Telling fairy tales in the literature of the past has been a vital aspect of writing. After Bruno Bettelheim’s short stories were published, fairy tales became popular in the United States. His writing attracts the reader through his fancy style. Horror and suspension were added to the stories through movies and action. Even the history of stories like those can be traced back to Shakespeare. Tatar claims that the fairy tales became familiar after Bruno Bettelheim: “Fairy tale made strong come back in the United States after Bruno Bettelheim published the uses of enchantment and endorsed their therapeutic value for children.”
With time, their mode of expression changed, and in the middle of the 19th century, when Bruno Bettelheim published his short stories about fairies, readers and listeners got attracted to them. In the given scenario, both cases reflect the same rhythm and movement of ideas as in Bruno Bettelheim’s writing. This essay aims to compare and contrast the Grimm fairy tale and Angela Carter’s “Company of Wolves.” Going through both sources, the compression and contrast are drawn as follows, despite different characters and roles in both cases, the objective is closely related to each other, that is, women’s empowerment in society. The movie “Company of Wolves is the precise version of the tale “Little Red Cap” with different characters, but the sole objective of both is the same.”
The story of fairy tales in the mentioned source overlaps more or less. The theme of the story and film moves with the ideas in a rhythmic way. Sometimes, these ideas differ from each other, and in some places, ideas precisely coincide with each other. However, the crux of the movie and Grimm’s story of “The Little Red Cap” are the same. In actuality, the film is the transformation of the fairy tales from Grimms’s red cap girl into an actionable statue. When we talk about the movie ‘the company of wolves” it is the combination of many fairy tales. Many stories were incorporated into a single film. In both scenarios, the role is moving around the girl and the wolves. This coincident reflects the overlapping of ideas with more clarity.
In the movie, the role played by the girl is closely related to the girl in Grimm’s fairy tale. The girl in both scenarios encounters the wolves in the same fashion and manner, but the responses in each are slightly different from each other in both cases. In the Grimm’s fairy tale, the girl “Little Red Cap” does not have such an aggressive and quick response to the wolf at the beginning. In the movie “The Company of Wolves,” the girl is more responsive to the wolf at the beginning. Grimm’s fairy tale exhibits the innocent role of the girl throughout the scenario, while in the movie “The Company of Wolves,” the role of the girl changes from interval to interval, or we must say the girl’s role is transitive. This phenomenon has mostly been the central character of fairy tales like these two tales and is called metamorphosis. Tatar stated that “Metamorphosis is central to the fairy tales.” This type of jump of ideas and characters fascinates the reader and listener. Such characters attract readers and listeners to a greater extent by creating suspense and curiosity. The same fashion has been adopted in the movie “The Company of Wolves”. As in the movie, when the girl attacks the man and kills him, he turns himself into a wolf, and the same is happening to the girl. This type of character or metamorphosis is absent in Grimm’s tale. In the fairy “tale The Little Red Cap,” the character revolves around the girl, while in the movie, the whole character is fragmented into different actors. However, the similarity is that in both cases, the central role is the girl. The wolves in both cases have been taken as the sign of evil, and the girl is represented as the victim of evil. The actions carried out in both cases reflect the retaliation against the crimes. The crux of the theme of both the movie and Little Red Cape Build is the role and activities of women in the dominant male society. The purpose of the girl shows to what extent society weakens women. Though it is an ideal build-up role, the facts incorporated in it are a beautiful reflection of reality in society.
The movie “Company of Wolves” exclusively shows the power of women in society. The way they have been treated and the role that has been assigned to them is basically to divide them from the man-oriented society. The theme is that we mapped task and characters to the women and in a community and we don’t want to see much more from the women, all they have to do is to be in their respective apartments of tasks. They cannot contribute equally to society as men do. This categorization limits the abilities of women in society. As in the movie it has been shown that the girl fights back to the wolf, this means women can equally defend them in such cases as men do. The empowerment of women is the prime goal of the movie. Through this movie, motivation is given to the women so that they can take retaliatory actions against any evil in society.
The compression lies in the character of the story of Grimm’s “Little Red Cap” and the movie “Company of the Wolves,” but the theme of both reflects the power of a woman in society and the way they had been considered and treated. The characters differ from each other in both cases. But the concept is the same in either case. As in the Grimm’s tale story, it has been stated that the girl is kind and innocent, she is beautiful as well this catches the eyes of everyone. The way she interacts with the wolves shows her innocence. As she communicates, “Hello, kindly wolf,” this reflects the blind trust women have in others. It also reflects how easily women are trapped in the words of others. The communication of the wolf shows the buttering of the girl “whither away so early little red cap” The way he opens the conversation tells how cunny he is. He uses the techniques of emotional blackmailing. As he offers, the girl enters the jungle and sees a beautiful flower. “See, little red cap, how pretty the flowers are about here.” The statement of the wolf shows his skill in trapping the girl. This point exactly magnifies the facts in society. Through the conversation between the girl and wolf, the writer expresses his views about the prevailing evil in society, where women are mostly victims. The ideas in both cases contrast each other to some extent as well. Some characters are missing in the Grimm’s tale, while in the movie, those characters are added to make the movie more curious and suspenseful. In the movie, the fancy is more prevalent than the tale. In the movie, the role of wolves is initially played by human beings, and then he converts himself to the wolf, while in Grimm’s tale, the role of the wolf is as it is. The advice given to the girl in both cases is different from each other. In the movie, the girl was told never to trust the man having mixed eyebrows “never trust the man having the mixed eyebrows. In the tale, the girl is promised not to run and to take care of things assigned to her: “Don’t run. Otherwise, you broke the bottle,” told her mother. When we compare the role of the wolf in both cases, their position differs from each other to a higher degree. In the movie, the part of the wolf is aggressive toward the girl at the beginning, while on the other side, the wolf is acting wisely to trap the girl. He tries to blackmail the girl through emotional tactics.
The standard interpretation of both cases will be in one sentence, that is, their orientation is fancy and speculative. The rhythm of ideas goes into a fantasy style. There is an imaginary world created by the writer in both cases. However, in both cases, the focus was on the role of women and their empowerment in society. The movie shows that women can defend themselves just like men do for themselves. But being polite and believing blindly in others can be more fatal. Despite being quiet, women can retaliate against any action taken against them. There is an equal right for women in society to take care of themselves by taking any action they feel is right for them at the moment.
