Papers by Carola Maria Wide
Folklore: An electronic Journal of Folklore, 2024
Girls' initiation contributes to cultural representations in Western folk fairy tales. This study... more Girls' initiation contributes to cultural representations in Western folk fairy tales. This study examines girls' initiation in three contemporary versions of "Little Red Riding Hood", Angela Carter's "The Company of Wolves" and "Wolf-Alice" (1979), and Märta Tikkanen's Rödluvan (Little Red Riding Hood, 1986), in relation to "The Story of Grandmother", popularized by Paul Delarue (1956). Combining fairy-tale research with Kristevan theories on subjectivity, the feminine, and the genius, it examines how initiation assigns to the girl in Delarue's tale a social identity and role as a woman and how the contemporary tales negotiate this through the heroines' wooing of werewolves. The findings, presented in both written and visual forms, show the reach of the heroines' feminine psychosexual maturity, here called the girl genius, in Carter's and Tikkanen's versions, representing an alternative to traditional assumptions of girls' psychosexuality within normative heterosexuality.
NORA, 2022
Recent scholarship on intergenerational female relationships in “Little Red
Riding Hood” often st... more 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.
Gramarye, 2021
“Little Red Riding Hood” has been understood as a rape narrative by fairy-tale scholars. By combi... more “Little Red Riding Hood” has been understood as a rape narrative by fairy-tale scholars. By combining fairy-tale research, trauma studies, Kristevan theories on subjectivity and the genius, this study explores how Paula Rego’s Little Red Riding Hood Suite (2003), Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Tanith Lee’s “Wolfland” (1980), and Lia Francesca Block’s “Wolf” (2000), return to the encounter between girl and wolf, ending in violence in the tale’s tradition, and creatively transform it through the heroines’ narrating and overcoming trauma, as well as constructing what we call the girl genius that may be freeing for girls.
Unni Lindell's thriller Rødhette (2008) är en subversion av den traditionella folksagan " Rödluva... more Unni Lindell's thriller Rødhette (2008) är en subversion av den traditionella folksagan " Rödluvan ". Romanen präglas av en kvinnlig mördare som jagar män och baserar sig dels på en medeltida, muntlig sagotradition av kvinnliga berättare, dels på nyare versioner förmedlade av manliga författare. Medan färgen röd i den muntliga traditionen markerar kvinnlig initiation, indikerad med menarche, betecknar rött förkastad kvinnlig agens och patriarkalisk underkastelse i den nedtecknade traditionen. Den undermedvetna narrativen om färgen röd både upprepas och kritiseras i romanen. Kvinnliga mördare är ofta kritiker av patriarkatet och marginaliserade till abjektets begränsade plats i samhället i samhälls-engagerad kriminallitteratur. Denna artikel undersöker en kvinnlig mördare, abjekt och färgen röd i Lindells Rødhette. Kvinnlig initiation är i hennes narrativ konstruerad på den maskulina hjälte-myten och abjekt, vilka aktiverar en cykel av kvinnligt våld. Analysen bygger på kvinnlig initiation och socialt abjekt samt diskuterar kvinnlig identitet i relation till könsöverskridning, kropp och sexualitet. Genom våld-samma överskridningar av abjekt och initiation i hjältecykeln skiftar protagonisten från ett oskuldsfullt barn till ett traumatiserat offer och en mördarjägare, för att slutligen bli mamma. Endast genom att över-vinna abjektet, kan huvudfiguren fullgöra initiationen, hjälte-och mördarcykeln samt nå jämlikhet och rättvisa.
Unni Lindell’s crime novel Rødhette (2008) is a subversion of the traditional folktale “Little Red Riding Hood”. Through its introduction of a female murderer, a hunter who kills men, the novel draws on the medieval oral tale tradition of female storytellers and the later versions cemented by male writers. In the female tradition, the color red is a powerful marker of female initiation signified through menarche. In the written tradition, submission to patriarchy is highlighted, whereby the color red turns into a symbol of rejected female agency. In the novel the subconscious narrative of the stigmatized color is reproduced and criticized. In contemporary socially-engaged crime fiction, female perpetrators are often critics of patriarchy and marginalized to the liminality of the abject in society. This paper examines a woman who kills, the abject and red in Lindell’s Rødhette. Female initiation is in her story constructed on the masculine hero narrative and the abject as activating a cycle of female violence. The analysis draws on the social abject and female initiation in order to discuss transgressions of gender, body and sexuality related to feminine identity. In the novel, the abject, female initiation and the hero narrative intersect in the violent crossings of the protagonist, through which she transforms from an innocent child to a sexually violated and traumatized victim, a female hunter-killer, and finally, a mother. Only by successfully overcoming the abject can the protagonist complete the murder cycle, the hero quest and the initiation and achieve equality and justice.
