The Company Of Wolves by Angela Carter

<p>The Company of Wolves by Angela Carter is a work of genius. There, I&apos;ve said it.<br/><br/>The Company of Wolves by Angela Carter is a short story from her collection The Bloody Chamber published in 1979 that was made into the 1984 film called, surprisingly The Company of Wolves, by Neil Jordan and starring, amongst others, Angela Lansbury.<br/><br/>In summary, the story is a version of the Little Red Riding Hood folk story or fairy tale but with a modern, possibly feminist, certainly gothic twist. It&apos;s no secret that it involves werewolves, the threatening kind not the Kindle book kind, of which no more shall be mentioned. There is also a grandmother who gets eaten. A simmering of a young girl&apos;s sexual awakening underlies Angela Carter&apos;s story, but it&apos;s all done in the best possible taste (unlike the Kindle werewolf books of which I promised I would say nothing)<br/><br/><b>Here is a short analysis of The Company of Wolves.</b><br/><br/>The story begins by setting up the milieu: a peasant community in a north European forest that struggles to survive in the winter and has to guard itself against the common predators. Not only are there common predators but there are werewolves too which are the worst combination of the savage wolf and the savage man . The worst wolves are hairy on the inside.<br/><br/>The Little Red Riding Hood avatar, a cocky, spoiled young girl goes walking through the dangerous wood. She is savvy enough to carry a knife and keep to the path. Unlike in the myth of Little Red Riding Hood where the Huntsman and the Wolf are separate figures, in this story they are one. <br/><br/>The girl is in the cusp of womanhood but still intact. Even so she has an interest in such things as kissing. She has a bet with the Huntsman about who will arrive first at Granny&apos;s cottage. If she loses she has to give him a kiss so she dawdles so that she will deliberately lose.<br/><br/>He is a hungry wolf and has already not been able to resist snacking on his pheasant. The old granny