, trans. S. Tomaselli. Cambridge 1988.Search in Google Scholar

Lacan, Jacques: The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience. In: Ecrits: A Selection, trans. A. Sheridan. London 1977, 1–7.10.4324/9781003209140-1Search in Google Scholar

Makinen, Merja: Angela Carter’s “The Bloody Chamber” and the Decolonization of Feminine Sexuality. In: Feminist Review 42 (1992) 2–15.Search in Google Scholar

Moss, Betty: Desire and the Female Grotesque in Angela Carter’s “Peter and the Wolf.” In: Marvels & Tales 12,1 (1998) 175–191, here 188.Search in Google Scholar

Ryan-Sautour, Michelle: The Intermedial Trajectories of Angela Carter’s Wolf Tales. In: Journal of the Short Story in English 59 (2012) 75–91, online: https://jsse.revues.org/1322, 1–31.Search in Google Scholar

Sceats, Sarah: Oral Sex: Vampiric Transgression and the Writing of Angela Carter. In: Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 20,1 (2001) 107–121.10.2307/464470Search in Google Scholar

Sheets, Robin Ann: Pornography, Fairy Tales, and Feminism: Angela Carter’s “The Bloody Chamber.” In: Journal of the History of Sexuality 1,4 (1998) 633–657.Search in Google Scholar

Stephens, John/McCallum, Robyn: Retelling Stories, Framing Culture: Traditional Story and Metanarratives in Children’s Literature. New York 1998.Search in Google Scholar

Wright, Elizabeth: Another Look at Lacan and Literary Criticism. In: New Literary History 19,3 (1988) 617–627.10.2307/469092Search in Google Scholar

Zipes, Jack: Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion: The Classical Genre for Children and the Process of Civilization. New York 1991.Search in Google Scholar

Zipes, Jack: Why Fairy Tales Stick: The Evolution and Relevance of a Genre. New York 2006.Search in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2018-11-14

Published in Print: 2018-11-07

You are currently not able to access this content.

Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/fabula-2018-0105