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Carter’s Feminist Revision of Fairytale: The Narrative Strategies of “The Company of Wolves”

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Abstract

The paper examines how the British woman writer Angela Carter rewrites Charles Perrault’s household fairy tale—“Little Red Riding Hood” in her short story—“The Company of Wolves.” This paper attempts to analyze the two distinctive narrative strategies—re-characterization and second-person narration, skillfully deployed by Carter in order to rewrite Perrault’s classic tale into a feminist story. In Carter’s version, Little Red Riding Hood is represented as a witty new woman who embraces her own sexuality and regards herself as a subject rather than an object. Through the transposition between reader and character, Carter’s tale produces a new subject position for readers, particularly for young female readers.

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Notes

  1. Refer to Jack Zipes (ed.), The Tials & Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood, 1993, p. vii–ix.

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Correspondence to Jie Wu.

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Wu, J. Carter’s Feminist Revision of Fairytale: The Narrative Strategies of “The Company of Wolves”. Fudan J. Hum. Soc. Sci. 10, 53–67 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40647-016-0162-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40647-016-0162-7

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