3 Literary Variants on Little Red Riding Hood
cw: mention of sexual violence. One of my first reading assignments when I started taking French was a French storybook version of Little Red Riding Hood, with the assumption that the story was familiar enough for us to muddle through the unfamiliar vocabulary. It’s simplicity and it’s sing-song climax make it memorable, it’s threat of violence offers a transgressive thrill to little children who may grow up to love horror or fear wolves. It’s usually interpreted as a stranger-danger warning to kids; in more specific and darker readings, the wolf is a sexual predator. His tempting Red off the path is a mock seduction, his visceral interest in bodily consumption represents violently untamed sexuality. The heroic woodsman who appears at the very end is perhaps a more appropriate romantic interest, and offers a male heroism where otherwise the only male character is bestial. In its basic form, the story has a conservative bent, but its simplicity and ubiquity make it easy to re...