The Square

Little Red Riding Hood

Little Red Riding Hood is a fairytale about a young girl and a big bad wolf. The story has been changed considerably in it's history and subject to numerous modern adaptions and meanings.Little Red Riding Hood, is best known for the red cape she wears throughout the story.The girl walks through the woods to deliver food to her sickly grandmother.However, a Big Bad Wolf wants to eat the girl and the food in the basket. He secretly stalks her behind trees and patches grass. He approaches Little Red Riding Hood and she naively tells him where she is going. He suggests that the girl picks some flowers; which she does. In the meantime, he goes to the grandmother's house and gains entry by pretending to be the girl. He swallows the grandmother whole (in some stories, he locks her in the closet) and waits for the girl, disguised as the grandma.When the girl arrives, she notices that her grandmother looks very strange. Little Red then says, "What a deep voice you have!" ("The better to greet you with"), "Goodness, what big eyes you have!" ("The better to see you with"), "And what big hands you have!" ("The better to hug/grab you with"), and lastly, "What a big mouth you have" ("The better to eat you with!"), at which point the wolf jumps out of bed, and eats her up too. Then he falls asleep.

The tale makes the clearest contrast between the safe world of the village and the dangers of the forest. To me, the moral of this tale, is that children should never talk to strangers. However Little Red Riding Hood has also been seen as a parable of sexual maturity, where In this interpretation, the cape symbolizes the blood of menstruation, braving the dark forest of womenhood.