Little Red Riding Hood is a poem by Carol Ann Duffy published by Picador as part of her 1999 poetry collection, "The World's Wife". The book consists of telling fairy tales, mythology, female figures in history and folk tales. In these retellings Duffy gave voice to these female characters, allowing them to express themselves and offer the audience an experience of seeing the world through a female perspective. It also allowed the characters to be important or dominant, which is in contrast to the usual male dominance and patriarchal ideas. Duffy is well known for her feminist literary works, and Little Red Riding Hood is one of many works in which she allows us to see the world through a feminist lens. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Little Red Riding Hood is the retelling of "Little Red Riding Hood" by Brother Grimm. The first thing that gives us a glimpse of the character's nature is in the title itself. Little Red Riding Hood instead of LRRH, the protagonist instead of the usual hood now wears a cap. The cap which is usually associated with modesty, shyness or something which is normally worn by women is replaced by a cap which is not so traditional, very unique, unisex and not so commonly worn by women in those times, it shows that this Little Red-cap is not a person like the usual girls of the time, she is different. And even little Red Riding Hood tells this poem herself in the first person, which is very important because it tells us that she had a voice of her own, which is rare in a patriarchal society where female voices are often repressed and neglected. According to John Welford, “Red cap is the name given informally to the Royal Military Police of the British Army. Anyone who knows this will therefore expect this young woman to be a girl with a don't mess around attitude. “At the end of childhood” we see that the protagonist has now reached biological maturity. Now he is entering adulthood. Since she has now reached puberty, it is natural that girls want to learn more about the world, explore, gain new experiences, find themselves, their passion and even explore their love life, which is what we see the protagonist do. She is seen embarking on a new journey traveling from well-civilized areas to less populated areas and eventually stops at the edge of the forest. A young girl just entering puberty has started a journey alone without any adult accompanying her to give us an idea of ​​how excited she is to explore and another quality the protagonist seems to have is courage and self-confidence. We see nowhere in the poem that little Red Riding Hood is scared, even though the places she is going are as scary and full of danger as the forest. It is possible that her going into the forest represents the fact that the protagonist is a free-spirited girl. “It was there that I first saw the wolf” coming of age brings with it not only physical changes but also hormonal changes, she is full of passion. We see the protagonist explore love life where she is seen chasing a wolf who is twice her age, which is brave for someone her age. The character in the red hat is seen exploring a sexual fetish that many girls have for older men and even bad boys. More than exploring love she seems lustful noticing the wolf from head to toe. She is furious with sexual desire and attraction to the wolf. "She stood in the clearing, reading her verses aloud" another thing she says about the character of Little Red Riding Hood is that she is passionate aboutpoetry and knowledge, she seems eager to learn wisdom and thinks the wolf is the way to get her hands on poetry and the books tell us that she is not naive, rather she is intelligent and manipulative and knows how to get things done. “At recess I made sure he saw me, sweet sixteen year old, I was never a child, a foundling, and he brought me a drink” she is seducing the wolf by showing off all her attractive qualities and even the fact that she is a virgin . When we compare Little Red Riding Hood to Little Red Riding Hood we see big differences in the character, in the Brother Grimm version Little Red Riding Hood is seen as a naive and innocent girl, however in this retelling Duffy has made significant changes in the character as that of an indomitable girl. We also see a little red cap approaching the wolf instead of the wolf approaching her, it breaks the stereotype of how the male is always expected to make the first move. According to Molly Clark Hillard this poem shows the predations of poor girls in a market economy. This is evident in the poem where she is seen selling herself, listing her marketable attributes, "sweet sixteen". “I never was, darling.” Etc. Even though we see her sell herself, I don't entirely agree with Molly's statement, we see Little Red Riding Hood making her own decisions, she is seen luring the wolf to herself by taking the first step. It cannot be said that Little Red Riding Hood is a prey but rather she can be seen as a predator because we saw that the wolf in the original version had hidden motives from Little Red Riding Hood on how he planned to eat her and her grandmother and in this version the little red hat hides his motive to gain knowledge about wolf poetry. However one of the attributes she uses to describe herself to the wolf is "waif", which means a homeless or abandoned person, especially a child, this shows us that she is trying to represent herself as someone who has no one and is pitiful , which says she's also quite diplomatic. Also, in the fourth verse, we see her say “The wolf, I knew, would lead me deep into the woods.” She seems well aware of what the wolf will do, but still goes with him fearlessly and curiously. of the unknown. He is embracing all dangers just to get his hands on poetry and knowledge. We see that the protagonist's journey to learn poetry and knowledge from the wolf cost her to sacrifice her virginity "my socks torn to shreds, shreds of red from my blazer" this phrase tells us about the sexual encounter she has with the wolf and also from this meeting he seems aggressive because we see that her socks are torn, red shoes, the red color could represent blood and through "clues of murder" he tells us that she has not simply lost her virginity but rather she has been killed, and a red blazer says this about the appearance of the red cap, the red blazer could represent her school uniform and that she was somewhat ruined in her sexual encounter with the wolf, it tells us that she has now left her student life behind and began a journey towards being a woman. “I lost both shoes” both shoes could be a symbol of her virginity and innocence that she loses in that encounter. Another way we can see this is as if she is making a business deal by trading her virginity and innocence for poetry and knowledge. We know she's manipulative. “but when you get there, wolf's den, you better watch out” her sacrifice of her virginity and innocence opens the door to the wolf's den for her. He manages to complete his task of getting his hands on the poetry and wisdom of the wolf. “he went in search of a white dove” 2020.