Alice's Adventures in Wolf-Land...

...the sequel to which is 'Through the Looking-Glass, and what Alice found there'...just like Alice in Wolf-Alice, ey? With the whole finding-herself-by-looking-in-the-mirror thing. wow. I'm sure you're all very impressed by my linking of Literature there...erm...ok...moving swiftly on...we're meant to be blogging on 'The Company of Wolves' and how it ends and as I wasn't in the lesson when we did it, I'm a bit unsure of what to say but...here goes...as we were taking about last lesson, I found the power-dynamic in the tale quite interesting and as Mr Francis said how 'power is attained by embracing the threat' - In the story we see a further exploration of the idea of humans and 'beasts' sharing the same base desires and animalistic qualities - to the extent that the girl seems to have the power over the wolf on account of her gender and sexual awareness. As we've read throgh the collection, Carter's sequencing of the tales begins to makes more sense, with the texts following each other well, expanding on ideas already touched upon. For example, in The Company of Wolves, the themes of the unconcious affect the moon has on characters and the idea of a the power-roles between gender roles not being as clearly defined as female victim and male predator are touched upon at the end of the story and are followed up and developed in Wolf-Alice.

Wolf-Alice is, like Tiger's Bride, I think, in the sense that it's based around a type of self-discovery. The way being human is defined at the start is interesting and integral to the character of Alice as she develops from Beast to Human - the link that is made between an awareness of time and simply acting on impulse and base desire. It seems to me that one of Carter's purposes in writing Wolf-Alice is to emphasize the ordered nature of human existence - whereas 'beasts' and mythical creatures are seen to be impulsive and unpredictable, they is a sense of order, perhaps set out by society, that means humans are conditioned not to follow their natural instincts without thinking e.g. a wolf will have the urge to attack something and will do it without any thought - but a human is governed somewhat by time, what is deemed acceptable e.t.c. Also, in Wolf-Alice the theme of finding sympathy in the gothic characters is brought out - with the characters presented as being sorry for their uncontrollable actions - there is talk of the Duke 'weeping' for example. There's a great deal of intertextual referencing within Wolf-Alice, also, with the adjective 'inconsolable' being used to describe the Duke at night just as it was used to describe the Lady in The Lady of the House of Love after her killings. Similarly the Duke's 'bloody chamber' is referenced - perhaps a suggestion that everyone has their dark secrets.

It can be interpreted in different ways but I got the impression that Alice wasn't really a wolf at all but saw herself as a wolf (explaining why references to claws e.t.c. were made) and her journey towards discovering her own autonomy and human self, in a way, mirrors the journey all humans go on as a child - trying to understand concepts of time, reflection and changes in one's self. Interestingly, Alice's self-realisation comes at a) the same time as the moon and b) the same time as the blood. As well - at the end, just as The Lady of the House of Love is made immortal after experiencing the care and love of the soldier, the Duke gains humanity having been cared for by Alice. I found it interesting that the Duke and Alice were 'companions' because they were two outsiders - also very different, they were united by their difference to the rest of society - the loneliness of the gothic protagonists, again, coming through.

I think I'll leave it there for now...

Little Red Riding Hood (again)

I'm pretty angry at the moment because I blogged last night and nasty blooger.com didn't save it so I'm going to try to remember what I wrote. I missed last week's lessons so it's quite possible I'm about to talk a load of nonsense...anyway...

I've read a few different re-tellings and reviews of re-tellings of Little Red Hiding Hood and I get the impression that the modern versions are focused on not going down the cliched innocent-girl-gets-attacked-by-predatory-male-but-good-prevails-over-evils-in-the-end route and, mirroring the trend in modern gothic Literature, are keen to explore the nature and loneliness of the 'beast' rather than making them and out-and-out villain - just as Carter does, most notably in The Tiger's Bride. Although essentially a fairytale, Little Red Riding Hood functions very well within the gothic genre as a lot of writers have picked up in their re-tellings - the gothic setting of the woods, the innocent girl, the predatory male 'beast', the symbolic red riding hood e.t.c. By design, it seems gothic texts subvert the key elements of the fairytale - Many fairy tales are allegory - a sugar-coated story with a harsh, blunt message i.e. 'don't go into the woods on your own, little children' but are distanced enough from the reality and time of the child reading so as not to scare them too much....'once upon a time' as opposed to 'last week...some girl went into the woods...' - the gothic genre des the exact opposite of this and aims to convince the reader that mythical beings can function within the 'real world' in order to scare. It's these opposites that I think make Carter's cross-over between the fairytale and gothic genres so successful. There are links, of course, between Dracula and the wolf in 'Little Red Riding Hood' with regard to the animalistic qualities (and most other gothic 'beasts')...and Red Riding Hoods curiosity and fascination with the wolf mirrors the deadly curiosity of the narrator in The Bloody Chamber. Also - the musical that I've referred to called 'Into the Woods' is, in a way, a re-telling of Little Red Riding Hood (of course taking its name from it) and, like the gothic genre, this take on the story brings the tale into real life and the song when the wolf meets Little Red Riding Hood 'Hello Little Girl' is particularly creepy when it's an old man singing it to a young girl. On that note....I'll be off.