Considering that two of the main characters of Happily Upon a Time are somewhat on the obscure side, and the rest aren’t necessarily readily identifiable, I thought it best to post a series of entries to elucidate readers as to who the group is. Let us begin with the one that in all likelihood rings the most bells: Hood.
Original Name: Little Red Riding Hood
Origin: The oldest written version was penned by Frenchman Charles Perrault
Original tale: Le Petit Chaperon Rouge
I struggled quite a bit with the notion of using Hood in my story, given that she’s arguably the single fairy tale character with the greatest number of modern reinterpretations and retellings, with several paradigm shifts in her relationship with the Wolf over the years. The girl has been a werewolf lover, a werewolf herself (voluntarily or involuntarily), has had a love triangle with the Hunter and the Wolf and has been seen sighted wearing a skimpy outfit while eviscerating the latter with a katana to save her granny. Thus, I was practically begging to be accused of following up on other people’s ideas.
Nevertheless, I decided to take the chance, for not only does my version of the tale and of Red Riding Hood’s personality have their very distinct characteristics, I also quickly came to realize that a group of characters including a repressed sorcerer, a misogynist, a frustrated runt and a demure girl desperately needed someone like Hood. Why? Because, historically, those suffering from lycanthropy have always been characterized by a strong sexual aura, duly emphasized by their voracious appetites and weak impulse control. On its face, the tale of a good girl who brings cookies to her granny and ends up eaten by a wolf is fairly innocent, a parable of female sexual maturity, in which the colour of the girl’s hood symbolizes her menstrual flow and the figure of the wolf embodies the threat to her chastity. Following that line of thought, lycanthropy and puberty share a number of parallelisms as well, given how both effect behavioural and bodily changes – changes that, in the case of female sexuality, are traditionally influenced by moon phases.
So there I had it: A chaste, timid girl with the sprouting body of a Lolita, desired by all the men in her village and smothered by her overprotective mother, who fears her imminent puberty might trigger the lycanthropic curse she inherited from her grandmother. The grandmother who served as the perfect excuse to convincingly retell the ever amusing scene of a wolf wearing granny’s clothes. Not only that, she would also serve as the catalyst for the drastic change Hood undergoes, turning her into a lecherous libertine with almost canine manners, a girl who starts indulging in every impulse that had been repressed by her strict mother. From prey to predator, Hood doubles as comedic relief and source of sexual tension amidst the group, providing a far more down-to-earth perspective of the strange and macabre events that characterize the world of Happily Upon a Time.
Next up, Donkey…