Little Red Riding Hood

Listening to Katherine May interviewing Erica Berry on her new book Wolfish triggered the memory of my first Hallowe’en costume, Red Riding Hood. Wolves have often been a cypher for our fears. Berry believes wolves are more than what they seem — that we project our fears onto them and make them symbols of everything that terrifies us. Yep.

Hallowe’en in Winnipeg could be a range of a coolish evening stroll to needing costume layers piled over a snowsuit. Actually my mother was pretty smart to figure out a costume which was waterproof, easy to put on overtop of almost anything and was actually an identifiable character. She put rouge on my cheeks. The basket was the best part. I honestly have no recollection who my brothers were supposed to represent. They only got paper bags for their loot. (By the way, I still have that basket).

The Red Riding Hood persona stuck in my brain, way back in the caverns where fear is emblazoned by your mother. Fear of the dark, fear of wolves, fear of men. The morality of the time was sexual matters were dangerous and could even result in death.

The Red Riding Hood story has always captured me. My piano teacher made me learn a suite of music written in 1926. It was the fairytale told in eleven short songs, starting out with Red at her home, saying goodbye to mother, a basket of nice things, going through the woods, introduction of the wolf, gathering wildflowers, the poor old grandmother, arriving at her cottage, meeting the wolf and finally being rescued by the woodmen. It was all very dramatic music at about a Grade Three Royal Conservatory level. And I actually enjoyed the performance of it. The entire suite I could easily still play for you today.

The red hood was my costume for at least three or four years. Years later I did the same thing to my own daughter and dressed her up as Red. Stay on the path. Be a good little girl or the wolf will get you. Women should not stop to talk to strange men lest they get themselves into some kind of trouble. Don’t get into bed with strange cross-dressing beasts. The sexual foreboding and censoring was as layered as the costume.

I’ve had nightmares about wolves. I’ve only seen one in the wild from a long distance as I was driving. I think the wolf thing also caused my fear of dogs.

At age seven I was allowed to be a princess. An easy costume for the southern California climate where we were living at the time. After that I had numerous years of costumes which today would be labelled politically incorrect, the pictures of which are embarrassing to say the least.

Numerous retellings of the Red Riding Hood story have been written. Ones with feminist interpretations where Red saves herself by virtue of her own wit or skill. Ones where she kills the wolf herself. One where she not saved by woodmen. Who needs a male saviour?