Towards A Harmonious Heterosexual Relationship In Angela Carter's Wolf Trilogy

Angela Carter (1940-1992) is a contemporary female writer in Britain who is well-known around the world because of her rewriting of classic fairy tales. She integrates modern consciousness into traditional forms, fusing unreal world and real life. The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (1979) is such rewriting of the French writer Perrault's"The Little Red Riding Hood". Among them,"The Wolf Trilogy"---The Werewolf, The Company of Wolves, and Wolf-Alice embodies Carter's exploration of the ideal heterosexual relationship, for its progressiveness from striving to resist patriarchy and replace male's position to resolving the bi-sexual opposition, ultimately to maintaining harmonious co-existence and equal status.This thesis includes three chapters besides Introduction and Conclusion. Chapter One mainly analyzes the antagonistic heterosexual relationship in The Werewolf. Firstly, this thesis investigates the confrontation between the Little Red Riding Hood and wolf. In The Werewolf, the Little Red Riding Hood actively fights against the wolf and shows her intention to subvert and replace the male's status. Then it mainly discusses the wolf's subjugation to the Little Red Riding Hood, who, in this version, is much weaker and more timid than traditional wolf images. This great change in both images and their relationship reflects Carter's original radical feminist point of view. The second chapter chiefly expounds the resolved heterosexual relationship in The Company of Wolves. Firstly, the dilution of the hostility of the Little Red Riding-hood will be presented. The Little Red Riding Hood is attracted by the handsome hunter (actually the werewolf), and soon becomes friends and walks forward with laughter with him, which is different from the tradition when the Little Red Riding Hood yielded to the wolf and was his delicious food. And the Little Red Riding Hood's calmness rather than panic against the wolf's threat, self-protection by using sexuality as a weapon and willingness to become the company of wolves and meanwhile, the wolf's happiness to cooperate with her, together witness the dilution of the hostility and mitigation of divergence between each other. This reflects Carter's reconsideration towards a resolved heterosexual relationship in the fairy tale. The third chapter attempts to explore and discuss the harmonious heterosexual relationship in Wolf-Alice. In the first place, it presents the unity of differences between Alice (girl) and Duke (wolf). Alice is the combination of the wolf and child and possesses the characteristics of both animal and human. Alice undergoes twice renascences and at the same time she saves Duke and helps him gain the rebirth, and they coexist with each other. Their peaceful coexistence is characterized by mutual help and love. Carter eventually realizes that men and women can achieve balanced bisexual relationship only in harmony.Angela Carter's"The Wolf Trilogy"can reflect clearly the development of Carter's particular feminist thought, with the change of relationship between females and males. The change of gender images and especially of the mutual relationship in her works between the female and the male witness the development from being comparatively radical to becoming gradually rational and finally arriving at maturity. Through rewriting the classic fairy tales, Angela Carter boldly creates new female images and rethinks bisexual relationship and mutual development. Although the heterosexual harmony she designates is comparatively ideal, it has definite practical significance and acts as a goal for the new development of feminism.