Utgångsläget för den här interartistiska avhandlingen har varit att granska
intertextualitet och ... more Utgångsläget för den här interartistiska avhandlingen har varit att granska
intertextualitet och intermedialitet i förhållande till text och bild i fem postmoderna och
feministiska vuxenberättelser om “Rödluvan.” I min avhandling analyserar jag tre
noveller av den brittiska författaren Angela Carter, som går under den gemensamma
benämningen varg trilogin: “The Werewolf,” “In Company of the Wolves” och “Wolf-
Alice.” Dessa literära verk utgavs i en större samling noveller kallad The Bloody
Chamber år 1979. Dessutom har jag uvärderat två konstverk, s.k. visuella berättelser, av
den amerikanska konstnären Kiki Smith nämligen skulpturen Daughter (1999) och
litografin Born (2002). I min avhandling undersöker jag hur Angela Carter och Kiki
Smith i rollen som sagoberättare ger uttryck åt huvudkaraktärernas övergång från barn
till kvinna. Jag är intresserad av de olika feministiska uttryck som skapas under dessa
övergångsriter och hur den intertextuella dialogen som uppstår runt den kvinnliga
huvudkaraktären i berättelserna skapar ett kreativt tillstånd av ett kvinnligt geni.
Huvudteorin fokuserar på den intertextuella linjen av Julia Kristeva, som också har
utformat teorin om det kvinnliga geniet. Analysen är indelad i tre delar. I den första
delen behandlas ideologemet den röda luvan och dess betydelse i relation till den
mångfasetterade sagotraditionen Rödluvan, som består dels av en muntlig tradition av
kvinnliga sagoberättare, dels av Charles Perrault och Jacob och Wilhem Grimms
skriftliga berättelser. Del två fokuserar på ideologemet vargen och dess funktion som
varning. Del tre behandlar de fem olika övergångsriterna. ”The Werewolf” presenterar
en relativt traditionell övergångsrit där kunskap förmedlas från en äldre till en yngre
generation, i vilken Carter kritiserar rådande könsnormer genom att skapa två
självständiga och starka kvinnoporträtt. ”In Company of the Wolves” är en initiering till
kvinnliga sexualitet. I den här berättelsen alluderar Carter direkt till myten om den
passiva kvinnan och den heterosexuella manliga blicken. I ”Wolf-Alice” tar Carter upp
begrepp som kvinnlig och manlig tid. Daughter berättar om hur det är att växa upp till
kvinna med skägg, vilket väcker kritiska frågor som anspelar på sexuell identitet,
traditionella könsroller och stereotypa kvinnobilder. Born tar upp frågor som kvinnlig
tid, pånyttfödelse och stereotypa kvinnobilder. Genom de intertextuella företeelserna
och det kvinnliga geniet inför Carter och Smith en ny feministisk och estetisk form av
sagoberättande.
