☕️ Alice’s Mad Tea Party Presents: Alice Spills the Tea – Red Riding Hood
Pour your tea, darlings, and tuck your pinkies out of the sugar bowl. Tonight, we wander deep into the forest with a girl in a crimson cloak. You think you know Red Riding Hood? Oh, sweet naïveté - it’s far darker and far sharper than your bedtime storybooks suggest.
Once upon a time, in a village hidden from the prying eyes of the world, lived a young girl loved by all - especially her grandmother. Her mother, a practical sort with a mind for protection, sewed her a cloak of the deepest red. Not simply a garment, darlings, but a warning, a beacon, and a mark of innocence under threat. From this cloak came her name: Red Riding Hood.
One crisp morning, her mother handed her a basket of bread, butter, and sweet cakes. “Take this to your grandmother,” she said, eyes shadowed with worry. “She is ill, and the forest is full of shadows. Stay upon the path and do not dawdle.” Red Riding Hood nodded, snugging her hood tight, and set off down the winding forest path.
Ah, the forest! Alive with whispers, rustling branches, and sunlight that danced like fleeting spirits. Every leaf and shadow felt as if it carried a secret, a lurking danger. Red Riding Hood, young and curious, strayed to pick flowers for her grandmother, unaware that each step off the path drew her deeper into peril.
And there he was - the wolf. Sleek, cunning, and terrifyingly charming. His eyes glinted like black gems, sharp and calculating. “Good morning, little one,” he purred, smooth and sweet, yet carrying the weight of menace. “Where are you off to on this fine morning?”
In her innocence, Red Riding Hood answered, spilling her destination. The wolf’s ears twitched. Swift as a shadow, he vanished into the forest, racing ahead to the grandmother’s house. There, he swallowed the old woman whole, donned her garments, and waited - patient, malevolent, and poised.
When Red Riding Hood arrived, she sensed something was off. Her grandmother looked strange, her voice hoarse, her eyes unnaturally large. And those teeth - oh, sharp and wicked - peeked beneath the nightcap.
“Grandmother, what big eyes you have,” she said, voice trembling.
“All the better to see you with, my dear.”
“What big ears you have!”
“All the better to hear you with.”
“And what big teeth you have!”
“All the better to eat you with!”
In Perrault’s 1697 French version, this tale ended sharply: the wolf swallowed the girl whole, leaving no huntsman, no happy ending—only a chilling warning. Children, especially girls, must not trust strangers; the world is cunning, patience is peril, and innocence fragile.
The Brothers Grimm, 1812, took a slightly kinder path. As the wolf prepared to devour her, a huntsman passing by heard the commotion, burst in, and cut open the wolf’s belly—rescuing both Red Riding Hood and her grandmother. They filled the beast with heavy stones. When he awoke, greedy and foolish, he fell dead.
Every detail, my darlings, is a thread of meaning. The crimson cloak is blood and experience, curiosity and warning. The forest is a realm of choices and dangers, not mere scenery. The wolf? Every charming menace lurking behind polite smiles in your world.
And the versions we know today, soft and sweetened for children? They are shadows of the original - a playful veneer over darkness that has always existed in the corners of the forest, in the teeth of predators, and in the delicate hearts of the curious.
So, my sweetlings, next time you wander a path in the woods - or hear whispers of a girl in a red cloak - remember: shadows wait, predators plot, and innocence is a fragile flame. Keep your wits sharper than your curiosity, and, as always… sip your tea carefully, for some tales bite as sharply as any wolf.
- Alice, Queen of Ink & Lore
