Angela Carter’s “The Company of Wolves” and the Brothers Grimm’s “Little Red-Cap” share the familiar structure of the Little Red Riding Hood story: a young girl enters the forest, meets a dangerous wolf, and reaches her grandmother’s house. But the two works use that structure for very different purposes.
The Grimm tale presents the wolf as an external predator and the girl as an inexperienced child who must learn obedience and caution. Carter’s 1979 story, published in The Bloody Chamber, transforms the wolf into a werewolf and the girl into a far more self-aware protagonist. The result is not simply a modernized version of the Grimm story. Carter rewrites the tale’s assumptions about innocence, sexuality, fear, gender, and power.
It is also important to distinguish Carter’s short story from the 1984 film The Company of Wolves, directed by Neil Jordan and co-written by Jordan and Carter. The film draws on several Carter stories and expands them through a dream-within-a-dream structure. This comparison focuses primarily on Carter’s short story and Grimm’s “Little Red-Cap,” while noting where the film differs.
The Shared Fairy-Tale Structure
Both stories use recognizable elements from the Little Red Riding Hood tradition:
- a young girl;
- a red garment;
- a journey through the forest;
- a grandmother living apart from the village;
- a wolf or wolf-like predator;
- danger inside the grandmother’s house;
- a confrontation that tests the girl’s vulnerability.
The Brothers Grimm version can be read in the public-domain Grimms’ Fairy Tales text at Project Gutenberg. In it, Little Red-Cap is sent to bring food and wine to her sick grandmother. Her mother warns her to stay on the path and behave carefully.
The wolf tricks the girl into wandering after flowers, reaches the grandmother first, eats her, disguises himself, and then swallows Little Red-Cap. A huntsman later rescues both grandmother and child by cutting open the wolf.
Carter preserves enough of this framework that readers immediately recognize the source tale, but nearly every element is changed in meaning.
Who Is the Heroine in Grimm’s “Little Red-Cap”?
The Grimm heroine is a child defined by innocence and inexperience.
She does not recognize the wolf as dangerous. She politely answers his questions, tells him where her grandmother lives, and allows herself to be distracted from the route her mother instructed her to follow.
Her vulnerability comes largely from not understanding the intentions of others.
The story therefore works partly as a cautionary tale. Children are expected to learn that rules exist for a reason, strangers can be dangerous, and apparently friendly conversation may conceal predatory intentions.
Carter’s Heroine Is Older and More Self-Aware
Carter’s girl is still young, but she is positioned on the threshold between childhood and adulthood.
That difference changes the meaning of the entire tale.
Instead of making ignorance her defining trait, Carter gives the girl increasing awareness of the danger and sexual symbolism around her.
Scholarly work on Carter’s retelling frequently emphasizes this shift. A study of the story’s narrative strategies describes Carter’s protagonist as a figure who increasingly acts as a subject rather than simply remaining the passive object of male desire. The story has therefore often been read as a feminist revision of traditional Red Riding Hood narratives.
The Wolf in Grimm Is an Animal Predator
In “Little Red-Cap,” the wolf is clearly dangerous from the beginning, even though the child does not realize it.
The narrator tells us the wolf is wicked. His motives are simple: deception, appetite, and consumption.
The wolf does not need a complicated psychological explanation. He represents the danger that waits outside the protected space of home and family.
Carter’s Wolf Is Also a Man
Carter makes the predator more complicated by connecting wolf and man.
Her story belongs to a wider set of wolf tales in The Bloody Chamber that explore the unstable boundary between human and animal.
The werewolf is not simply a supernatural monster. He embodies predatory masculinity, desire, violence, appetite, and the fear that civilized appearance can conceal animal aggression.
The British Library’s discussion of Angela Carter and the visual imagination describes The Bloody Chamber as a collection in which Carter reworks familiar fairy-tale material through Gothic imagery, gender, and transformation.
The Forest Has Different Meanings
In both stories, the forest is dangerous, but the nature of the danger changes.
For Grimm, the forest is a place where the child leaves the safe path and encounters a predator.
For Carter, the forest is also psychological and sexual territory.
It represents:
- the unknown;
- transition into adulthood;
- sexual danger;
- desire;
- the breakdown of civilized boundaries;
- the possibility of transformation.
Carter’s forest is therefore not only something to escape. It is also where the heroine confronts knowledge that childhood has kept outside the home.
Obedience in the Grimm Version
The Grimm story strongly links safety with obedience.
Little Red-Cap’s mother gives clear instructions. The girl leaves the path because the wolf redirects her attention toward flowers.
Her error is not simply that she meets a wolf. It is that she fails to recognize danger and abandons the structure designed to protect her.
The rescue by the huntsman restores order.
