Sarah Miller

Professor Pastore

English Composition 101

7 October 2022

                                      The Revolution of The Little Red Riding Hood

The Little Red Riding Hood is an old fairytale that has been told for hundreds of years with its origin dating all the way back to the seventeenth century.  The typical story is about a girl who goes to bring food to her grandmother and gets tricked by a wolf on the way, who puts her in danger. In most versions of the tale, the protagonist is portrayed as a naïve, immature, and careless girl unaware of her surroundings. Most importantly, she is always characterized asan ignorant, helpless victim. This trope would often be used as a moral metaphor for societies’ expectations for how women and girls ought to be. Innocence and purity were common male fantasies, and these fantasies were used for the expected morals for the ideal woman. This idea was challenged by Angela Carter, a feminist novelist who rewrote the tale changing the general narrative of this trope. In her short story, “The Company of Wolves”,the protagonist is a given the ability to be a sexual being. This turns out to be both beneficial and detrimental to her, but that is beside the point. It is the first scenario where the protagonist makes choices with the knowledge (somewhat) of the wolf’s desires, sharing similar desires herself.

Jack Zipes is a retired professor from the University of Minnesota. He writes on the tale The Little Red Riding Hood focusing on how fairy tales evolved with social and political significance. In his book A Second Gaze at Little Red Riding Hood’s Trials and Tribulations, Zipes argues that the literary origins of fairy tales can be traced back to male fantasies about women and their sexuality. Literary versions of The Little Red Riding Hood, for example Charles Perrault’s, writes a version based on a surprisingly progressive oral version of the tale. In the oral version, the protagonist escapes on her own and saves herself. Perrault changed that to fit in with many Christian ideals of women. In his written version, the protagonist is made out to be ignorant, naïve, and helpless, which ultimately results in her being raped and eaten. It is her negligence that makes her, according to Perrault, deserving of what happened to her, and is seen as a moral lesson to young girls (Zipes). The idea of sex being consensual outside of a marriage setting for a woman is unheard of. In most fairy tales, especially The Little Red Riding Hood, women are not made out to be sexual beings. Sex is viewed as sinful. Perrault pushes the narrative of purity and naivety, the idea that sex happens to women, not with them. The feminist rewriting of this fairy tale by Angela Carter was written in the mid- 1980’s, giving the protagonist freedom to explore her sexuality.

The following article “Carter’s Feminist Revision of Fairytale: The Narrative Strategies of The Company of Wolves”, was writtenbyJie Wu from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in Shanghai, China, about the recharacterization of the protagonist in Angela Carter’s version of The Little Red Riding Hood. Jie Wu writes in her article how female sexuality is repressed in fairy tales. Similarly, the American writer Andrea Dworkin says, “There is the good woman. She is a victim. There is the bad woman. She must be destroyed. The good woman must be possessed. The bad woman must be killed or punished.” In “The Company of Wolves”, the protagonist embraces her sexuality. The protagonist meets a handsome young man (the wolf in disguise) in the woods and is immediately attracted to him. He places a bet where they would race to her grandmother’s house and if he wins, he gets to kiss her. She purposely takes her time to lose the bet to earn his kiss. Though this does not entirely benefit her, it gives her freedom. However, this ends up giving him more time to reach her grandmother where he then proceeds to rape and kill her. He waits for the protagonist to arrive so that he can do the same to her.

In Carter’s version of The Little Red Riding Hood, the protagonist is clever and fearless. Her confidence as a sexual being saves her from death. The wolf can’t use sex to victimize her because she won’t allow it. She takes control by managing to outsmart him when she throws his clothes in the fire whereby forever leaving him to be a wolf. She issomewhat careless, but she acts wisely and does not show fear. Most importantly, she is not a helpless victim like in Perrault’s and many other versions of The Little Red Riding Hood. In the book written by theorist Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, she claims that there are three archetypes in which women have been associated with; the mother, the virgin, and the prostitute. In most versions of The Little Red Riding Hood, the protagonist fits in the archetype of the virgin, which is the narrative Carter strays from. In her version, the protagonist does not fit into any of these three archetypes.

Another article discussing the reconstructing of The Little Red Riding Hood is called “Wolfings”: Angela Carter’s becoming-narrative”. The author of this article, Wendy Swyt, a college instructor, writes about the progression of the tale and the girl’s freedom for her own sexuality. Not only that, but she doesn’t let the wolf scare her. She replies, laughing with, “I’m nobody’s meat” when the wolf says he’ll eat her. “In “The Company of Wolves”, Carter seeks a new conceptual framework, a place in narrative that does not punish women for leaving the path” (Swyt). In Carter’s version the girl is not punished the way she is in other versions for being sexual, even if she was violated in the other versions, and her sexuality was forced upon her. Her punishment for “letting” herself get there in the first place makes her deserve for her being assaulted. Swyt writes that “Carter’s Red Riding Hood challenges the binary fields of purity and danger and escapes the path.”

As written in Jack Zipes A Second Gaze at Little Red Riding Hood’s Trials and Tribulations, Charles Perrault’s version of the tale push the narrative of the “innocent” woman. Most versions that abide by this idea all have the same theme: the girl is both taken and saved by a man. In both articles “Carter’s Feminist Revision of Fairytale: The Narrative Strategies of “The Company of Wolves”” and “Wolfings: Angela Carter’s becoming-narrative” discuss the change that Angela Carter brings. They both write about the progression of the tale. In Angela Carter’s version of the tale, the girl is given sexual freedom and wisdom. She is clever and is finally free from being the helpless victim.

Works Cited

Wu, Jie. “Carter’s Feminist Revision of Fairytale: The Narrative Strategies of ‘the Company of Wolves.’” Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences, vol. 10, no. 1, 2017, pp. 53–67., https://doi.org/10.1007/s40647-016-0162-7.

Zipes, Jack. “The Trials & Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood.” 2017, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203700433.

Swyt, Wendy. “‘Wolfings’: Angela Carter’s becoming-narrative.” Studies in Short Fiction, vol             33, no. 3, summer 1996, pp. 315+. Gale Academic OneFile,       link.gale.com/apps/doc/A20877857/AONE?u=cuny_ccny&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=d75bf1ea. Accessed 6 Oct. 2022.