Carol Ann Duffy's "Little Red Cap" shares a title with a popular Brothers' Grimm Tale, but many contemporary readers are more familiar with an alternative title: "Little Red Riding Hood." Titles are only the first way in which versions of this tale diverge from one another. Like most folktales, "Little Red Cap" began orally, with countless ever-changing variants being told in a range of languages and dialects. Eventually, compilers interested in ethnographic folktale research, like the Grimms, collected and published these tales—often making creative adjustments of their own. Viewed in this context, Duffy is participating in a tradition of folkloric retelling and recontextualization, using a familiar tale to approach contemporary issues as many have done in the past. Here, we'll review some of the many versions of the Little Red Cap, or Little Red Riding Hood, story.
The Grimms include two tellings of this tale, the first of which is the closest to the version Duffy shares. In this version, a young girl with a red hood enters the woods with a basket of food for her ailing grandmother. Her mother gives her a warning not to wander off or dawdle in the woods, but a wolf soon draws her into conversation, and encourages her to pick flowers in the forest. She does so, moving slowly enough that the wolf reaches her grandmother's house before her, and eats the old woman. Disguised as the grandmother, he also eats Little Red Cap upon her arrival. Eventually a hunter passes the house and finds the wolf there. Rather than shoot the wolf, he considers that the grandmother might be in his stomach and cuts him open instead. Little Red Cap and her grandmother emerge and fill the wolf with stones, so that when he wakes, he falls and dies from the weight. The story ends on a moral note, with Little Red Cap asserting that she will never disobey her mother by running off in the woods.
"Little Red Hat," a version collected in Italy and Austria, has a less neat ending. In this tale, Little Red Hat meets an ogre rather than a wolf as she journeys to her grandmother's house. The child says that she will reach her grandmother by going "across the stones," to which the wolf replies that he will go "across the thorns." He hurries, arrives first, eats the grandmother, and stores a number of her body parts in the house as if they are food. When the girl arrives, she encounters these body parts, consuming them as food and wine. She comments that they are strange, and though the wolf explains that they are her grandmother's body, she does not hear him. Since she is cold, the wolf urges her to remove her clothes and climb into bed. She notes that he is hairy and that he has large teeth, ears, and a large mouth—at which the wolf opens his mouth and eats her.
In a Romanian version called "The Old Man and the Wolf," an old man lives with his four beloved grandchildren. Before leaving the house to buy food, he warns the children not to open the door to strangers. When a wolf approaches, they first obey his warning. However, the wolf then claims that their grandfather has sent him, and has given him cake to share with the children. They open the door, at which the wolf eats the children. He then drinks a bottle of brandy, becoming so drunk that he has to lie down. The grandfather returns to find him like this, and cuts him open, allowing the grandchildren to escape. The old man fills the wolf's belly with lime and sews him shut. Waking up thirsty, the wolf runs to a stream and drinks. The reaction of the water with the lime causes him to burn and explode.
This tale exists in many more versions, passed down orally and compiled in writing. It has also been adapted more liberally for the page—in Duffy's poem, for instance, and in the works of writers ranging from Beatrix Potter to Angela Carter and Neil Gaiman. It has made a mark in other art forms as well, with adaptations of or references to the story appearing in media such as operas, musicals, pop music, and film. While different tellers and creators have drawn inspiration from different aspects of the tale, many have explored its themes of sexuality, coercion, and power, finding it a useful tool through which to approach these issues.
