Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Wolf-Alice
- Characters
- Wolf-Alice
- 'Nothing about her is human
except that she is not a wolf; it is
as if the fur she thought she
wore had melted into her fur and
become a part of it, although it
does not exist.'
- Wolf-Alice inhabits the liminal space
between the human and the beastly
- Sense of otherness as she belongs to neither world
- Carter describes that she is 'human manquée not beast plus'
- Thus perhaps the implication that this is what humans are
themselves, we should somewhat alter the definition of humanity
to incorporate a small level of beastliness?
- In this way, our exterior wold reflect our interior (much like
the fur becoming a part of her), and fit with Carter's views
on materialism
- 'In order to be something
over any sustained length of
time, it is necessary to be it.'
- Removing the liminal
space between
interior and exterior
will empower men
and women?
- Her duality
- 'She inhabits only the present tense... the world of
sensual immediacy as without hope as it is without
despair.'
- Much like killing the
grandmother in The Werewolf,
reflects the idea (revenance) of
not letting the past control our
present
- Eg females not trying to disown their past
treatment/ patriarchy, but move on from it and be empowered
- 'She would be the bud of flesh in the kind
lion's mouth: but how can the bitten apple
flesh out its scar again?'
- Biblical reference with idea of Eve as fallen
woman- yet in contrast wolf-alice lives in
present and thus is not fallen
- Portraying female's burden of
patriarchy that they endure
even today
- 'She...crouched,
trembled, urinated,
defecated- reverted
entirely, it would
seem, to her natural
state.'
- Beastliness is natural to
her before she is
preconditioned by society
- Shows the effect of
society on humans
- (referencing the
burial of her rags) 'it
was not
fastidiousness but
shame that made her
do so.'
- L'enfant sauvage
- A person with
naive
undisciplined
behaviour due
to youth or
inexperience
- Implied liminal space
between childhood
and adulthood-
puberty
- Rationality vs wild behaviour
- The Duke
- 'The Duke is sere as old
paper; his dry skin
rustles against the bed
sheets... his legs scabbed
with old scars...'
- Unlike other
Beasts/ male
protagonists
(marquis for
example) there is
nothing attractive
about him at all
- Thus the character's concluding
equality highlights Carter's
desire for males to be liberated
from the constraints of
patriarchy also
- Once patriarchy is no longer
important, there is no longer need
for males to fulfil its stereotypes
also
- Thus, in terms of the book's structure,
this shows progression as the concluding
story
- The story ends with
'the face of the Duke.'
- 'His eyes see only appetite.'
- 'These eyes open to devour
the world in which he sees,
nowhere a reflection of
himself; he passed through
the mirror and now,
henceforward, lives as if
upon the other side of
things.'
- The idea that him
and Alice are
doppelgängers
- Both inhabit a liminal space of
otherness, neither human nor
beast.
- Symbolism
- The mirror
- 'The rational glass, the
master of the visible.'
- Carter regarded materialism as the
only way to view the world
- 'So images, however deceptive they might
be, are important in knowing who we are
and what we are becoming.'
- Links to a dozen mirrors on the
ceiling of the Marquis bedroom
- Yet the mirrors that, in The Bloody Chamber, fragment
the image of the female protagonist, making her passive
subject, have the opposite effect in Wolf-Alice
- '...yet her relation with the mirror
was now far more intimate since she
knew she saw herself within it.'
- She becomes active subject when realising that the
mirror reflects herself and accepting her true
nature, females empowered by accepting the
horror of their beastly natures
- Quote about learning to
run with the lions
- This story and entire
book should act as a
mirror to its reader?
- 'We secluded her in
animal privacy out of fear
of her imperfection
because it showed us what
we might have been.'
- Elements of the uncanny as it
reflects 'disguised and distorted
yet inalienable images of our own
repressed desire.'
- Form and structure
- Easy to compare to
BC and show the
progression of
Carter's viewpoint
- Generally 3rd
person form-
fairytales etc
- At one point shifts to the female protagonist's perspective?
- (referencing the Duke) 'poor wounded
thing... locked half and half between such
strange states, an aborted transformation,
an incomplete mystery.'
- Setting
- The duke's mansion
- his bedroom is like 'the interior of
an Iberian butcher's shop...'
- 'a gloomy mansion'
- 'that exiled place'
- Something which should be
powerful and impressive and yet
is underwhelming
- Like the Duke himself?