“Grandmas Do Worse:” The Kristevan Feminine in Contemporary Versions of Little Red Riding Hood

Abstract

ABSTRACT Recent scholarship on intergenerational female relationships in “Little Red Riding Hood” often stresses conflict. Examining such relationships from the perspective of adolescent daughtering through Julia Kristeva’s idea of the feminine in three contemporary versions of the story, Angela Carter’s “The Werewolf”, Kiki Smith’s “Bedlam”, and Gillian Cross’s Wolf, this study demonstrates that some friction is necessary for recreating the protagonists’ grandmaternal relationship, which positively highlights female bonding and enhances the protagonists’ maturity and feminine development to embrace new beginnings with an environmental twist.