Little Red Riding Hood In Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber

Little Red Riding Hood is one of the most famous tales written by Angela Carter in her book The Bloody Chamber. As said before, Angela Carter provides us with a new writing from a post-modern point of view. It is a text associated to Jaques Derrida’s concept of deconstruction: in this specific case, the author’s aim is the deconstruction of the (opposed) socially accepted gender roles, the demolition of the feminine prototypical models imposed by the binary thinking proceeding from modernity.

If we wanted to analyse the version of this feminist author properly, we would have to consider the different versions of the story that have appeared over the years. We have three versions; the first one from an unknown original and oral tradition, the second one by Charles

In the oral tradition there is Little Red Riding Hood, who single-handedly is able to escape from the clutches of the wolf by her own cunning and wit (she tells the wolf that she has to go outside the house to defecate and then escapes). Here we also see eschatological references. The story of Perrault is considered a cautionary tale, considering that the little girl does not have the same fate and is eaten by the wolf as her grandmother. This version emphasizes the care girls must have not to fall into the clutches of a man-wolf, or how they should keep pureness and chastity without departing from the correct cultural and moral "path" predominating at that time (a metaphor for the route that follows the little girl to reach her grandmother). Later, the Grimm brothers introduced the male saviour figure -the huntsman- who rescues women at risk, perpetuating male authority and the necessity of his help for the women’s survival. In addition, “Little Red Riding Hood” is presented as guilty for disobeying her mother’s commandments not to leave the way, so that her fate is caused by her rebellion and