Little Red Riding Hood

Little Red Riding Hood

Illustration by Arthur Rackham, 1902.

Author Anonymous Published 1812-??-?? Type Fiction, Short story Genre Fairy tale Themes Drama Age Group Children

Little Red Riding Hood, also known as Little Red Cap, is a fairy tale with origins going back to around 990 CE. Notable versions include Charles Perrault's 1697 version published in Stories or Tales from Past Times, with Morals, and Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's 1812 version published in Children's and Household Tales for which this page primarily focuses.

In the story, a little girl known as Red Cap or Red Riding Hood (because she always wears a red cap), is told to deliver food and wine to her grandmother who lives out in the woods. Along the way, she meets a wolf who asks where she's going, and the wolf, upon learning of the grandmother's whereabouts, convinces Red to pick wildflowers to take to her and quickly races to the grandmother's cottage, pretends to be Red, and convinces her to unlock her door. Once inside, he eats the grandmother and puts on her clothes and waits for Red. When Red arrives, the wolf tricks Red into to getting close to him so that he can eat her too. Full from eating people, the wolf falls asleep, but a hunter hears his snoring and cuts his belly open and pulls out Red and her grandmother, then fills the wolf's belly with heavy stones before sewing him up. When the wolf awakes, he tries to escape, but the stones kill him and the hunter skins him.

Personal

Own?	Compilation book.
Read?	Margaret Raine Hunt translation.
Finished	2025-02-27.

I had encountered various adaptions of this story throughout my childhood, and, when I saw it in a fairy tale anthology a friend bought me, I was interested to read a much older version. I finished it on 2025-02-27, and recognized this version from a children's program I saw on TV as a child.

Review

Overall:

Good

• The "all the better to eat you with" section is quite memorable.
• Filling the wolf's belly with stones is pretty funny.

Bad

• The wolf's plan is overly complicated. He could have just eaten Red immediately after she told him where her sick grandmother lived, then went to eat the grandmother at his leisure.
• What is the point of filling the wolf's stomach with stones only to have it die when it tries to move? It seems like there were two different endings, one to punish the wolf with embarrassment, the other to punish him with execution, but the Grimm brothers just included both.
• The "moral" Red takes away from the story — never to leave the path when your mother tells you not to — doesn't fit with the story because Red met the wolf on the path, and nothing bad happened when she wandered away from it to pick flowers.
• In the Grimm version, there is a follow-up story where another wolf ends up being tricked into drowning itself in sausage water. This not only seems entirely unrelated, but also doesn't make any sense.

Ugly

• I know it's a fairy tale, but even a child knows you can't expect someone to remain sleeping as you slice open their belly. Either way, performing an impromptu surgery in a dingy bedroom would certainly result in infection!

Media

Illustrations

The story really lends itself well to art because a little innocent girl next to ravenous predator is a very evocative image.

• 

  Carl Larsson - 1881 - "Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf in the Forest."

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  Arthur Rackham - 1902.

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  Jessie Willcox Smith - 1911.

Representation

Strong female character?	Fail	None of the women are strong.
Bechdel test?	Pass	Red talks to her mother about her grandmother.
Strong person of color character?	Fail	The setting implies everyone is white.
Queer character?	Fail	There are no queer characters.

Adaptations

This story has become especially popular and adapted into all manner of media many times over. Works that are important to me included:

• King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne
• Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes

Links