Conference Presentations by Carola Maria Wide
IPVI2021, 2021
Due to an ingrained cultural taboo, narratives of menstruation are repressed in contemporary Angl... more Due to an ingrained cultural taboo, narratives of menstruation are repressed in contemporary Anglophone countries. If these are accidentally conveyed by menstruating girls and women, the attitude towards menses is negative. Menstruation is socially constructed as undesirable, painful, and out-of-control, which stereotypes menstruants as violent, unstable, mentally, or physically ill emotionalists. The symbolic violence of repression and negativity that surrounds menstruation is disempowering and wounding to girls. This paper addresses menstrual trauma by attending to menstrual encounters in a new generation of fairy tales on the theme of “Little Red Riding Hood”: British writer Angela Carter’s short story “The Werewolf” (1979) and American Artist Kiki Smith’s visual storybook Bedlam (2001) and illustration Born (2001). This new generation of “Little Red Riding Hood” tales intertextually relates to the popularized versions by Charles Perrault (1697) and the Brothers Grimm (1812), in which the cultural narrative of menstruation is repressed. Specifically, I am interested in the ways in which the girl in the new generation of “Little Red Riding Hood” versions works through (grand)maternal abjection. The main theoretical concepts of the study are maternal abjection and the female genius by Julia Kristeva. I have adapted the former to include (grand)maternal abjection and the latter to contain the girl genius. Central to the discussion is the relationship between the girl and her grandmother which problematizes normalized assumptions of menses in relation to girls’ maturation, female sexuality, and motherhood. The results which I present in both written and visual forms show that working through abjection redresses the menstrual taboo and claims rebirth and the genius. Through a holistic journey towards menstrual agency, healing, and a new ethics, the menstrual narrative is transformed from a repressive to a regenerative narrative that is emancipatory for girls.
In 'Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection,' Julia Kristeva (1982: 10) states that “[t]he abject... more In 'Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection,' Julia Kristeva (1982: 10) states that “[t]he abject confronts us, on the one hand, with those fragile states where man strays on the territories of animal.” Starting in early civilization, abjection dwells on the borderline of human ethics. Situated between culture and animal, abjection protects the human race from animals, which back then represented sex and murder. On the other hand, Kristeva continues that abjection confronts human subjectivity through the unbinding of the maternal bond, prominent in infancy and adolescent girlhood. Primitive blood taboos bind animal and maternal abjection. Imprinted in the collective memory of contemporary Eurocentric culture, these taboos have created a rhizome of abjection, with crossings of death, murder and cessation, paradoxically, together with femininity, procreation and vitality. I use rhizome, in the sense of Rosi Braidotti, to signify, on the one hand, boundary-crossings and the blurring of boundaries; on the other hand, reconstructed by these, the multiple subject.
In my study, animal and maternal abjection materialize in the wolf, familiar from the Eurocentric fairy tale “Little Red Riding Hood.” Using abjection, the paper examines wolf-girl transmogrifications, in three contemporary narratives of “Little Red Riding Hood.” These are Angela Carter’s short story “Wolf-Alice” (1979), Kiki Smith’s sculpture Daughter (1999) and Ulla Jokisalo’s cut-out print Little Red Riding Hood (2015). For analyzing the written and visual narrative modalities, I use a cross-modalities method, which I name crossmodal storytelling. In the narratives, the wolf and the girl in red are merged into what I call the Wolf Girl. I am interested in how girl agency is constructed, through the crisis of abjection, represented by the Wolf Girl. According to Kristeva (1982: 10), abjection is only experienced through the synthesis of the self with an Other that the self violently essays to expel. In the narratives, the wolf represents this encounter with an Other. Marked by ambiguity, abjection destructs and reconstructs human development and relationships, through which process the human subject is formed and reformed. Through animal and maternal abjection, the Wolf Girl is marked by emotions of pain, destruction and paradoxically healing together with creation.
In addition to the theory on abjection, I identify the Wolf Girl with Rosi Braidotti’s notion of the posthuman that decenters the Eurocentric (hu)man. In her feminist politics 'The Posthuman' (2013:80), Braidotti describes the posthuman subject as a becoming-animal – “a she wolf and a breeder.” Representing the symbiosis of the female and animal, Braidotti’s she wolf embodies all living organisms. In the stories, by structuring the crises of animal and maternal abjection on the posthuman, subjectivity transcends beyond human language, society and gender to reconstruct a multiple subject, the Wolf Girl, fueled by ethical and political agency. Using creativity, relationality, collectiveness and healing, the results show that the new ethical and political register, what I refer to as girl agency, reflect on animal rights together with the sustainability of the Earth.
In the folktale “Little Red Riding Hood,” menstruation and rape are culturally ingrained issues t... more In the folktale “Little Red Riding Hood,” menstruation and rape are culturally ingrained issues that confine the female gender. In reading the color red as a female motif, this paper examines traumas of menstruation and rape in three contemporary narratives of “Little Red Riding Hood”: Paula Rego’s Little Red Riding Hood Suite (2003), Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) and Unni Lindell’s Rødhette (2004/2008). By structuring Joseph Campbell’s traditional male hero cycle on abjection and using theories of trauma and intertextuality, as well as a cross-modalities method, which I name crossmodal storytelling, for analyzing Rego’s visual together with Atwood’s and Lindell’s written stories, I show how the narratives redress these traumas and construct a new cultural narrative of girl agency. Through identifying the represented crisis of abjection, the study indicates new ways of constructing girlhood, gender and sexuality in contemporary Western society.
