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Uncivilized Eating as Women’s Heritage in Angela Carter’s “The Werewolf”

Food has always been a symbol. Varying from one culture to another, food has come to embody ideologies on and off the table. As Lévi-Strauss would demonstrate, most of the times, Western ideologies would come to think about food in opposing binaries: the good and the bad, the healthy and the unhealthy, the fresh and the decayed, the cooked and the raw (1). These conceptual tools became the basis of our shared perception about food symbolism, and they are employed to elaborate abstract ideas of our relationship with eating. Eating and cooking are, then, built over this binary oppositions that encapsule gender and civilization depicting a correct and an incorrect way of performing around food. All this centers around a form of control in which deviant forms of eating are exiled from food representations.

One of the ways that society teaches these civilized ideologies and symbolisms of eating came from children’s literature, specifically fairytales. Fairytales come from a frequently gendered oral tradition. By carrying not only eating representation but also gender expressions, fairytales accomplish to teach children the values of their culture through storytelling. However, the nuances created by the multiplicity of versions came to be standardized by French authorized fairytales like ones of Charles Perrault, the most famous and influential author of civilized fairytales. Histoires ou Contes du Temps Passé avec des Moralités, published in 1697, was meant to embody the totalizing ideology of civilization in which binaries were clearly defined. Jack Zipes states that Perrault’s fairytales had the purpose “to express their views about young people and to prepare them for roles that they idealistically believed they should play in society” (30). Perrault’s tales meant to reinforce social norms and it is from the stories “aimed directly at females” (Zipes 39) from which I can highlight gender and eating. Perrault’s ideal “femme civilisée” was “the composite female. . . beautiful, polite, graceful, industrious, and prop[er]” (Zipes 40). Consequently, the civilized representations of women instructed them to repress their desires (including sexual desire and hunger).

The correct and civilized notions of femininity become apparent in the only warning tale of the book: “Little Red Riding Hood,” which depicts food and gender with the intention of controlling women’s bodies. The tale is enacted around food and eating. The girl is sent to her grandmother’s house to deliver the food her mother cooked, but she is eaten by the wolf after he also eats her grandmother. One can identify, first, the binaries around civilized and uncivilized eating: since the wolf is human-like, the wolf’s cannibalistic instincts are defined as abject. Additionally, women’s familiar relationships and desires around food are also questioned (being food the trigger of Little Red Riding Hood tragic end). This gendered perception of correct eating allows the tale to provide a model of behaviour for girls: “they must exercise control over their sexual and natural drives or else their own sexuality will devour them, in the form of a dangerous wolf” (Zipes 40). Perrault stablishes clear lines between “the good” and “the bad,” and teaches them to women.

In contrast, Angela Carter’s rewriting of the tale makes more complex this seemingly binary oppositions. As a well-known translator of Perrault’s Histoires ou Contes du Temps Passé avec des Moralités, Carter’s short stories tend to adapt his civilized versions of the fairytales to problematize his binary distinctions. “The Werewolf,” published in The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, recues the “original” tale which was the inspiration for Perrault’s authorized version. The older tale depicted the girl eating her grandmother and escaping from the wolf, elements that Perrault’s civilized notions deemed as unacceptable. Zipes explains the tale was anything but cautionary:

“Guilt was never a question in the original folktale. The little girl, who meets a werewolf and drinks the blood and eats the flesh of her grandmother, acts out an initiation ritual that has two aspects to it: the pattern of the ritual reflected a specific French peasant tradition and a general “archaic” belief. In those regions of France, where the tale was popular, the tale was related to the needlework apprenticeship, which young peasant girls underwent, and designated the arrival of puberty and initiation into society. The girl proves that she is mature and strong enough to replace the grandmother” (Zipes 45)

It is this original ideology around gender and food that Carter contests in “The Werewolf.” Challenging the perceived ideologies of women’s primary responsibilities for food making as gender bound, suppressive of the instincts, and oppressive, I recognize eating and cooking in her retelling “as a crucial means of self-definition.” (Heller and Moran 8).

Therefore, in this essay I will analyze Carter's “The Werewolf” through the critical framework of food studies. In this perspective, Carter calls to the surface the tale before Perrault by restructuring the binaries of civilization and gender that his tale contains. So, I will demonstrate that the aforementioned binary oppositions of gendered and civilized eating and cooking are problematized. In “The Werewolf,” uncivilized eating is a means for the advancement of women’s relationships, as opposed to oppressive civilized men’s eating. This opposition is built through food, in which cannibalism (perhaps the epitome of the "uncivilized") and cooking preserve women's legacy. To develop this analysis, first, I will define and evaluate the civilized eating inside the tale. I will conclude how masculinity and food define women. Then, I will define and examine the uncivilized eating which brings back the oldest tale rite of passage through cannibalism. Finally, I will conclude that uncivilized eating and cooking is what drives women’s heritage at the end of “The Werewolf.”

