1 “The Werewolf,” in The Bloody Chamber (1978), Angela CARTER

Note how Carter uses a brief description of the setting as a transition to introduce each of the three parts of her story. It's only at the beginning of the second part of the story that there are any of the usual, easily recognizable indications that we are being told the tale of ‘Little Red Riding Hood. Finally, pay close attention to the way Carter turns traditional ‘sexist’ views of the fairy tale on its ear. ‘Red’ is not a helpless girl in the forest – far from it! She is a blood-thirsty, knifewielding four-foot-tall barbarian who attacks and maims the wolf and gets her grandmother lynched. In addition to an attack on ‘sexual’ discrimination and stereotypes, some might say that Carter even brings some criticism of Ageism.

2 Little Red-Riding Hood & Political Correctness- Excerpt from James Finn Garner’s Politically Correct Bedtime Stories (1994)-

Garner’s main purpose is to make fun of the PC movement, and nearly every sentence includes some kind of wordplay, qualification, disclaimer, relative phrase, apposition or unexpected twist that makes a mockery of political correctness. Note for example, how euphemisms designed to allude to handicaps (“as optically challenged as a bat”), to erase possibly sexist terms (“womyn’s work” or “woodchopper-person”, to avoid saying ‘man”) or to give prestige to an otherwise less glamorous job (“a log-fuel technician, as he preferred to be called”). The text also takes a few pot-shots at what the author must consider the psycho-babble of theday. Thus the wolf is only guilty of a “willful invasion of her personal space (Fr: ‘son espace vital’)”. Freudian readings of the tale, often associating the girl’s fear of the wolf with her fear of her sexuality, is also attacked in the second paragraph, when we are told that she noticed the obvious Freudian imagery and was not afraid.