"Wolf-Alice" Blood and Identity

To me, the most interesting of the three short wolf-stories was “Wolf-Alice” because of what I perceived as its exploration of humanity and the self. “Nothing about her is human except that she is not a wolf” (119). This description sets an interesting point about identity in that it can be found by understanding what we are not. We are also often defined by how others see us, rather than how we see ourselves. When Alice first looks in the mirror, she does not understand that she looks at herself, thinking her reflection is a friend. Her discovery of the mirror coincides with her discovery of menstruation, linking blood to (at least the beginnings of) self-understanding, and so in a way, humanity. The fact that Carter uses menstruation blood to symbolize understanding emboldens her point, as menstruation is often seen as a time of maturity and growth. With relation to the Duke, he eats the bodies of the dead to sustain himself. He tries to take in what is human, but he consumes only illusions of humanity. They no longer have life or soul—everything about them is human except that they are not human. Through his appetite, he absorbs the illusion—one that the townspeople believe well enough, the same as they believe Alice is a vengeful ghost from beyond the grave, perhaps to denounce the ease with which people forget themselves (their true, temporal selves) and buy into the fantastic. The Duke only begins to see himself when he bleeds. Once Alice recognizes the Duke’s shortcomings, his weakness, his wound, does the Duke finally see his reflection. He understands himself through that blood which, in its life sustaining and life taking properties, dispels illusions of invulnerability and immortality.