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The grandmother, like the Countess in "The Snow Child," fears that the younger, more beautiful girl will supplant her. As in " The Snow Child," "the other woman" tries to destroy the heroine presumably out of jealousy. Woman collude in and also plot other women's destruction.

In doing so, she suggests that man is not woman's only enemy. The story ends with the summary, "Now the child lived in her grandmother's house she prospered." Analysisīacchilega calls "The Werewolf" the first of "Carter's three 'women-in-the-company-of-wolves' stories." In this story, Carter combines the characters of wolf and grandmother to create a werewolf. They examine the hand and declare the wart on it to be "a witch's nipple." They force the grandmother out of bed and to the edge of the forest, where they stone her to death.

Hearing the girl's cries, the neighbors rush in. Her grandmother's severed arm is already rotting. The girl uses all her strength to pull back her grandmother's covers and beneath them discovers the cause of her fever. It has changed into a hand, which she recognizes as her grandmother's because of a single wart on it.

She finds her grandmother in bed with a terrible fever, and when shakes out the cloth to make a hot compress, the wolf's paw falls on the floor. When the girl reaches her grandmother's house, the snow is so thick that no tracks can be seen in it. She wraps the wolf's paw in cloth and continues on her way. She turns with her knife drawn to face the beast, and when it lunges, she cuts off its paw. The girl sets off on her journey unafraid because she knows the forest well.Īs she is walking, the girl hears a wolf's cry.

Her mother sends her into the forest to bring food to her ill grandmother, arming her with a knife and warning her against the dangers of the woods. They are superstitious to the point of conducting witch-hunts and stoning any witches found (identified by a telltale third nipple) to death. The narrator of "The Werewolf" sets the story's ominous tone with the opening sentence: "It is a northern country they have cold weather they have cold hearts." The people in this country are poor and live short, hard lives.