A Literary Analysis Of Little Red Riding Hood

The tale of “Little Red Riding Hood” is a story about a young girl who is on her way to visit her ill grandmother who lives in the forest. She comes prepared with food and a beverage for grandmother to have, provided by her mother who warns her not to go off the path. On the way to grandma’s house, she runs into a wolf in the forest who asks where Little Red is going, who she is going to see, and then usually he will give her a proposition about racing to the house or just wishing her good luck in making her grandmother feel better. The wolf always beats Little Red Riding Hood to grandmother’s house, eats grandma, and then is laying in grandma’s bed pretending to be her while waiting for Little Red Riding Hood so that she can be consumed as …show more content…
Although this tale seems pretty innocent because it is about a little girl who loves her grandma and who learns not to disobey orders, a critic named Jack Zipes argues that “…the origins of the literary fairy tale can be traced to male fantasies about women and sexuality” (Zipes 78). In this essay I will be analyzing the Brothers Grimms’ version of “Little Red Riding Hood” in conversation with “A Second Gaze at Little Red Riding Hood’s Trials and Tribulations” by Jack Zipes, an online article explaining the background of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung in order to set the stage for why critics believe sexual images are present within old fairytales, and I will also analyze one image from Gustave Doré to show that the original fairytales are layered tales in which have hidden symbols and sexual themes that are not very obvious until the minds of readers of the tale have