The illustration series Little Red Riding Hood Suite (2003/2006) by British visual artist Paula R... more The illustration series Little Red Riding Hood Suite (2003/2006) by British visual artist Paula Rego joins the continuum of counternarratives of the folktale “Little Red Riding Hood” which recolor the subconscious narrative of the color red. In Rego’s boldly crayoned narrative, prior readings of the color red affect the characters through intertextuality. The girl, the mother, the grandmother, and also the wolf sport the red stigma, which is loaded with ambiguous values of female agency and victimization. The story of the girl in the red marker originates in Western female oral culture, where the color red powerfully highlights female initiation and agency using menarche and the (grand)mother. During the Enlightenment, male writers however inscribe a new ending of sexual trauma on the folktale tradition. In the written tradition, the color red illustrates patriarchal subjugation of the girl, who is sentenced to death for a crime she is wrongly inculpated for. Contemporary storytellers and scholars, for example, Angela Carter (1979/2006) and Jack Zipes (1993), have commented on the rape and the rejection of female agency in the white Western male tradition of the folktale, which is still popular and read by children today. Following Carter and others, the subconscious narrative of red is both repeated and criticized in the Rego narrative, which is a story about violation, trauma and murder and contradictory healing through the abject act of murder. In the story, the mother disembowels the wolf with a pitchfork and thereby saves the girl through the heroic deed. Female killers often criticize patriarchy in socially-involved crime stories and are marginalized to the liminality of the abject in society.
In a close reading of the color red as a female motif, this paper examines sexual trauma in Rego’s Little Red Riding Hood Suite, through abjection and intertextuality. In Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (1982), Julia Kristeva examines the abject from the perspectives of social and maternal abjection, which can be further developed in the context of trauma. Overcoming the abject provides healing and thus reconstructs female subjectivity in the narrative. By structuring the traditional male hero cycle on abjection and using theories of trauma, intertextuality, and close reading, I demonstrate how Rego’s visual story redresses the trauma of the color red through abjection; on the one hand, by repeating what is abjected, which is the female gender and rape in the written tradition; on the other hand, by overcoming the abject and thus completing the hero cycle through the mother’s seeking justice by killing the wolf. By first exposing and then resolving the abject trauma of rape through murder, a new female subjectivity, where the mother transmogrifies from victim to avenger, is grafted on symbolic consciousness. In Rego’s work, the traditional roles of victim and victimizer are questioned. In this hero cycle, abjection, murder, and revenge vindicate the old narrative of red, which using ambiguity, creativity, and resurrection morph into a new reading of the color red constructed on female subjectivity, heroism, and agency.
Crossmodal storytelling is increasingly popular in contemporary culture, as images combine with t... more Crossmodal storytelling is increasingly popular in contemporary culture, as images combine with text. Simultaneously, we lack skills in crossmodal literacy. The aim of this paper is to outline a cross-modalities method to storytelling for my selection of articles on girl agency and abjection in contemporary literary and visual counternarratives of the folktale “Little Red Riding Hood.” In what follows, I attempt to answer the following questions: What is crossmodal storytelling? What does it consist of? How do I apply it? To illustrate my points, I use examples from the first article “Girl in Red” of my dissertation. The examples consist of one written and three visual narrative modalities. These are author Unni Lindell’s crime thriller Rødhette (2004) together with artist Paula Rego’s illustration series Little Red Riding Suite (2003), photographer Mia Damberg’s diasecs Bruises I-IV (2012) and artist Katja Tukiainens’s oil painting He Came from Behind the Wall (2015). My cross-modalities method analyzes different modalities along the narrative borders and is appropriated from theories of intertextuality, visuality and multimodality together with close reading and visual collaging. Drawing on my background as a visual artist, in addition to presenting my findings on girl agency in the written modality, my results will be displayed in visual collages. The benefit of a cross-modalities approach to storytelling is a comprehensive view on the folktale.
