Analyzing Grimm's Once Little Red

Grimm starts his tale by portraying the image of how women, especially younger girls, should act. “Examples include the grandmother’s love for the girl, the mother’s feeling of responsibility for the grandmother, and the girl’s love for her grandmother” (Shavit 330). All of these views show how loving all of the female characters are, revealing Grimm’s views of how women behavior should be. Grimm has his readers imagine Little Red by describing how “if you set eyes on her, you could not but love her” (Grimm 13). This rhetorical method makes other younger woman want to be like Little Red, and sets up the rest of the story so they will want to gain traits that she has so they as well can be loved by all. Little Red also was told to “walk properly”
While walking to grandmas, Little Red encounters a male figure, the wolf, who acts friendly to deceive her, and tells her that there “are beautiful flowers all about” and then, Little Red “left the path and ran off into the woods looking for flowers” (Grimm 14). This portrays the image that young women are naïve and should be careful when going out on their own without someone to protect them. Little Red acts as the example of what not do if you are a woman in a patriarchal society. She strayed from the path, she did not listen to her mother, and in the eyes of society, reinforced why they believe women should be under the authority of men. This also calls out to parents as Zohar Shavit describes it by stating “the notion that adults are duty-bound to guide their children and that they are responsible for the behavior of the latter … became the basis for the mother -daughter relationship in the Grimm version” (Shavit 332). This shows that Grimm is reaching out to parents to make sure that their children conform to patriarchal norms, and that they should act like little girls who will grow up and always stick to the