Rebekah Calhoun Blog Post "In Response" to my Peers' "Blog Post"--

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDqNOkd8vIY

This is a trailer for a movie that was apparently made out of Angela Carter's work, which seems to often involve wolves. The wolf is a powerful symbol for me of escape and the capacity of a female to be fierce. The fairy-tale aspect is incredibly significant because, like many of the other writers who we have read this semester, Carter chooses to employ a literary tradition that has been dominated by and possibly invented by men. Often these traditions have felt alienating to women, and there is a great deal of speculation that (like Freud) fairy tales have been a way to make the subjugation of women legitimate. Fairy tales often do this by making the "best", most sought after girls the least autonomous, the least outspoken, and indeed, the most passive . The women who do attempt to control their own destiny or have active roles in the story are always the witches-- the horrid, snarling, conniving, crooked women.  It is a powerful way to "decolonize" women's bodies and lives, what Angela Carter is doing. She is using the language of the oppressor to describe her own experience.

Look at this quote from an article on Carter's works by Merja Makinen:
"Carter's tales do not simply 're-write' the old tales by fixing roles of active sexuality for their female protagonists-- they 're-write' them by play with and upon (if not PREYING upon the earlier misogynistic version".

Emphasis mine. 

Female passivity can be a beautiful thing in stories, but the reality of women trained in obedience and subservience is much uglier. Women elsewhere in the world (and here, too) too often die at the hands of their spouse or boyfriend or father. Women who are trained to never fight back in any sense are more vulnerable to rape and assault, unaware of their own capacity to fight back.Carter plays with these ideas that females are 'naturally' obedient. She does it elegantly.

I'll shut up now, but take a look at this too, if you want. I feel that it puts into better words what I am trying to say about the dangers of cultural values that restrict and confine:http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/16/italy-struggles-with-spate-of-domestic-violence-murders.html