ABSTRACT
Unni Lindell’s crime novel Rødhette (2008) is a subversion of the traditional folktale “... more ABSTRACT
Unni Lindell’s crime novel Rødhette (2008) is a subversion of the traditional folktale “Little Red Riding Hood”. Through its introduction of a female murderer, a hunter who kills men, the novel draws on the medieval oral tale tradition of female storytellers and the later versions cemented by male writers. In the female tradition, the color red is a powerful marker of female initiation signified through menarche. In the written tradition, submission to patriarchy is highlighted, whereby the color red turns into a symbol of rejected female agency. In the novel the subconscious narrative of the stigmatized color is reproduced and criticized. In contemporary socially-engaged crime fiction, female perpetrators are often critics of patriarchy and marginalized to the liminality of the abject in society.
This paper examines a woman who kills, the abject and red in Lindell’s Rødhette. Female initiation is in her story constructed on the masculine hero narrative and the abject as activating a cycle of female violence. The analysis draws on the social abject and female initiation in order to discuss transgressions of gender, body and sexuality related to feminine identity. In the novel, the abject, female initiation and the hero narrative intersect in the violent crossings of the protagonist, through which she transforms from an innocent child to a sexually violated and traumatized victim, a female hunter-killer, and finally, a mother. Only by successfully overcoming the abject can the protagonist complete the murder cycle, the hero quest and the initiation and achieve equality and justice.
Keywords: crime fiction, hero narrative, intertextuality, Little Red Riding Hood, the abject
Kiki Smith’s sculpture 'Daughter' (1999) and Ulla Jokisalo’s cut-out pigment print 'Little Red Ri... more Kiki Smith’s sculpture 'Daughter' (1999) and Ulla Jokisalo’s cut-out pigment print 'Little Red Riding Hood' (2015) are contemporary visual narratives of the popular folktale “Little Red Riding Hood.” While drawing on the rich tradition of the tale, these revisualizations, which feature the protagonist Red as a solitary she-wolf, also tell a different story. There is something distinctively abject about the multiple transmogrifications of the main character, which opens up to a discussion centered on revolt and female empowerment. In this paper, I apply revolt in the Kristevan sense of return and memory. Revolt, in similarity with abjection, oscillates between semiotic drives and symbolic identity. That is, revolt structured on the abject supervenes on both a psychic and cultural level through a lapse into the semiotic realm. My paper explores abject metamorphoses in two visual narratives 'Daughter' and 'Little Red Riding Hood'. In a visual and intertextual reading, revolt incorporates the abject to discuss the crossings from human to wolf. The human-wolf hybrid points towards revolt through the return to the semiotic, after which a new subject identity or species emerges called the She-wolf, whom I aim to compare with Rosi Braidotti’s the Being-animal. Besides alluding to the tradition of the folktale, the visual narratives refer to a miscellany of intertexts such as Angela Carter’s short story “In Company of the Wolves” (1979/2006), Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ book 'Women Who Run with the Wolves' (1996) and Shakira Ripoll’s song the 'She Wolf' (2009).
KEYWORDS: Little Red Riding Hood, the abject, revolt, the she-wolf, visuality, intertextuality, Kiki Smith, Ulla Jokisalo
Unni Lindell’s crime novel Rødhette (2004) and Mia Damberg’s diasecs Bruises I-IV (2012) are cont... more Unni Lindell’s crime novel Rødhette (2004) and Mia Damberg’s diasecs Bruises I-IV (2012) are contemporary versions of the popular folktale Little Red Riding Hood. The narratives, which revolve around abject times of murder and shame, respectively, to rewrite the story of the girl in the red marker, extract partly from the medieval, oral tradition circulated by female storytellers, partly from the more recent written tradition seized by male writers. Whereas the color red powerfully signifies female initiation through menarche in the oral creativity, in the written tradition the red marker absorbs new values of victimization and shame, as female agency is weakened by subjugation to patriarchal laws and confines. In Lindell’s and Damberg’s new works of art, the stigmatized historical narrative of the red, disseminated through the male versions of the tale, is stitched and forced upon the little girl in the form of a scarlet dress, which on the on hand reproduces hurts of the past, on the other hand criticizes and negotiates history.
