Erl King

• Narrator: "Take two huge handfuls of his rustling hair...strangle him with them"


  -Encourages female autonomy

  -Reclaimed the power of her freedom using the power of his nature on him
• Narrator: "He strips me to my last nakedness...And we are like two halves of a seed"

  -Danger of men

  -Suggest her vulnerability to his predatory consumption as she is subsumed by his power
• "the woods enclose and then enclose again...she will be trapped in her own illusion"


  -Suggests the natural seductive allure of the Erl Kings world can also entrap women in illusions about sexuality and freedom

  -Over sexuality
• Narrator: "I had no wish to join the whistling congregation he kept in cages"


  -Takes control of own fate

  -does not want to be confined like the other women who have fallen prey to the Erl King
• Carter moral and deviation

  -Subverts the initial moral by encouraging women to stray off the path as she believed they were strong enough to liberate themselves and other women in need

  -Original green man is generally depicted as kind and benevolent however Carter's Erl King is portrayed as cunning and evil
• AO5

  'The Erl King's violent and cruel actions are indeed those of a man rather than a non-human' [Wright]

  -Reinforces the stereotype of the male oppressor that Carter sought to portray in all her stories
• AO3

  "pretty cages" Angelou's 'I know why the caged birds sing', draws on themes of domestic violence and how women are entrapped within the house
• What are the key plot points of "The Erl-King"?

  1. Young woman meets the Erl-King in the forest.
  2. He charms women into his control.
  3. He turns women into birds, trapping them.
  4. The protagonist resolves to kill him.
  5. She strangles him with his own hair.
• What does the Erl-King represent in the story?

  A romantic predator
• How does the young woman resist the Erl-King?

  She kills him to regain her freedom
• Analysis of Female empowerment

  • The Erl-King keeps women as birds, stripping them of voice and agency.
  • By killing him, the narrator reclaims her body and voice, subverting traditional fairy tale roles.
  • There’s a strong continuity with The Lady of the House of Love — both heroines are trapped birds seeking escape from a male-defined destiny.
• Analysis of Symbolism and imagery

  • The cage represents patriarchal control, like the vampire’s castle in Lady of the House of Love.
  • The hair used to kill him is symbolically feminine — she turns a feminine object into a weapon.
  • Her transformation from bird to killer reflects the journey from passivity to power.
• Analysis of femnist reimagining

  • Rewrites the “wild man of the woods” figure from folklore, making him a metaphor for toxic male control.
  • The story ends with female resistance rather than rescue — she is her own saviour.