Civilized Eating: controlling and preventing

Civilization is mostly about rejecting abjection. In its nature as binary, limits and boundaries define what is and is not acceptable in a certain culture and society. This explains why civilizing eating is of great importance. Eating naturally involves traversing the body’s boundaries: what one eats and how one eats affects the perception of this process. Additionally, eating is a gendered activity, already a primal event associated with the mother” (Heller and Moran 18) so the limits surrounding eating and cooking must be made clear to maintain them. For instance, certain foods are associated with the masculine, like the raw meat, whereas the feminine is associated with agricultural products. The aim is to maintain a “clean and proper” body. Although I will not elaborate on the general Western ideologies of eating, these patterns allow us to recognize the binarism that Carter problematizes.

In one hand, “The Werewolf” depicts what I define as “civilized eating”[1]. This may seem like the continuation of former gendered ideologies on food, but the tale depicts a nuanced definition of “civilized”. “The Werewolf” describes a woodsmen’s town where witches exist and pose an impending danger over the villagers. At first sight, the witches are the ones connected with food. They celebrate picnics with Satan and eat fresh corpses (Carter 137), which might lead us to believe that the tales replicates said binarism: men are not involved with food, and women are naturally drawn to the bodily experience of food consumption and cannibalism. After all, these witches (women) seem to obtain their power from food, those whose “cheeses ripen” (138) are endowed with a supernumerary nipple for their familiars. Nonetheless, men’s perception of the civilized is what leads women into this abject states.

Men’s civilized eating in “The Werewolf” is based on control, and their control is what causes women’s abjection. First, the civilized eating seeks to preserve food. The woodsmen relationship with food seeks, not to eat, but to preserve food to be eaten when they deem correct to do so. The first description of men’s food shows “a crude icon of a virgin. . ., the leg of a pig hung up to cure, a string of drying mushrooms” (137). The food that the men have is neither fresh nor cooked. Their food exhibits control because it is not allowed to rot or be eaten; that is to say, food cannot be incorporated into other’s bodies. In their pursue of rejecting abjection, the control of food consumption is a form of civilizing eating. This contrasts with the witches’ “fresh corpses” and “ripen cheeses”. Women actively eat and enjoy the bodily pleasure of eating.

Additionally, men’s civilized eating seeks to control women’s desires. Food can also be a symbol for sexual desire and, in “The Werewolf,” the witches appetite is imbued with this meaning. In contrast with Perrault’s controlled desires, “women had become equated with potential witchlike figures [with] alleged sexual powers of seduction” (Zipes 50). Thus, the woodsmen in the story attempt to civilize their appetite and eating by “preserving” women. Each house has “a crude icon of the virgin behind a guttering candle” (137) which symbolizes the control over women’s appetite. Firstly, the virgin is described as “raw” which can be interpreted as “not cooked,” so she cannot be eaten. Because the figure is a virgin, this means that she is unfit for sexual desires and appetites. Furthermore, the virgin is placed “behind” the candles. Unlike most altars (which feature brightly lit candles positioned below the virgin), the raw virgin is placed away from the heat. This can be translated as the image of food not being placed over the heat of a stove’s flame in an effort for preventing it to be cooked. The raw virgin is a symbol of civilized eating.

Secondly, civilized eating pursues separation. In their quest for disproving abjection, men’s food divides the inside and the outside with its food. Their houses have “wreaths of garlic on the doors” (138) to keep out vampires. Vampires are known for their “strange eating” which involves the consumption of other’s bodies. To prevent this uncivilized eating, the woodmen employ food to prevent abjection from entering their bodies. Unlike the witches who eat corpses and allow their familiars (vampires in some capacity), men separate themselves from other bodies. In conclusion, the civilized eating in “The Werewolf” is masculine and seeks to separate, to control and to preserve men’s values through food. It will be against this civilized eating that women’s heritage will be passed down.

Uncivilized eating: cooking cannibalism

On the other hand, women characterize uncivilized eating. In “The Werewolf,” women are the abject because of their relationship with food. What they eat and how they eat it defines them as the men’s opposite. Unlike the woodsmen, women eat fresh food and cook food that needs to be eaten to prevent it from rotting. The witches eat “fresh corpses” (137) before they decay, and the girl’s mother cooks “oatcakes” (Carter 138) which must be delivered the same day to the grandmother. Instead of controlling, uncivilized eating seeks to incorporate food and the body into eating and cooking in an attempt of normalizing the abject. At this point, the rewriting of “Little Red Riding Hood” becomes more important. The wolves of the story are revealed to be older women and the girl escapes from one of them, her own grandmother. The connections between women are complex because of men’s civilized eating: women cannot fulfill their appetite freely because the ones who do so are deemed as “witches” and killed. One must remember that when “we delve into the relationship between women and food we will discover the ways in which women have forged spaces within that oppression” (Voski in Heller and Moran 3), women existing as witches, wolves, and, later, cannibals in “The Werewolf” creates the opportunity of creating connections despite men’s civilized eating.