At the end, Little Red-Cap has learned that she should not leave the path when her mother has forbidden it.
Carter Questions the Idea That Obedience Alone Protects Women
Carter’s story is much less comfortable with the lesson that a girl’s safety depends on obedience.
Traditional cautionary tales can create a troubling implication: if a girl is harmed after breaking a rule, her own disobedience seems partly responsible.
Carter relocates responsibility.
The danger comes from predation, not from female curiosity itself.
Her heroine survives not because a male authority rescues her and not because she perfectly follows instructions, but because she recognizes the power relationship and acts within it.
The Huntsman Changes Everything in Grimm
The huntsman is essential to the Grimm ending.
Little Red-Cap and her grandmother are unable to free themselves after being swallowed. A male rescuer enters, identifies the danger, cuts open the wolf, and restores the victims.
This produces a clear moral structure:
- child = innocent;
- wolf = evil;
- huntsman = protector;
- rescue = restoration of social order.
Carter Removes the Male Rescuer
One of Carter’s most important revisions is the disappearance of the rescuing huntsman.
No external authority arrives to save the heroine.
She has to respond to the wolf herself.
This structural change is one reason the story is often described as feminist. The heroine is not rewarded for waiting to be rescued. She becomes the active agent in the final encounter.
Sexuality Is Mostly Coded in Grimm
Traditional versions of Little Red Riding Hood have long been interpreted as warning tales about predatory men, sexual danger, and girls entering adulthood.
But the Grimm version presented to children keeps much of that meaning indirect.
The wolf wants to “eat” the girl. The forest is dangerous. The grandmother’s bed becomes the site of deception. Yet explicit sexuality is absent.
The emphasis is on childish innocence and danger.
Carter Makes Sexuality Explicitly Central
In “The Company of Wolves,” sexuality is impossible to separate from the plot.
Carter’s heroine is approaching sexual maturity. The werewolf is both dangerous and attractive. The encounter at the grandmother’s house becomes charged with fear and desire.
This is deliberately provocative.
Carter refuses to represent female sexuality only as vulnerability. The girl is exposed to danger, but she also becomes aware of her own desire and power.
A peer-reviewed analysis of Carter’s revision argues that the story transforms the passive, victimized Red Riding Hood figure into a protagonist who negotiates sexuality and agency rather than being defined only by male predation.
Does Carter Turn the Wolf Into a Romantic Hero?
Not exactly.
The wolf remains dangerous. He is associated with violence and has killed the grandmother.
Carter does not erase the risk simply because the girl ultimately takes control of the encounter.
This ambiguity is important.
If the wolf became harmless, the story would lose its central tension. Instead, Carter asks whether the heroine can face danger without accepting the traditional roles of either helpless victim or obedient child.
The Red Garment
Red has symbolic importance in both stories.
In Grimm, the red cap identifies the child and gives the tale its name.
In Carter, red becomes more strongly associated with:
- sexual maturity;
- blood;
- danger;
- desire;
- visibility;
- female identity.
The garment is therefore not only a charming costume. It becomes part of the story’s visual language of transition.
Metamorphosis in “The Company of Wolves”
Metamorphosis is central to Carter’s rewriting.
The wolf can appear as a man, and the boundary between civilized human behavior and animal appetite becomes unstable.
Scholarly analysis of Carter’s work has emphasized how animalization and transformation allow her to destabilize simple divisions such as:
- human vs. animal;
- innocent vs. corrupt;
- male predator vs. female victim;
- civilization vs. wilderness.
Grimm’s wolf is a fixed category. Carter’s werewolf is a changing one.
Does the Girl Transform Too?
In the short story, the girl’s most important transformation is psychological and symbolic rather than a straightforward physical transformation into a wolf.
This is one place where readers sometimes confuse the short story with the 1984 film.
The film uses additional transformations, dream sequences, and wolf imagery drawn from several Carter texts. The short story’s ending is more concentrated on the heroine’s changed relationship to fear and the wolf.
The Grandmother
In Grimm, the grandmother is another innocent victim who is eventually rescued.
In Carter, the grandmother belongs to an older moral world structured by warnings, superstition, and fear of wolves.
Her death therefore has both narrative and symbolic importance.
The old protective system cannot survive the encounter.
The younger woman must create a different response.
Fear in the Two Stories
The Grimm tale teaches the reader to fear the predator.
Carter asks what happens when the heroine refuses to behave exactly as fear expects.
This does not mean Carter’s heroine becomes physically invulnerable. Her strength comes from recognizing that the wolf expects her to occupy the role of terrified prey.
When she rejects that role, the script changes.
Power and the Gaze
Traditional fairy tales often place the girl under observation. Her beauty makes her visible and vulnerable.
Carter reverses part of that dynamic.
The heroine observes the wolf too.
