Feminist Criticism
Gabriela Rasuk
English Composition II Melissa Juchniewicz
Feminist Criticism
2/23/13
Hide the Hood Little Girl Little Red Riding Hood by Charles Perrault is a story every child learns that is about a young girl with a red riding hood who goes into the woods to deliver some food to her very ill grandmother and in her journey she encounters a wolf who in the end wants to trick her into believing he is her grandmother. However children only enjoy a simple fairy tale for the fact of being imaginary, as when we were children we never sensed a double meaning to this story. In Charles Perrault version of this popular tale he adds a moral to this tale which is “Children, especially attractive well bred, young ladies, should never talk to strangers, for if they should do so, they may well provide dinner for wolf. I say “wolf,” but there are various types 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” (Perrault). With this moral at the end of the story we can realize how he is using a gender based opinion by how he is directly stating young girls as defenseless and only assuming girls to be a target. When he mentions children he states rapidly the term “young ladies”, not realizing also that young males are also a target for predators.
This story provides an incentive of paranoia for a child with his words of describing a wolf terrorizes the idea of speaking to a stranger which makes it seem he is describing a male. Even if his intentions are to raise awareness on the dangers that are out there this purpose fails since he makes the mistake of not alerting the audience of both genders, only referring to a specific one. I refer to children because he relates them with young women, the similarity he sees between them is of defenseless, naïve and vulnerable in every way. The
English Composition II Melissa Juchniewicz
Feminist Criticism
2/23/13
Hide the Hood Little Girl Little Red Riding Hood by Charles Perrault is a story every child learns that is about a young girl with a red riding hood who goes into the woods to deliver some food to her very ill grandmother and in her journey she encounters a wolf who in the end wants to trick her into believing he is her grandmother. However children only enjoy a simple fairy tale for the fact of being imaginary, as when we were children we never sensed a double meaning to this story. In Charles Perrault version of this popular tale he adds a moral to this tale which is “Children, especially attractive well bred, young ladies, should never talk to strangers, for if they should do so, they may well provide dinner for wolf. I say “wolf,” but there are various types 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” (Perrault). With this moral at the end of the story we can realize how he is using a gender based opinion by how he is directly stating young girls as defenseless and only assuming girls to be a target. When he mentions children he states rapidly the term “young ladies”, not realizing also that young males are also a target for predators.
This story provides an incentive of paranoia for a child with his words of describing a wolf terrorizes the idea of speaking to a stranger which makes it seem he is describing a male. Even if his intentions are to raise awareness on the dangers that are out there this purpose fails since he makes the mistake of not alerting the audience of both genders, only referring to a specific one. I refer to children because he relates them with young women, the similarity he sees between them is of defenseless, naïve and vulnerable in every way. The
Cited: Perrault, Charles. "Little Red Riding Hood." Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for Readers and Writers. Boston: John Schilb and John Clifford, 1967. 1078-1081.