Chapter 2: Female Metamorphosis: Objects as Agents of Transformation

and Identity Formation

This chapter investigates the differing functions of particular objects, often those with

unsettling connotations, in *The Erl-King* and *Wolf-Alice*, and draws a comparison with

their roles in the tales discussed in the preceding chapter. Whereas objects in the preceding

chapter typically serve to confine heroines within patriarchal structures, in these narratives

they are instrumental in instigating transformation. Within *The Erl-King*, the wicker cages

and the fiddle bow are presented not merely as symbolic representations but as direct agents

that generate states of both confinement and liberation. The protagonist’s transformation is

contingent upon her direct engagement with these specific artifacts. Similarly, in *Wolf-

Alice*, the mirror and the wedding dress transcend their conventional role as instruments of

subjugation or ownership; instead, they facilitate Alice’s initial formation of a distinct self

identity. Collectively, these two narratives substantiate the core contention of this thesis:

female transformation is not predicated upon a disengagement from the material realm, but

rather involves the active negotiation of a revised subject position within it, achieved through

direct interaction with particular objects.

1. The Materiality of the Enclosure and the Reclaimed Artefact in “The

Erl-King”

Before examining the objects themselves, it is necessary to establish the setting in

which they appear. The forest does not merely surround the heroine; it absorbs her entirely:

“The woods enclose and then enclose again, like a system of Chinese boxes opening one into

another” (Carter 84). The repeated verb “enclose” gestures not towards literal physical

captivity but towards an atmospheric absorption that blurs the boundary between the exterior

world and the heroine’s inner experience. Unlike the objects discussed below, the forest
cannot be reclaimed or altered; it remains static and indifferent, and shapes circumstance

rather than actively participating in it.

The Wicker Cages: Thingness as Archive of the Repressed

In a conventional fairy tale, a cage is a straightforward instrument whose function

entirely determines its significance. Carter’s cages, however, resist such an interpretation.

Though described as hanging “from the rafters” (Carter 87), appearing ordinary and even

rustic, something inherent in their nature prevents them from assimilating into the domestic

setting. Applying Kopytoff’s biographical approach, these cages narrate a history of

continuous collection: not of objects, but of persons. Each one contains a woman’s identity

transmuted into a bird, “finch, bunting, robin, lark” (Carter 87), and the “plangent song”

(Carter 87) the heroine perceives suggests more than mere animal noise, intimating an

identity that is not wholly extinguished.

It is only when the heroine ceases to regard the cages as decoration and acknowledges

their physical presence that their true significance becomes apparent. As Brown observes,

objects possess “their force as a sensuous presence” (Brown 5), and these cages exert

precisely this kind of insistent materiality. The heroine’s reflection, “I should not have looked

at him a second time” (Carter 85), suggests that genuinely perceiving an object is both

perilous and transformative. In Freudian terms, the cages restore what is repressed. As Freud

argues, “an uncanny experience occurs either when infantile complexes which have been

repressed are once more revived by some impression, or when primitive beliefs which have

been surmounted seem once more to be confirmed” (Freud 23). The repressed content here is

female identity, and the cages are simultaneously familiar and deeply disturbing: ordinary

household objects that conceal something which ought not to be there. This recognition lays

bare the Erl-King’s system of control and renders the heroine’s transformation possible.
The Fiddle Bow: The Reclaimed Artefact and the Reversal of Possession

Unlike the cages, the fiddle bow carries no prior history; its power derives entirely

from what it is destined to become. The Erl-King intends to “make a fiddle bow out of my

hair” (Carter 88), thereby converting the heroine’s body into raw material for his music. Hair

is deeply personal and intimate, the most visible physical marker of individual identity, and to

fashion it into an instrument entails severing something living from its source. As Brown

observes, such an object “bears the mark of the person from whom it was taken,” displaying

“the magic by which objects become values, fetishes, idols, and totems” (Brown 5). The

fiddle bow, as the Erl-King conceives it, represents the culmination of his possessive logic: a

person reduced to a mere thing.

The decisive moment arrives when the heroine resolves to act preemptively. She plans

to employ her hair to strangle him, then construct the instrument herself: “I’ll make a fiddle

of your breastbone, / Whose strings shall be your yellow hair” (Carter 90). What is once a

source of dread, her body being transformed into an object, becomes the very means of her

liberation. The object changes hands, and with this transfer its meaning is entirely rewritten.

