In Big Teeth – Investigation into a Little Misunderstanding, Lucile Novat invites us to reread Little Red Riding Hood. His intuition is that we were wrong about the meaning to give to this tale. We are convinced that it is written to warn (childish) readers against strangers (perverts hiding in the woods); that in other words, the danger would come from outside, from the dark woods where unsavory strangers lurk.
But doesn't it emerge rather from within? Because it is when she arrives at her grandmother’s house – and in her grandmother’s bed – that the Riding Hood is devoured. There is therefore, perhaps, a misunderstanding: “I believe that what Little Red Riding Hood teaches us is that the danger is not in the forest, but rather in the home. That there is not so much to be wary of unknown wolves as of family wolves.”
At the origins of a misunderstanding
But how did we come to misunderstand the meaning of Little Red Riding Hood? For Lucile Novat, this misunderstanding comes from our lack of understanding of the reality of sexual assault. We in fact represent the aggressors as complete strangers, whereas the vast majority of sexual assaults on minors take place within the home, sometimes even in the presence of family members.
“The figures given in 2023 by the Independent Commission on Incest and Sexual Violence (Ciivise) are […] radically clear: only 8% of child abuse attacks are perpetrated by strangers.” Such figures suggest that the woods crossed by Chaperone are less dangerous than her grandmother's house; It is moreover on this interpretative track that Gustave Doré placed us in his famous engravings. In fact, it represents two wolves rather than one. He who lives in the forest has something…
Read more on Slate.fr
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