In Carter’s tale, older women embody the threats against civilized eating: witches and wolves. As it was mentioned earlier, witches represent consuming subjects; since they are associated with sexual practices, witches already are eating bodies. Moreover, they also produce perishable food (cheeses that ripen), so they act against civilized eating. For women to satisfy their hunger they can either wait for men to provide them with food (which men control) or they can change to satisfy their hunger regularly: “At midnight. . . the Devil holds picnics in the graveyards and invites the witches” (137). They also can construct relationships with others through their bodies. The civilizing view which men have of food prevents them from letting others eat from or through them, whereas the witches let their familiars suck on their “supernumerary nipple.” Their familiars trespass the boundaries of their bodies by eating so they can create a connection characterized by “follows her about all the time” (138). Consequently, women are not the “crude virgin,” defined and controlled by men, but individuals in their own right. Uncivilized eating thus becomes a form of escape.

On the other hand, werewolves were originally the equivalent of men in “Little Red Ridding Hood.” Wolves’ intention was to consume girls to satisfy their hunger (hurting them in the process), but in this tale, men must participate on civilized eating by killing the beings that step outside of the norm. Nonetheless, werewolves received a similar treatment to that of the witches’: “There were numerous notorious cases of werewolf trials, and thousands of men and women were persecuted and exterminated because they were charged with being werewolves” (Zipes 44). Thus, women are able to take the role of the werewolves as a response of men closed civilized eating. The tale points out that women are only killed in their human form, unlike when they are wolves. In their wolf’s form, women can defend themselves from men. Wolves are not edible for men’s consumption (contrary to the pig leg or the girl in “sheepskin” [Carter 138]). In contrast, their werewolf form allows them to run and attack men.

In the context of uncivilized eating, the girl displays the final piece of consuming opposition. When she faces her grandmother in her wolf form, she completes the rite of passage that Perrault did not include into his authorized version of the tale. Firstly, the girl goes from being consumable (like the men’s food) to consuming (like the older women). The girl is dressed in “scabby coat of sheepskin” (138) but drops her coat while fighting her grandmother (in her werewolf form). Once she stops emulating a sheep, the girl collects her grandmother’s hand and places it with the oatcakes while she “wipe[s] the blade of her knife clean in her apron” (138). By placing her grandmother’s hand with the food, she is symbolically preparing herself to eat her. As a reaction to men’s civilized eating and preserved food that eliminates older women (the witches), women’s relationship with food becomes their genealogy. The witches ate their ancestors from the grave to prevent them from rotting by incorporating them into their bodies (given that they were killed for being non-conforming women). Similarly, the girl has her grandmother’s hand with the food to be eaten. It is in the consumption of other women’s bodies that creates a path for preserving women, even if they are killed by the men of the town. As said by Irigaray, “mothers and daughters feed/feed upon one another in the absence of what she terms “a genealogy of women” and a “female symbolic,” both of which require deliberate interventions in the symbolic order” (in Heller and Moran 3). JJust as Zipes states, “The girl proves that she is mature and strong enough to replace the grandmother” (Zipes 45); after her grandmother is killed “now the child lives in her grandmother’s house. She prospered” (Carter 139)

Eating is always nuanced, especially for women. Women’s eating experiences prove to be complex, because their culture contextualizes their relationship with food and defines their relationships with it. Due to Carter’s awareness of this fact, the correct and civilized notions of eating in “The Werewolf” are more complex. Her rewriting of “Little Red Riding Hood” surpasses Perrault tale by problematizing his binary definitions of eating-women.

For the women in “The Werewolf,” uncivilized eating proves to be the means for a rebellion against the controlling and oppressive force that structures the binaries of eating and gender. Cannibalism proves to be a form of matrilineal narrative that allows the preservation of women’s appetites despite the efforts of men’s civilized eating of eradication. Uncivilized eating is therefore a means for the advancement of women’s relationships built around nuanced representation of food.

[1] For the purpose of this essay, I decided not to use “disordered eating” nor other definitions, since I consider Carter’s “civilized” eating is particular to this tale.

Works Cited

Carter, Angela. The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories. Penguin Books, 2015.

Heller, Tamar, and Patricia Moran. “Introduction: Scenes of the Apple: Appetite, Desire, Writing.” Scenes of the Apple: Food and the Female Body in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Women's Writing, State University of New York Press, 2003, pp. 1–44.

Lévi-Strauss, Claude. “Overture.” The Raw and the Cooked: Introduction to the Science of Mythology. Harper and Row, 1964, pp. 1–35.

Sceats, Sarah. “Cannibalism and Carter: Fantasies of Omnipotence.” Food, Consumption, and the Body in Contemporary Women's Fiction, Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 33–61.

Zipes, Jack. “Setting Standards for Civilization through Fairy Tales: Charles Perrault and the Subversive Role of Women Writers.” Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion: The Classical Genre for Children and the Process of Civilization, 2nd ed., Routledge, 2006, pp. 29–57.

#angela carter #analysis #essay #werewolf #short story #the bloody chamber #the werewolf

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