She studies his appearance, behavior, and intentions.
This movement from being looked at to looking back is important because it gives her interpretive power.
Passive Victim vs. Active Subject
| Grimm’s “Little Red-Cap” | Carter’s “The Company of Wolves” |
|---|---|
| Heroine is a young child | Heroine is approaching sexual maturity |
| Does not recognize the wolf’s danger | Gradually recognizes and confronts danger |
| Wolf is an animal predator | Wolf is also a man/werewolf |
| Disobedience leads to danger | Obedience is not presented as the only route to safety |
| Huntsman rescues the girl | No male rescuer arrives |
| Order is restored by killing the wolf | The ending destabilizes the predator/prey relationship |
| Sexual meaning remains indirect | Sexual awakening is central |
Is Grimm’s Story Anti-Woman?
It would be too simple to label the Grimm tale merely “anti-woman.”
It emerged from a long tradition of oral and literary storytelling and has functioned as a warning story for children.
Its heroine is vulnerable partly because she is young, not simply because she is female.
However, the tale does reproduce a pattern common in traditional stories: female innocence is endangered, disobedience is punished, and male intervention restores safety.
Carter’s revision becomes meaningful because readers already recognize that pattern.
Why Carter Rewrites Fairy Tales
Carter was interested in fairy tales partly because they are culturally powerful and endlessly reusable.
Fairy tales teach ideas about:
- beauty;
- danger;
- marriage;
- obedience;
- gender;
- sexuality;
- violence;
- family roles.
Rewriting a familiar tale allows an author to challenge those ideas without building an entirely new symbolic vocabulary.
Readers already know what the wolf, grandmother, forest, and red hood are supposed to mean. Carter’s power comes from making them behave differently.
The Gothic Style
Carter intensifies the Gothic qualities of the story.
Her world is physical, sensual, violent, cold, bloody, and threatening.
This Gothic style makes desire and fear difficult to separate.
The reader experiences the forest as both attractive and dangerous—just as the heroine experiences the werewolf.
What About the 1984 Film?
The film The Company of Wolves should be treated as a related but separate work.
The British Library’s Angela Carter archive includes material connected to Carter’s screenplay work, and scholarship on the film notes that it was co-written by Carter and director Neil Jordan and draws on several stories from The Bloody Chamber.
The film expands the short story through:
- nested dreams;
- multiple wolf tales;
- more elaborate physical transformations;
- visual Gothic imagery;
- a broader coming-of-age framework.
So claims about a girl physically becoming a wolf or about particular film scenes should not automatically be attributed to the original short story.
Which Version Gives the Girl More Agency?
Carter’s version clearly gives the heroine more agency.
Grimm’s girl makes choices, but the central lesson is that her judgment is unreliable and adult rules protect her.
Carter’s girl also faces genuine danger, but she must interpret the situation herself.
Her survival depends on refusing the identity the wolf has assigned to her.
Is Carter’s Ending Empowering or Ambiguous?
Both.
The ending can be read as empowering because the heroine is no longer simply prey and does not require rescue.
But the story does not offer a simple feminist victory in which all danger disappears.
The wolf remains connected with violence. Desire remains risky. The boundary between human and animal remains unstable.
Carter’s feminism is therefore more complicated than “girl defeats bad man.” She is interested in how female agency operates inside a world where desire and danger can coexist.
Major Themes Compared
| Theme | Grimm | Carter |
|---|---|---|
| Innocence | Something endangered by experience | A stage the heroine moves beyond |
| Obedience | Protective moral lesson | Questioned as an adequate model for female safety |
| Sexuality | Mostly implicit | Central and explicit in symbolism |
| Predation | External evil embodied by wolf | Linked to masculinity, desire, violence, and transformation |
| Rescue | Comes from huntsman | Heroine negotiates the threat herself |
| Ending | Restoration of order | Transformation of the predator/prey relationship |
Conclusion
Angela Carter’s “The Company of Wolves” does not merely retell the Brothers Grimm’s “Little Red-Cap.” It rewrites the traditional roles that make the older story work.
Grimm presents a child who fails to recognize danger, leaves the safe path, is consumed by a predator, and is rescued by a huntsman. The tale restores order by teaching caution and obedience.
Carter preserves the forest, red clothing, grandmother, wolf, and dangerous encounter but changes the heroine’s relationship to them. Her protagonist is older, more self-aware, and not dependent on a male rescuer. The wolf is no longer only an animal but a werewolf who connects human masculinity with appetite and violence. Sexuality, metamorphosis, and female agency move to the center of the story.
The most important difference is therefore not plot but power. Grimm asks how an innocent child can survive a predator. Carter asks what happens when the supposed victim recognizes the story she has been placed inside—and refuses to play the role exactly as tradition expects.