Welcome back to White Rose of Avalon, my Darlings.    For this week’s Femme Fatale Friday post, I will be discussing the fairytale of Little Red Riding Hood as a tale of initiation!   

The story of Little Red Riding Hood is likely one of the most well-known and easily recognized of all fairytales.   The premise is simple enough: a young girl goes out in the woods to visit her grandmother, who lives deep in the forest.   She is told by her mother to keep to the path and not stray from it.   Of course, being young and naive, the girl strays from her path while picking flowers, and that is how she first encountered the Wolf.   However, the Wolf did not immediately kill her; instead using the information gained from the exchange to find his way to the grandmother’s house first.   Which leads to the most iconic moment of the tale, with the Wolf impersonating the grandmother, having already eaten her, and luring in the young girl, whom he also eats.   Of course, the story ends happily, at least in most tellings, with a kindly Woodsman cutting open the Wolf’s stomach to free the girl and her grandmother.

Now, from my short recap of the tale, you may wonder where the story of initiation lies.   After all, it is a rather gruesome cautionary tale to teach children not venture off the beaten path while in the woods, for you do not know what dangers may lurk, is it not?   Well, the story is certainly a cautionary tale, but there is so much more to the story than that!    The story of Little Red Riding Hood is, as I noted at the beginning of this post, also a tale that can be read as an initiation.   In particular, I see this fairytale as an Initiation into Womanhood.

Let’s dig into how that is the case.   Red Riding Hood, the young heroine of the story, is a girl who is making a trek alone into the deep woods to see her grandmother.   The fact that she is going to see the matriarch of her family is significant, as we can view this as the younger generation learning the wisdom of the Crone.   Beyond that, her mother warns her to keep to the path, but does not accompany Red Riding Hood, which can be viewed as a sign that this is a path that the young girl must walk alone.   Red Riding Hood is going on a Quest, a Spiritual Quest, which will involve her being tested.   

The Big Bad Wolf is there to lead her astray; he is the beginning of the Quest, the beginning of the test.   Red Riding Hood does fall for his trap, at first, which lulled her into a false sense of security.   However, when she gets to her grandmother’s house, she is actively questioning the Wolf, actively seeing through the deception, until she herself is also swallowed.   Of course, in most versions, Red Riding Hood and her grandmother are saved by the kindly Huntsman, cutting open the stomach of the Wolf and freeing them.   So, the story ends happily, but it also ends with Red Riding Hood having experienced many trials and tribulations.

She has learned the hard way that not everyone you meet in life can be trusted.   We can even view her time spent in the Belly of the Beast, quite literally, as a time of confronting the Shadow and a time of the Heroine’s Journey!   After all, the idea of the Heroine’s Journey, versus the more commonly discussed Hero’s Journey, is that the Heroine’s Journey is an internal one.   The Herione’s Journey is a dive into the depths of the Underworld, the depths of the Otherworld, and the depths of the individual Soul.   I have written several times about my love of fairytales with Sleeping Curses, and how the Sleeping Curse may be interpreted as the protagonist going on a Spiritual Heroine’s Journey while asleep.   And I think that the same could be said of Red Riding Hood in the Wolf’s Belly.

By the end of the story, Red Riding Hood has surely learned to be cautious and wary of strangers, especially those who have an air of danger.   Although she was initially comfortable with the Wolf, she learned to question him when he impersonated her grandmother.   Then she sprang forth from his belly, now ready to grow up into Womanhood.   As I have already said, her journey being to see her grandmother is a show of the young Maiden learning the wisdom of the Crone.   In many ways, I think that by the end, Red Riding Hood has inherited her grandmother’s wisdom through this initiation process!

I hope that you have enjoyed this look at Little Red Riding Hood as an initiation into womanhood.   What is your favorite aspect of this age-old fairytale?   Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

Note on Image: The image at the top of the post is a Little Red Riding Hood illustration by Arthur Rackman.   I found the art on https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Arthur_Rackham_Little_Red_Riding_Hood.jpg.                         

LINK TO AVALONIAN ROSE FAERY MYSTERIES PATREON: patreon.com/AvalonianRoseFaeryMysteries 

Further Reading

• Little Red Riding Hood by Charles Perrault
• Little Red Riding Hood by the Brothers Grimm