“Red Riding Hood” photography by Rebeca Saray
Over at his Alternative Typewriter, Haralambi Markov takes his scalpel to “Red Skein”, my version of Little Red Riding Hood from The Girl With No Hands and Other Tales.
“Little Red Riding Hood has marked my childhood since an early age and continues to linger – a dark, dangerous story even when censored for children. Compared to other stories, which all dealt with how girls are punished, if they fail to adopt a certain behavior, Little Red explores universal fears and dangers – being lost, veering off the well-trodden path and being devoured metaphorically and literally. These are all possible, plausible, physical dangers coded into our blood and flesh.
Of course, it did help that the Big Bad Wolf cross-dressed to fool Little Red before eating her in a single bite. Even as a child’s story, the tale taps into our in-built self-preservation and gets our blood pumping with some good old-fashioned survival horror. I remember reading other versions where once freed the grandmother sews stones inside the wolf’s belly, who then falls into the river and drowns. The original story itself is fascinating and Angela Slatter herself has a go at it on her blog: Little Red Riding Hood – Life Off the Path.”
The rest is here.