Dante's Heart
Janette MacDonald
“between the paws of the tender wolf”:
Angela Carter’s Wolf Fugue
In her 1983 essay “Notes from the Front Line,”
Angela Carter writes, “The women’s movement
has been of immense importance to me personally
and I would regard myself as a feminist writer,
because I’m a feminist in everything else and one
can’t compartmentalise these things in one’s life.”
At the heart of the women’s movement for Carter
is less a concern for equality than for freedom, a
concern reflected in the exuberant, far-flungedness of her uncountable
interests and ways of exploring them both fictionally and nonfictionally.
That exuberance demands you take a deep breath before fixing your eyes
on the first sentence of any Carter prose, before you sink your teeth into
her joyfully textured language and images, before you realize you cannot
anticipate the path the tale will take.
Carter cheerfully admits her greater interest in folklore over myth. Myths
“are extraordinary lies designed to make people unfree.” Folklore, on the
other hand, “is a much more straightforward set of devices for making real
life more exciting and is much easier to infiltrate with different kinds of
consciousness.” The apparent simplicity of, say, perhaps the fundamental
folktale, “Little Red Riding Hood,” suggests the story of a young girl and a
predator in the form of a wolf traces a very thin line above a chasm of
chasms rich with veins of potential. Indeed, the warning tale bearing the
motifs of Charles Perrault’s literary version can be found in many cultures
and is so widely disseminated as to occupy a kernel of the collective
unconscious and remain a cornerstone of our cultural literacy.
Recently, I asked my writing class to tell the story of “Little Red Riding
Hood” in the round. The version that resulted was rich with flashbacks to
add information to events already mentioned, told in quizzical language by
college students questioning every word even as it dropped into the
communal air. Many were surprised this version was not exactly the story
they thought they knew. It was better. It was public and daring, a florescent-
lit recreation of the campfire situation that must have been the scene of the
earliest tellings of tales.
Carter’s folktale collection, The Bloody Chamber, triangulates three wolf
stories, “The Werewolf,” “The Company of Wolves,” and “Wolf Alice.”
Taken together, the three create a fugue of fear, ecstasy, and wonder, as
Carter dives into the chasm of chasms, bringing forth deeper readings of
community, of individuals and their relationships, of the way stories are
born and grow, changing in beautiful and grotesque ways. Carter turns the
flashing diamond before us, reveling in its elusive facets, each different
from the rest, celebrating the chasms of interpretation that attend each one.
Page 2
“between the paws of the tender wolf”:
Angela Carter’s Wolf Fugue
In her 1983 essay “Notes from the Front Line,”
Angela Carter writes, “The women’s movement
has been of immense importance to me personally
and I would regard myself as a feminist writer,
because I’m a feminist in everything else and one
can’t compartmentalise these things in one’s life.”
At the heart of the women’s movement for Carter
is less a concern for equality than for freedom, a
concern reflected in the exuberant, far-flungedness of her uncountable
interests and ways of exploring them both fictionally and nonfictionally.
That exuberance demands you take a deep breath before fixing your eyes
on the first sentence of any Carter prose, before you sink your teeth into
her joyfully textured language and images, before you realize you cannot
anticipate the path the tale will take.
Carter cheerfully admits her greater interest in folklore over myth. Myths
“are extraordinary lies designed to make people unfree.” Folklore, on the
other hand, “is a much more straightforward set of devices for making real
life more exciting and is much easier to infiltrate with different kinds of
consciousness.” The apparent simplicity of, say, perhaps the fundamental
folktale, “Little Red Riding Hood,” suggests the story of a young girl and a
predator in the form of a wolf traces a very thin line above a chasm of
chasms rich with veins of potential. Indeed, the warning tale bearing the
motifs of Charles Perrault’s literary version can be found in many cultures
and is so widely disseminated as to occupy a kernel of the collective
unconscious and remain a cornerstone of our cultural literacy.
Recently, I asked my writing class to tell the story of “Little Red Riding
Hood” in the round. The version that resulted was rich with flashbacks to
add information to events already mentioned, told in quizzical language by
college students questioning every word even as it dropped into the
communal air. Many were surprised this version was not exactly the story
they thought they knew. It was better. It was public and daring, a florescent-
lit recreation of the campfire situation that must have been the scene of the
earliest tellings of tales.
Carter’s folktale collection, The Bloody Chamber, triangulates three wolf
stories, “The Werewolf,” “The Company of Wolves,” and “Wolf Alice.”
Taken together, the three create a fugue of fear, ecstasy, and wonder, as
Carter dives into the chasm of chasms, bringing forth deeper readings of
community, of individuals and their relationships, of the way stories are
born and grow, changing in beautiful and grotesque ways. Carter turns the
flashing diamond before us, reveling in its elusive facets, each different
from the rest, celebrating the chasms of interpretation that attend each one.
Page 2
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