In this paper, I map the ways in which the protagonist gains agency through abject time in Unni Lindell’s Rødhette and Mia Damberg’s Bruises I-IV. I structure female initiation on the abject and intersect it with the girl and the color red to examine abject time. With abject time, I refer to the specific moment when the abject intersects with personal and historical identity to rewrite the narratives of the female body and history. In the analysis, I apply theories of the abject and intertextuality by Julia Kristeva together with theories of femininity, trauma, visuality and narrative as well as memory studies. The analysis draws on two aspects of the abject namely the social and the maternal abject to comment on patriarchal and institutional violence and to discuss abject times of trauma, shame and violence related to the female body, gender and sexuality. In the process of overcoming the abject, the main characters complete the initiation cycles and thus achieve liberation from patriarchal authority.
Unni Lindell’s crime novel Rødhette (2004) is both an extension and subversion of the tradition o... more Unni Lindell’s crime novel Rødhette (2004) is both an extension and subversion of the tradition of the folktale known as ‘Little Red Riding Hood’. Through its introduction of a female multiple murderer, a hunter who kills men, it draws on the one hand on the medieval oral tale circulated by female storytellers and on the other hand the more recent written versions cemented by male writers. In the early female tradition, the color red is a powerful marker of female initiation signified through menarche. In the written tradition, dependence on and submission to patriarchal constraints are highlighted, whereby the color red turns into a symbol of rejected female agency.
In Lindell’s crime story, the scarlet hood is sewed and forced upon the little girl by her grandmother, and the subconscious narrative of the stigmatized color red is reproduced, reappropriated and criticized. Thus, the novel questions social values by commenting on the patriarchal restrictions disseminated through the male versions of the tale. In contemporary socially-engaged crime fiction, female perpetrators are often critics of patriarchy; concurrently, women overall and particularly violent women are marginalized to the liminal space of the abject in society. This paper examines a woman who kills, murder and the abject in Lindell’s Rödluvan. Female initiation is in her story constructed on the typically masculine hero narrative and the abject, which activates a cycle of female violence.
The analysis draws on two theoretical aspects of the abject namely the cultural abject and female initiation in order to discuss transgressions of cultural boundaries of gender, body and sexuality related to feminine identity and to criticize patriarchal and institutional violence. In the novel, the abject, female initiation and the hero narrative intersect in the violent crossings of the protagonist, through which she transforms from an innocent child to a sexually violated and traumatized victim, a female hunter-killer, and finally, a mother. Only by successfully overcoming the abject can the protagonist complete the murder cycle, the hero quest and the initiation and achieve equality and justice.
The folktale Little Red Riding Hood (LRRH) is part of Western collective consciousness owing to i... more The folktale Little Red Riding Hood (LRRH) is part of Western collective consciousness owing to its long traditions and ability to constantly renew itself in narrative media. Contemporary scholars have interpreted the tale in terms of intertextuality and patriarchal ideology. With representation as a female agent in phallocentric economy, the female character in contemporary, alternative narratives of LRRH gains agency through abject and intertextual practices. In the narratives, I explore how the maternal abject, as a site of violence, subversive power and female initiation, shapes the gender and sexual identity of the young girl. In this context, the multimodal narratives also promote a female discourse of maternity, which is unrepresented in Western tradition. In the multimodal analysis that encompasses both verbal and visual stories from, for instance, Margaret Atwood, Angela Carter, Paula Rego and Kiki Smith, theories on the abject and intertextuality by Julia Kristeva are applied. Multimodal narratology, as a method, is employed to cross the borders between the narrative modalities. Both intertextual and abject phenomena are essential for renewal, growth and creative practices to take place since they cause a relapse into the semiotic center. In a violent and chaotic manner, they break communication and linear time, negotiate dominant social structures as well as transgress cultural frontiers and taboos. In the alternative stories, the female child is portrayed as brave, independent and clever, which deviates from the stereotypical image of the passive and gentle woman. The repressed mother-child bond is clearly exhibited through the embodiments of both the initiation and the abject processes into female adulthood and sexuality, but simultaneously it departs from heteronormative traditions of motherhood. Thus, by abject and intertextual means (from different traditions of LRRH and feminist criticism), the storytellers reshape the masculine canon of the tale.
