Not So Little Red Riding Hood

               In “The Company of Wolves”, Angela Carter explored a very different side of the classic children’s’ story. She took the traditional little red riding hood and changed it in to the less traditional older red riding hood. I thought that it was interesting that she took a seemingly innocent story and added a whole sexual side of the story by making red riding hood older, a virgin, by making the wolf also be the hansom woodsman, and by making red sleep with the wolf. To keep with the plot, she left red rather uninformed and curious, but when approached by the wolf, while she was all alone in granny’s house, she took all of her clothes off and seduced him.  

I thought that it was interesting that, with as edgy as many of her pieces are, that she didn’t go in to more detail between everybody stripping and her last line about Red nestled between the paws of the wolf.  This was affective in leaving the events to follow in the mind of the reader. Instead of making her work explicit, she made it borderline appropriate. If the reader does not understand what they are reading then they may mistake her implications as something else. Angela Carter is much more explicit in some of her other stories like “Snow Child” and “The Executioners Beautiful Daughter”.