Little Red Cap

Theme: Coming of Age, Innocence and Experience, Gender Stereotypes

The red clothes of the young woman symbolize passion, lust and experience.

Annotations:

First Stanza: The young woman is said to be leaving her house and venturing into the woods. This can be said as her transition from childhood to adulthood, and coming out of her comfort zone. Her house symbolizes her sheltered childhood, while the open fields and woods symbolize her path towards new experiences, which can be unpredictable and new, just like the woods and open fields. She sees married men keeping their factories and allotments like “mistresses”. This goes to say that these men take great care of their business, and are very sincere to them. It was here where she first saw a glimpse of the man, whom she describes as a ‘wolf’.

Second Stanza: The woman sees the man reading a poem, describing his voice being as deep as a wolfish drawl. Red wine stains his beard. She finds his facial features both intimidating and attractive. She makes sure he sees her and buys her a drink, indicating that she may have seduced him.

Third Stanza: The woman is attracted to the man because of his poetry, which she believed would help her explore the world outside her house more. The wolfish man leads her to his house. The path to his house seems to be dark and thorny. The woman’s clothes get stuck and torn in many places, which look like clues for a murder.

Fourth Stanza: They are at the man’s house. His breath on her ear seems to be teaching her a love poem while she clings on his body till dawn, making love. She then asks, ‘What little girl doesn't dearly love a wolf?’ This might indicate a gender stereotype where every girl is expected to love a man. When she says ‘wolf’ she means a somewhat ‘masculine’ man whose features are bold, rough and confident.

Fifth Stanza: She then leaves his arms and goes in search of a white dove – a symbol of chastity. The bird flies right from her hand into the man’s mouth who eats it in one bite. This scene may describe the loss of the woman’s virginity which was taken by the man in just one night. The man, however, seems quite unaffected by this and casually remarks about the convenience of receiving breakfast in bed. Right after he sleeps, the young woman then goes to the back of his lair, where she sees a whole wall aglow with books. She is filled with intense pleasure and excitement upon seeing all these books.

Sixth Stanza: Time passes and the woman reflects on her relationship with the wolf after ten years. She compares the oppressive nature of their relationship to a mushroom growing from the mouth of a corpse. This implies that she might have killed him. The line ‘birds are the uttered thought of trees’ means that in ten years she has learned that art only comes from experience. She becomes disinterested in the wolf. Perhaps this is because she finds his poems repetitive and thus, boring. She picks up an axe and attacks a willow tree and a fish, to see what happens when she wields power in the woods. She then kills the man, inside whom she finds her grandmother’s bones, which she calls ‘virgin white’. The speaker discards of her dead lover by filling his stomach with rocks and then sewing him back up. She walks out of the wolf’s lair alone, carrying flowers and singing. Thus, she ends her oppressive relationship with the wolf and walks away, empowered.

Symbolism:

1. Birds – symbolize poetry and knowledge
2. White and Red – Throughout the poem, white has been used as a symbol of purity and innocence, while red symbolized lust and maturity.
3. The Woods – They are said to be an unfamiliar place for the speaker, symbolizing her journey from childhood to adulthood. The woods are unpredictable and wild – a representation of her expectations when she goes to the ‘wolf’s’ lair.

Stylistic Devices:

1. Allusion: “Into playing fields, the factory allotments / Kept like mistresses, by married kneeling men”
2. Metaphor: “Then I slid from between his heavy matted paws”
3. Alliteration: “Season after season, same rhyme same reason”
4. Repetition: “What big ears / he had! What big eyes he had! What teeth!”

Global Issues: