Carol Ann Duffy’s World’s wife: Little Red Cap Analysis

January 5 2018

Introduction

The technique of story retelling comes with thrust for changing the original story. In this exercise the retell acquire considerable freedom that includes owning up the new story and giving it new aspects developed from the original story. During these transitions a myriad of changes on the original shape of the original story occurs, there come inevitable changes like the thematic concerns addressed by the new creation of the story. The new author may tend to adopt a completely different storyline or stick to the original but modify the characters and their roles or the vice versa in order to pass a seemingly original message across. From the World’s Wife Little Red Cap poem retell by Duffey explores all the freedoms that she acquires from her new version of the poem. She, for instance, deviates from the original Red Cap’s role and character as a kid and assigns a role in the new retell poem a role and character that demonstrates a transition and end of childhood. This feature alone has changed the original character in Grimm’s original poem where Red Cap is depicted as a kid who is naively innocent but not obedient which completely affects character’s roles. This essay will be exploring the features and what influenced the new shape of the poem as adopted by Duffey in World’s wife developed from Grimm’s Little Red Cap poem. This paper will do so in analyzing the roles assigned to the character alongside the significance of such roles as well as the styles adopted to pass a message or theme across in the poetry while looking into the reason for choices of such styles and significance.

Little Red Cap

Duffey gives the Little Red Cap new roles and stature different from Grimm’s assigned role which the Little Red Cap plays as a naïve kid that depends on her mother’s advice to remain on the right path. Due to her naivety in Grimm’s Little Red Cap, the little girl easily gets convinced by the wolf that she meets on her way to her grandmother’s place and veers off the path (Carol Ann Duffy, p,1-12). She gives the wolf the directions to her grandmother’s place without knowing of its ill intentions of the wolf to go and eat her up. When she goes to fetch a bouquet of beautiful flowers to take along with cake and wine to her grandmother. The wolf leaves her grandmother’s house disguised as the Little Red cap and eats her up. After this, the wolf puts on the kid’s grandmother’s clothes in disguise so that he eats the Little Red cap also. In Grimm’s story, the Little Red cap falls prey of wolf but is saved by a hunter who slaughters the wolf to save two. Duffey assigns the Little Red Cap an innocent trait but so naïve as portrayed in Grimm’s poem. In this technique, she is able to depict the girl at the end of her childhood at sixteen as a strong woman who uses her beautiful looks to get drinks from the wolf(Carol Ann Duffy, p,1-12). In her poem, the Little Red Cap does not fall a prey and not times she dependent on her mother’s advice to remain on the right path as told in the Grimm’s original version. Due to the time of her new poem publication, the new role and stature assigned are influenced by the feminism notion especially where show that the girl is seduced by the good looks of the wolf. She is destined to show the liberation of women where she suggests that it is not true that the kid girl loves the wolf dearly. In so doing, she seeks to put across and extinguish the stereotype that it is not true that women should not be regarded as predictive on men against the existing stereotype. She also shows the vigour in women to induce a self-liberation from dangerous endeavours with men who take the shape of the wolf where the Little Red Cap grabs an axe from the hunter this time to save her from the wolf enclosure of dangers. Towards the end of the poem, the Little Red Cap in the World’s wife retell emerges as a heroin that is able to sort issues independently. For instance, where she puts stones on the wolf’s stomach is a depiction that she intuitively does not want the wolf to recognize that they had been liberated.

Duffy is able to transform the role of the wolf from that of a villain that torments the women character especially the grandmother and the Little Red Cap where he dominates in the role of cunning the little kid as well as well eating her including her grandmother by pretending to be the Little Red Cap. In Grimm’s poem, the wolf is depicted as the villain all the way that uses luring things including his looks to lure the little girl into swallowing her up despite her fear that was strange in her grandmother’s house. The Little Red Cap also due to her naivety who tricks her with the idea of fetching beautiful flowers for her grandmother’s thus disappearing following the directions that she gave due to her naivety to her grandmother’s house where he eats her up. To put across the feeling of women’s role as the heroine in the poem retell, Duffy depicts the wolf as an average character who also falls prey of the women looks and is used to guide the Little Red Cap towards liberation as is seen at the last line of the poem.

Use of imagery and symbolism

Duffey draws the picture in the audience’s mind of a bush where the Red Little Cap veers off the path contrary to her mothers’ advice. The bush represents a world of adult women where they are expected to rescue themselves from cunning wolves.Little Red cap in Duffey’spoem do not rely on her mother’s advice entirely. In Duffey’s bush, the little red cap succeeds to kill the wolf using the axe and she remains alone in the forest where walks out with a bunch of flowers. In the approach as adopted in Duffey’s world’s wife the world represents a world where women are willing to bring problems to problems facing them (Jacob and Wilhem Grimm, p 5-10). In Grimm’s imagery of the Little Red Cap is left helpless in the wolf’s stomach with her grandmother until the hunter comes to save them.Grimm’s imagery features to the wolf tend to make arouse the curiosity of the little kid who gets lured to the wolf pretending to her grandmother(Carol Ann Duffy, p,1-12). Though she is suspicious of what she exclaims “what big eyes grandmother” (line-19) of Duffy’s world’s wife she seems to lose trust on her instincts due to naivety and childish curiosity which makes the woman role seem villainous due to the susceptible nature of the kid Little Red Cap(Jacob and Wilhem Grimm, p 5-10).The wood venture by the Little Red Cap represents is symbolically used to depict that life a transitioned from childhood woman life looks like without the advice from her mother. Although she falls in love with wolf, it is imperative that symbolism was used by Duffy to signify the point at which the Little Red Cap was able to sustain her life in the wood which is supposedly representative of a tough life out of mother’s care.Also, the departure from the original Little Red Cap, Duffy avoids using the little girl who fell in love with a red cap a representative of women’s culture but changes here role and character to that which represents heroic traits of women other than mere culture.

Conclusions

From the analysis of the world’s wife and the Little Red Cap by Duffy and Grimm respectively, this essay has been able to conclude that authors who chose to retell a story from an original story tell it differently based on their inspirations of their writings. This has been discussed above where Duffy changed the role and character of the original Little Red Cap she could demonstrate the potential in women heroin actions. She feels that the original work by Grimm was based on male chauvinism in that the woman character is depicted as the villain due to her innocence and naivety. Importantly, the techniques adopted by Duffy in the retell the poem’s story revolves around her school of thought concerning surrounding feminist debates which as analyzed all through this paper influenced her change of imagery and symbolism representations.

References

Carol Ann Duffy. The World’s Wife: Poems Analysis, By Julia Geddes, Wessex P, p. 1-12. Retrieved from: https://moodle.asw.waw.pl/pluginfile.php/143617/mod_resource/content/1/Carol%20Analysis.pdf (Accesses 12 October 2017)

Jacob and Wilhem Grimm. The Little Cap Poem. p. 5, (2012) retrieved from: http://bths.enschool.org/ourpages/auto/2012/2/1/43427527/3%20Little%20RedRidding%20Hood%20Stories001.pdf