| “ | Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother's house we go! | „ |
| ~ Red Riding Hood while traveling to her grandmother's home. |
Little Red Riding Hood is the titular protagonist of the classic fairy tale of the same name made by the Brothers Grimm.
Story[]
The story revolves around a girl called Little Red Riding Hood. In the Grimms' and Perrault's versions of the tale, she is named after the red hooded cape/cloak that she wears. The girl walks through the woods to deliver food to her sickly grandmother (wine and cake depending on the translation). In the Grimms' version, she had the order from her mother to stay strictly on the path.
A Big Bad Wolf wants to eat the girl and the food in the basket. He secretly stalks her behind trees, bushes, shrubs, and patches of little and tall grass. He approaches Little Red Riding Hood and she naïvely tells him where she is going. He suggests that the girl pick some flowers; which she does. In the meantime; he goes to the grandmother's house and gains entry by pretending to be the girl. He swallows the grandmother whole (in some stories, he locks her in the closet) and waits for the girl, disguised as the grandma.
When the girl arrives, she notices that her grandmother looks very strange. Little Red then says, "What a deep voice you have!" ("The better to greet you with"), "Goodness, what big eyes you have!" ("The better to see you with"), "And what big hands you have!" ("The better to hug/grab you with"), and lastly, "What a big mouth you have" ("The better to eat you with!"), at which point the wolf jumps out of bed, and eats her up too. Then he falls asleep. In Charles Perrault's version of the story (the first version to be published), the tale ends here. However, in later versions the story continues generally as follows:
A woodcutter (in the French version, but in the Brothers Grimm and traditional German versions, it was a hunter) comes to the rescue and with his axe cuts open the sleeping wolf. Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother emerge unharmed. They then fill the wolf's body with heavy stones. The wolf awakens and tries to flee, but the stones cause him to collapse and die. In sanitized versions of the story, the grandmother shut in the closet instead of eaten, and some have Little Red Riding Hood saved by the lumberjack as the wolf advances on her rather than after she is eaten where the woodcutter kills the wolf with his axe. From that day forward, Red learns never to talk to strangers.
Personality[]
Little Red Riding Hood is described as a very sweet young girl. She is well-liked by everyone she meets, especially her grandmother. However, she is also somewhat naive and too trusting toward strangers, which causes her a lot of trouble. She deeply cares for her grandmother, as she went to visit her. Other versions have a redeeming aspect to her character, as she could be wise of the wolf's tricks, and saves her grandmother from him in the process.
