Though the book began as her senior thesis in folklore and mythology, Orenstein is not a scholar. We come into the book good-humored but braced for the worst, fully prepared to be shocked and horrified by what our parents were really telling us those many years ago. Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: Sex, Morality, and the Evolution of a Fairy Tale, by Catherine Orenstein ’90, sounds so intriguing largely because it seems to offer us the chance to learn about ourselves.
Reading a scholarly take on a fairy tale, as an adult, is rather like looking at the ingredients list on a package of lunchables: it tasted fine when we were kids, but now that we know what’s inside, it’s hard to believe we ever got it down.
It is now common academic practice to see the tales as models for, and mirrors of, cultural concerns, representing and commenting on social realities. The notion that fairy tales are simple stories for simple minds is long out of fashion.
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