(no subject)
Honestly, I love the background / history of the story better than the modern understanding of the story Little Red Riding Hood.
I want to share why I love this story so much and maybe by understanding what makes me excited by it, you'll find something that resonates. I guess I've always liked the notion that Red is just as scary/crafty as the wolf, if not more so, because it gives back the power to the traditional victim. Which is what I like about the character Stiles from Teen Wolf, who is one of the few normal humans on a show made up of almost entirely super-human or enhanced individuals but still can hold his own. He's cast as an easily victimized person (and we do see that in the show) but he's not just a victim; he's the unsung hero.
My absolute favorite thing about Little Red Riding Hood is that it's an allegory for rape/going to bed with people who might be dangerous. It was a story to keep young girls away from men/beasts who'd take their virtue - and in the middle ages, essentially ruining their family's honor. The red hood can also be read as a symbol for a female's menstruation or the hymen. The version by Charles Perrault even states: "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." That's probably more than you need to know about me - but I like using stories like this to get over my own issues/not-good memories. And then there's the whole knotting, fur, dub-con, kinky thing possibilities that come with werewolves, period. ;) It's cliche but some of the best things are.
However, or the sun and the wolf symbolizes the moon. In Cox's Comparative Mythology Little Red Riding Hood is interpreted as "the evening with her scarlet robe of twilight," who is swallowed up by the wolf of darkness, the Fenris of the Edda. It appears to me that this explanation may suit the color of her cap or hood, but is at variance with the other incidents of the story. I am inclined to look upon the tale as a lunar legend, although the moon is only actually red during one portion of the year, at the harvest moon in the autumn. Red Hood is represented as wandering, like Io, who is undoubtedly the moon, through trees, the clouds, and flowers, the stars, before she reaches the place where she is intercepted by the wolf." - I enjoy the notion that Red's character is a symbol in the sun vs. moon thought process. I always analyze the hell out of things.
To me, the wolves represent wildness/instinct and the huntsman is society's control/order (what the Argent's essentially play in the Teen Wolf world - with codes that aren't always followed) and Red is the unpredictable third party. There's versions of the tale that the huntsman/hunter cuts the wolf apart to free Red and her Granny; and in others all three (the wolf, granny, and Red) are killed with the huntsman going on his merry way.
Also, I've always been drawn to the blood-play and bodily transformations hinted at in the original tales. For example: the grandma's nightgown the wolf wears... I've read a recount where it says the wolf pulls on her skin - like her actual skin - which is a little related to the wolf/man transformation of a werewolf. It's body horror in a way. Red is clearly linked to the association of blood and I'd like to see how blood is going to be further addressed by the Teen Wolf (canon and fandom).
Others have Red as the one who kills the wolf through trickery - she tricks him into eating stones, thinking they were food, which weighed him down and she escaped. In some where she turned him into a coat! Perhaps a little Silence of the Lambs but it goes back to the body transformation of wolf-human and human-wolf.
Maybe there's even one of the 'huntsman' killing and skinning werewolves? *shrug* It would make sense with the Argent-Hale storyline.
Likewise, I've always been interested in the cannibalism of the story, too. Whether the wolf literally eats the grandmother or in one version the wolf leaves the grandmother’s body/meat for the girl, who then unwittingly eats her own grandmother! Or if that 'eating' of Red is a little more sexual - that's fine too! I'm totally down with that.
some of my favorites:
Non-Teen Wolf Little Red Riding Hood
http://archiveofourown.org/works/38205
http://archiveofourown.org/works/451952 (poem)
My all time favorite retelling of the story is actually a scifi supernatural-rpf space!au. Even if you don't like the show, it's worth a read. http://archiveofourown.org/works/302311
Other adaptions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptations_of_Little_Red_Riding_Hood
And one of my favorite poems ever (which has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING AT ALL, NADA, ZIP, NILCH, to do with red riding hood except everything and all the feels I have for both):
“i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh ... And eyes big love-crumbs,
and possibly i like the thrill
of under me you so quite new.” - ee cummings