KEYWORDS: Little Red Riding Hood, the abject, the maternal abject, intertextuality, multimodality, fairytale
Thesis Chapters by Carola Maria Wide
JYX Digital Repository, 2024
The aim of this dissertation is to examine how female storytellers’ contemporary versions of “Lit... more The aim of this dissertation is to examine how female storytellers’ contemporary versions of “Little Red Riding Hood” (LRRH) represent the Kristevan feminine in girl or woman through their young-adult (or adult) heroine and transform the cultural rape trauma embedded in Charles Perrault’s and the Brothers Grimm’s renderings of the tale. In order to pursue this aim, the dissertation asks three questions, each discussed in the three separate articles, respectively: RQ1) How does the heroine overcome rape trauma through the feminine genius? RQ2) How does the heroine negotiate women’s social identity through the feminine? RQ3) How does the heroine recreate her feminine and how does this change her grandmother relationship? Cultural sexual trauma has developed into a central topic after the completion of the articles although trauma is explicitly studied only in Article 1. The dissertation emphasizes that the female storytellers represent the heroine’s feminine of girl or woman through three trauma-related themes: trauma narration, female initiation as a way to negotiate trauma, and intergenerational female relationships as a way to reorient trauma. The material of the dissertation consists of ten contemporary written and visual narratives on the topic of LRRH by female storytellers from North America, Britain, and Finland: Margaret Atwood, Kiki Smith, Francesca Lia Block, Paula Rego, Angela Carter, Tanith Lee, Gillian Cross, and Märta Tikkanen. The method used is multimodal thematic close-reading. Theoretically, the study draws on Julia Kristeva’s theories of the genius, the subject, and the feminine with a particular focus on the latter, as well as on research on fairy tales, and, in Article 1, it draws also on trauma studies. Each article’s analysis deepens the dissertation through visual results in the form of artwork created by the author that adds to the written results. Article 1 shows that the heroine overcomes rape trauma by narrating it. Trauma narration discloses the feminine through female bonding, productive imagination, the girl genius—the article’s interpretation of the Kristevan genius—and concluded by the dissertation, narrated life. The dissertation relates these results to the three qualities of the feminine: reliance, relationality, and the unity of living and thinking/narrated life. Article 2 argues that the heroine negotiates women’s social identity through female initiation, which also reveals the feminine in the form of the girl genius and the three qualities of the feminine, seen in Article 1. Article 3 demonstrates that the heroine recreates her feminine and changes her grandmother relationship in this relationship through the two feminine qualities of reliance and relationality. The dissertation results show how the cultural rape trauma of Little Red Riding Hood is transformed, arguing for the emergence of a new trend of women’s narratives on LRRH. The new trend is of value to fairy-tale audiences and storytellers, who can envision forgiveness, peace, and new horizons for red-hooded heroines after cultural rape trauma, and also offers support for victims of completed or attempted rape. Providing a role model of the heroine’s transformation of cultural rape trauma by reaching feminine psychosexual maturity, the dissertation benefits ordinary girls who seek freedom and healing from rape trauma victimization and want to discover the extraordinary in them, as well as contributes to the understanding of the girl to Kristevan scholarship.
ISSN 2489-9003; 802)
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Papers by Carola Maria Wide
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.
Unni Lindell’s crime novel Rødhette (2008) is a subversion of the traditional folktale “Little Red Riding Hood”. Through its introduction of a female murderer, a hunter who kills men, the novel draws on the medieval oral tale tradition of female storytellers and the later versions cemented by male writers. In the female tradition, the color red is a powerful marker of female initiation signified through menarche. In the written tradition, submission to patriarchy is highlighted, whereby the color red turns into a symbol of rejected female agency. In the novel the subconscious narrative of the stigmatized color is reproduced and criticized. In contemporary socially-engaged crime fiction, female perpetrators are often critics of patriarchy and marginalized to the liminality of the abject in society. This paper examines a woman who kills, the abject and red in Lindell’s Rødhette. Female initiation is in her story constructed on the masculine hero narrative and the abject as activating a cycle of female violence. The analysis draws on the social abject and female initiation in order to discuss transgressions of gender, body and sexuality related to feminine identity. In the novel, the abject, female initiation and the hero narrative intersect in the violent crossings of the protagonist, through which she transforms from an innocent child to a sexually violated and traumatized victim, a female hunter-killer, and finally, a mother. Only by successfully overcoming the abject can the protagonist complete the murder cycle, the hero quest and the initiation and achieve equality and justice.
