Fairy Tales: Little Red Riding Hood, Danger Danger Danger!

Jerry Pinkney

Little Red Riding Hood is like Hansel & Gretel, a basic tale that is usable and transferable--from urban locations to countrysides, from modern suburbia to historical landscapes. 

More like Hansel & Gretel than Goldilocks, it doesn't lend itself to "nice" endings, tea parties where the grandmother and wolf and Red Riding Hood sit down together, non-ironically. 

Hansel & Gretel are little sociopaths. Little Red Riding Hood isn't, but in most versions, she is a hard-headed survivalist. (In the earliest versions, she is eaten and...that's the end, folks!)

James Marshall

Consequently, cute tales that lessen the wolf's dangerous nature miss the essence of the tale, which can be linked, historically, to tales of rabid dogs in medieval times. Life is not safe, states the tale and Stephen Sondheim concurs. 

Enter the woods, explore the limits of safety and civilization, you may very well get eaten.

Or, if you are the wolf, axed to death and/or shot dead. (See the wolf's legs in Marshall's illustration.)

At the very least, you will be irrevocably changed.

No matter what: danger danger danger!