Red playfully—flirtatiously? —calls
out the traits and submits to what will happen in the bed. This is a story
about a girl wanting to be sexually active, who voluntarily removes her clothes
for the experience. However, it is no less an assault as the story becomes
violent. It is no longer a willing sexual encounter between two parties, but a
rape. The wolf, then, really is two-faced as both a predator under the guise of
someone that Red thought she could trust with such an encounter.
Modern audiences would see this as
a date rape, where Red goes willingly with a companion, but the encounter
suddenly turns violent. The caution is that there can be a wolf hidden within
people we can seemingly trust, and to exercise care. Red thought she knew what
she was doing both by speaking to the wolf and by removing her clothes. These
were signals of her willingness to engage in what she thought would happen, but
the reality was violent and final.
The happy ending to the story with
the Woodsman rescuing Red and Grandma was not present in the early versions of
the story. This was a story meant to convey just how deadly and duplicitous
people can be, especially when it comes to matters of passion. The wolf, a
predator, is rightly not a human being, reflecting an animal nature when it
comes to sex. The story is set in the wilderness, far from civilized spaces
where—ostensibly—such behaviors did not occur (though we know better).