The heroine does not escape the logic of bodies becoming objects; rather, she inverts its

direction and becomes the maker rather than the material.

2. The Formative Thing: Objects and Identity Construction in “Wolf-

Alice”

Whilst the objects in “The Erl-King” constitute a battleground for possession and

recovery, those in “Wolf-Alice” serve a more fundamental purpose: the constitution of a self

that does not previously exist. Alice, having been reared amongst wolves, enters human

society without language, social structure, or any conceptual framework through which
objects might acquire significance. The central question, therefore, is how a coherent identity

can emerge from such a condition, and the answer proposed here is a material one: through

engagement with the mirror and the wedding dress.

The Mirror: Thingness and the First Encounter with the Self

Conventionally, a mirror is the quintessential “non-thing,” an object intended for

looking through rather than at. What renders Alice’s encounter so remarkable is that this

implicit understanding is entirely unavailable to her. Unacquainted with the mirror’s purpose,

she cannot see beyond its surface; she can only look directly at it. Carter captures her

bewilderment precisely: “she did not know it was a mirror… she thought it was a window”

(Carter 118). As Brown explains, one apprehends an object’s “thingness” when it fails to

perform its intended function (Brown 4), and the mirror fails here not because it is defective

but because Alice lacks the conceptual apparatus to look past its surface. Unlike the heroine

in “The Bloody Chamber,” who encounters her reflection through an externally imposed

perspective, Alice meets hers without distortion. In Freudian terms, what the mirror discloses

is not a repressed self that returns but the very first intimation of a self not yet formed. As she

continues returning to it, the object gradually reveals its purpose to her on her own terms. The

mirror, in this reading, functions as a collaborator in the construction of her identity rather

than an instrument of its suppression.

The Wedding Dress: Biography, Inherited Form, and Uncanny Futurity

Unlike the mirror, the wedding dress is densely layered with history. It belongs to no

living person; it is a remnant of marriage, femininity, and the formal inscription of woman

within patriarchal structures, and its original wearer is lost, leaving a form without a body.

When Alice puts it on, its historical weight does not dissipate but asserts itself through the

garment’s physical presence. The dress is too long, too formal, designed for a social persona
Alice does not yet possess. As Brown contends, things “exceed their mere materialisation…

their force as a sensuous presence” (Brown 5), and this excess is precisely what renders the

dress’s material presence so apparent: the disparity between the form it embodies and the

body that wears it is impossible to ignore.

Alice does not consciously resist this imposition; she simply puts the dress on, and in

so doing she begins, however tentatively, to assume a human form. It is argued here that the

dress produces a sense of temporal dislocation rather than the uncanny return observable in

“The Erl-King.” It belongs to a social world Alice never inhabits, worn by a body that does

not yet know what femininity signifies. This quality may be termed uncanny futurity: the

dress directs attention not towards suppressed trauma but towards an identity Alice does not

yet attain. It imposes no meaning from a controlling figure, nor does it demand reclamation.

It simply waits, and through that waiting it furnishes Alice with the outline of a self she has

yet to become.

The analysis of “The Erl-King” and “Wolf-Alice” reveals a clear departure from the

patterns observable in the preceding chapter. Whilst objects previously restrict, here they

enable transformation. In “The Erl-King,” the wicker cages disclose a system of possession

once the heroine acknowledges their physical and historical significance, and the fiddle bow

becomes an instrument of liberation precisely because the heroine assumes control of its

creation. In “Wolf-Alice,” the mirror and wedding dress are generative rather than repressive,

and Alice’s identity is not rediscovered but gradually constituted through her engagements

with these objects.

What unites both narratives is the absence of a dominant figure who dictates the

significance of objects. In “The Bloody Chamber,” the Marquis controls the meaning of the

choker and the key; in “The Lady of the House of Love,” the portraits and tarot cards impose
a significance that precedes the Countess herself. In these two stories, however, that external

authority is either overcome or absent from the outset. It is this very absence, the heroine left

alone with objects and compelled to confront their physical reality directly, that enables

transformation and permits the dismantling of the patriarchal system.