One morning Little Red Riding Hood’s mother asked her to take some cake and wine to her sick grandmother to help strengthen her up. Little Red Riding Hood agrees to the task and goes out to give her grandmother the package. But as she walked towards her grandmother’s house she found herself being approached by a wolf walking up to her asking where she was going, she replied with the truth, which caused the wolf to send her off to pick flowers while he went and ate her grandmother. When Little Red Riding Hood finally got to her grandmother’s house she saw how different her grandmother looks, but it was the wolf in disguise and he ate her up as well. Later a huntsman was walking around and heard the wolf snoring so he went into the grandmother’s house and saw the wolf laying in her bed, he took a pair of scissors and cut the wolf open saving Little Red and her grandmother, Little Red then fills the wolf with stones and when the wolf awoken he fell dead.
This is how the tale of Little Red Riding Hood is formated most of the time. This story first was written as a way to warn children of stranger danger, which is a pretty good lesson to teach about. Having the wolf trick her so he can run and eat the Grandmother and set a trap up for Little Red which causes her to also get eaten by the wolf. ”When Little Red Riding Hood entered the woods a wolf came up to her. She did not know what a wicked animal he was, and was not afraid of him.” With the Huntsman coming by and helping both of them and killing the wolf, teaching Little Red to not trust strangers. ‘The three of them were happy. The huntsman took the wolf’s pelt. The grandmother ate the cake and drank the wine that Little Red Riding Hood had brought. And Little Red Riding Hood thought to herself: “As long as I live, I will never leave the path and run off into the woods by myself if mother tells me not to.”’ But in another version of the story written by Charles Perrault changed the tone completely, even if I find the warning a good one I greatly dislike how it’s presented.
While the first story had a moral of stranger danger Charles Perrault decided he wanted to spice it up by making it an allegory for paedophilia. Which is like cool and all but Charles my man YOU COULD HAVE USED ANY STORY WHY THE ONE ABOUT A GIRL AND A WOLF THAT’S LIKE THREE LAYERS OF WEIRD, like Snow White could have worked hell maybe even used Sleeping Beauty! While in the first tale Little Red is talked about in a sweet way like how you would talk about a child like look “Everyone who saw her liked her, but most of all her grandmother, who did not know what to give the child next. Once she gave her a little cap made of red velvet. Because it suited her so well, and she wanted to wear it all the time, she came to be known as Little Red Riding Hood.” Being referred to as ‘loved by all’ and immediately pulled into how much her grandmother loves her. But CHARLES decided to open up the story with this line “Once upon a time there lived in a certain village a little country girl, the prettiest creature who was ever seen. Her mother was excessively fond of her; and her grandmother doted on her even more. This good woman had a little red riding hood made for her. It suited the girl so extremely well that everybody called her Little Red Riding Hood.” First off ‘pretty creature’ sir, this is a child and secondly ‘good woman’ she is a CHILD and LITTLE GIRL far from being a woman. When Little Red got to her grandmother’s house she was too late and the wolf was already in there. “The wolf, seeing her come in, said to her, hiding himself under the bedclothes, “Put the cake and the little pot of butter upon the stool, and come get into bed with me.” Little Red Riding Hood took off her clothes and got into bed.” Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm did not ask for this in their version of the story Little Red never took of her clothes to be in bed with the wolf, this is supposed to be an allegory for a young girl being mislead by an older man, a predators, but DAMN this makes me feel icky, which is the point of the story. In the Grimms’ version of the story Little Red gets a little scared of “grandmother” and walks up to her to see how she is “When she arrived, she found, to her surprise, that the door was open. She walked into the parlor, and everything looked so strange that she thought, “Oh, my God, why am I so afraid? I usually like it at my grandmother’s.” Then she went to the bed and pulled back the curtains. Grandmother was lying there with her cap pulled down over her face and looking very strange.” In the Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s version of Little Red, Red is very scared about how “grandmother” is instead of hoping into the bed and taking off her clothes, she was cautious about what was happening around her which fits the narrative of stranger danger, while in Charles Perrault version of the story he wanted it to scream paedophilla bad, which I’m all for cause it true but somehow he made it worst.
At the end of the story for the Grimm brothers version of when the wolf eats Little Red it is literally the wolf eating Little Red while in the Charles Perrault version the wolf eating up Little Red is an allegory for him raping Little Red, while in the Grimm’s version Red gets out of the wolf’s belly with her grandmother and learns that trusting strangers is not a good thing and grows from this horrible experience while for Charles’s version of Little Red she is left to just wallow in what happened to her and not having a happily ever after like the other Little Red. Lastly Charles decided he wanted to straight up state the moral of the story but just look at it “Moral: Children, especially attractive, well bred young ladies, should never talk to strangers, for if they should do so, they may well provide dinner for a wolf. I say “wolf,” but there are various kinds of wolves. There are also those who are charming, quiet, polite, unassuming, complacent, and sweet, who pursue young women at home and in the streets. And unfortunately, it is these gentle wolves who are the most dangerous ones of all.” ESPECIALLY ATTRACTIVE AND WELL BRED, TWO WORDS THAT SHOULD NEVER BE USED TO DESCRIBE CHILDREN!! In conclusion, Little Red has been used as a tool to help want children of danger both very similar dangers but with two different meanings.

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