Story: Little Red Riding Hood is a fairy tale story about a girl who's going to deliver something to her grandmother. She takes the path through the woods and encounters a wolf, who tries to obstruct her way. When she finally gets to her grandmother's house, the wolf is disguised as the grandmother, having eaten her, and wishes to also eat Red. The ending of the story varies but most commonly, a woodcutter comes to the rescue and saves both Red and the grandmother, who is still alive inside the wolf's stomach. The wolf is killed, and they all live happily ever after.
Structure:
Little Red Cap has seven stanzas, all with about six lines each. As the poem progresses, Red matures.
Closer Reading:
- "At childhood's end, the houses petered out" - the age of Red is referenced. She is no longer a child, and on the brink of adulthood.
- "into playing fields, the factory, allotments," - symbolises a journey. As she moves further and further out of her town, the landscape becomes more abandoned.
- "kept, like mistresses, by kneeling married men" - simile, shows how women dote on men. This is also contextual as the poem is written with Adrian Henri in mind, a man that Carol Ann Duffy loved, and who she claims "he was never faithful".
- "the silent railway line, the hermit's caravan" - adding imagery to her journey. Things are becoming more isolated and separate. Things aren't staying together.
- "till you came at last to the end of the woods" - this is a metaphor for reaching adulthood. The woods are an unknown place to Red, both literally and metaphorically.
- "It was there that I first clapped eyes on the wolf." - intertextuality with the original story.
- "red wine stainging his bearded jaw." - Red, the colour, is the colour that both she and he are wearing. Red can connote blood, danger and death, but also heightened sexuality.
- "What big ears/ he had! What big eyes he had! What teeth!" - the exclamation points suggest that she is excited and impressed by this new figure and also links to the original story. The repetition suggests age and experience.
- "I made quite sure he spotted me" - she initiated the romance, not the other way round, showing female dominance.
- "sweet sixteen, never been, babe, waif, and brought me a drink," - an idiom, representative of her naivety and innocence. "Waif" could also suggest her age, and how fragile she is.
- "my first." - enjambment. Impactual.
- "The wolf, I knew, would lead me deep into the woods,/ away from home, to a dark tangled thorny place, lit by the eyes of owls." - she was well aware of the world she was about to enter; adulthood. She was led away from saftety and security.
- "I crawled in his wake," - she has become submissive, which is contradicting to her previous attitude. The adult world, and the wolf, are changing her personality to fit their own.
- "my stockings ripped to shreds, scraps of red from my blazer." - the loss of innocence. The blazer suggests she is educated, young. "snagged on twig and branch, murder clues." - the death of her childhood. "I lost both shoes" - internal rhyme.
- but got there, wolf's lair, better beware." Caesure, a deliberate break in text using punctuation.
- "I clung till dawn to his thrashing fur, for/ what little girl doesn't dearly love the wolf?" - sexual and intimate. The rhetorical questions addresses the reader, and illustrates the thoughts of women. They can't resist a man.
- "went in search of a living bird - white dove - " Red wishes to reclaim her innocence, now that she's experienced what adulthood is like. The dove symbolises purity.
- "One bite, dead. How nice, breakfast in bed, he said," - Her innocence can never be reclaimed. Monsyllabic words make for an abrupt internal rhyme.
- "As soon as he slept, I crept to the back/ of the lair, where a whole wall was crimson, gold, aglow with/ books." - she can't do anything without the permission of the wolf, so feels the need to sneak around in order to be by herself. A male is all encompassing, and you cannot escape their clutches. "gold, aglow with/ books" is a metaphor for treasure.
- "Words, words were truly alive..../warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and blood." Asyndetic listing for emphasis on the magesty of books. Henri was Duffy's inspiration, showing her a vivid life that is culturally rich.- "But then I was young - and it took ten years" - time has progessed.
- "a mushroom/ stopper the mouth of a buried corpse" - she has become more knowledgeable about being an adult and the world in general. She wants to put her knowledge into practice.
- "that a greying wolf/ howls the same old song at the moon, year in, year out,/ season after season, same rhyme, same reason." Red is now growing bored of the wolf. She wants to grow and change, whilst the wolf stays the same. He's just repeating himself.
"I took an axe" - link to the woodcutter in the original story. She is back to being an independant woman, who doesn't need a man to save her.
- "I took an axe to the wolf/ as he slept, one chop, scrotum to throat" - she's killing the wolf in order to be free.
- "and saw/ the glistening, virgin white of my grandmother's bones." - She is seeing a vision of herself if she had stayed with the wolf. A feminist view that men 'consume' women. Intertextuality to the original story of the grandmother being eaten.
- "I filled his old belly with stones" - she realised his age and how she could do better, she wants to bury her past life with the wolf.
- "Out of the forest I come with my flowers, singing, all alone." - Red, now that she has been cut free of the wolf, is celebrating her independance. She is happy to be alone.
Themes:
Carol Ann Duffy starts The World's Wife with this poem. It has a very feminist opinion of men; that women are just as poweful and capable, even more so.
There are a few references to age, much like in Medusa. Red is trying to be independant, like Mrs Faust and experience the world for herself.
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