Finding A Name

One of my favorite fairy tales is Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its subsequent Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There. When I was a girl, I read the book and watched almost every version on TV and in the movies. I didn’t realize it then, but Alice’s escapades began my own quest to find stories of female adventure. Considering they were written in 1865 and 1871, respectively, I’d consider them some of the earliest forms of feminist fairy tales.

I would definitely walk through a tiny door behind a curtain

Then again, there is her red-caped sister in adventuring, Red Riding Hood. My feelings about Red have run the gamut. Sometimes I think of her as a neglected child—who sends their little girl into a wolf-infested forest to bring food to an elderly woman? Maybe it’s the Latina in me, but shouldn’t Abuela have moved in with the family already? Other times I think of Red as a hapless girl talking to strangers and too ignorant to recognize that her granny has been replaced by a furry predator.

But in my quiet moments I wonder if she isn’t a bit of a rebel. She’s sent to the woods and wanders from the path. She converses with a dangerous stranger. And when confronted with an obvious fake grandmother, it almost seems like she’s flirting with her ridiculous questions. If Little Red Riding Hood had been written today, she’d be a badass! Maybe being eaten was a calculated risk in order to find her grandmother. I’d read that story.

Image by ImaArtist from Pixabay

My point is, we (myself included) spend a lot of time talking about fairy tales that feature women and girls who seem to lack agency, but there are plenty of interesting fairy tale characters who also fueled my love of women adventurers. It was what gave my blog its name.