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Little Red Riding Hood 'And The Company Of Wolves'

Decent Essays

Both old and new fairy tales today can be said to have a long history and have been retold through generations for many years. They have even been modified into several new versions that create ideas and morals in today’s society. The tale of both Charles Perrault’s “Little Red Riding Hood” and Angela Carter’s “The Company of Wolves”, demonstrates a notion of violence and sexuality. The two tales closely relate but both have different perspectives on how to deal with violence and what is interpret with sexuality throughout the stories.
Charles Perrault’s traditional tale “Little Red Riding Hood” differs from Angela Carter’s “The Company of Wolves” because, first of all, the story describes the image of the young girl as “the prettiest creature who was ever seen” (line 1). She is also represented as naive, because in line 12 it says “the poor child who did not …show more content…

Little Red Riding Hood was fooled by the wolf, impersonating her grandmother. From the tale, one can depict that even children, well-raised and attractive, listen to strangers. The young girl in Carter’s tale shows a sense of intelligence because right when she arrives she knows something is wrong yet, undresses herself. Like said before, the young girl is more sexually ready, foreshadowing that her virginity may be lost by the end of the story. She reverses the attraction, mesmerizing the wolf on page 117, “small breasts gleamed as if snow had entered the room”. Afterward, she takes his final clothing off on page 118 and “flung it into the fire, and the fiery wake of her own discarded clothing”, expressing that because of Carter’s background, both figures will be wolves forever. She also loses her virginity, “she sleeps in granny’s bed, between the paws of the tender wolf” (page 118), something she can never get back just like her

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