intertextualitet och intermedialitet i förhållande till text och bild i fem postmoderna och
feministiska vuxenberättelser om “Rödluvan.” I min avhandling analyserar jag tre
noveller av den brittiska författaren Angela Carter, som går under den gemensamma
benämningen varg trilogin: “The Werewolf,” “In Company of the Wolves” och “Wolf-
Alice.” Dessa literära verk utgavs i en större samling noveller kallad The Bloody
Chamber år 1979. Dessutom har jag uvärderat två konstverk, s.k. visuella berättelser, av
den amerikanska konstnären Kiki Smith nämligen skulpturen Daughter (1999) och
litografin Born (2002). I min avhandling undersöker jag hur Angela Carter och Kiki
Smith i rollen som sagoberättare ger uttryck åt huvudkaraktärernas övergång från barn
till kvinna. Jag är intresserad av de olika feministiska uttryck som skapas under dessa
övergångsriter och hur den intertextuella dialogen som uppstår runt den kvinnliga
huvudkaraktären i berättelserna skapar ett kreativt tillstånd av ett kvinnligt geni.
Huvudteorin fokuserar på den intertextuella linjen av Julia Kristeva, som också har
utformat teorin om det kvinnliga geniet. Analysen är indelad i tre delar. I den första
delen behandlas ideologemet den röda luvan och dess betydelse i relation till den
mångfasetterade sagotraditionen Rödluvan, som består dels av en muntlig tradition av
kvinnliga sagoberättare, dels av Charles Perrault och Jacob och Wilhem Grimms
skriftliga berättelser. Del två fokuserar på ideologemet vargen och dess funktion som
varning. Del tre behandlar de fem olika övergångsriterna. ”The Werewolf” presenterar
en relativt traditionell övergångsrit där kunskap förmedlas från en äldre till en yngre
generation, i vilken Carter kritiserar rådande könsnormer genom att skapa två
självständiga och starka kvinnoporträtt. ”In Company of the Wolves” är en initiering till
kvinnliga sexualitet. I den här berättelsen alluderar Carter direkt till myten om den
passiva kvinnan och den heterosexuella manliga blicken. I ”Wolf-Alice” tar Carter upp
begrepp som kvinnlig och manlig tid. Daughter berättar om hur det är att växa upp till
kvinna med skägg, vilket väcker kritiska frågor som anspelar på sexuell identitet,
traditionella könsroller och stereotypa kvinnobilder. Born tar upp frågor som kvinnlig
tid, pånyttfödelse och stereotypa kvinnobilder. Genom de intertextuella företeelserna
och det kvinnliga geniet inför Carter och Smith en ny feministisk och estetisk form av
sagoberättande.
Conference Presentations by Carola Maria Wide
In my study, animal and maternal abjection materialize in the wolf, familiar from the Eurocentric fairy tale “Little Red Riding Hood.” Using abjection, the paper examines wolf-girl transmogrifications, in three contemporary narratives of “Little Red Riding Hood.” These are Angela Carter’s short story “Wolf-Alice” (1979), Kiki Smith’s sculpture Daughter (1999) and Ulla Jokisalo’s cut-out print Little Red Riding Hood (2015). For analyzing the written and visual narrative modalities, I use a cross-modalities method, which I name crossmodal storytelling. In the narratives, the wolf and the girl in red are merged into what I call the Wolf Girl. I am interested in how girl agency is constructed, through the crisis of abjection, represented by the Wolf Girl. According to Kristeva (1982: 10), abjection is only experienced through the synthesis of the self with an Other that the self violently essays to expel. In the narratives, the wolf represents this encounter with an Other. Marked by ambiguity, abjection destructs and reconstructs human development and relationships, through which process the human subject is formed and reformed. Through animal and maternal abjection, the Wolf Girl is marked by emotions of pain, destruction and paradoxically healing together with creation.
In addition to the theory on abjection, I identify the Wolf Girl with Rosi Braidotti’s notion of the posthuman that decenters the Eurocentric (hu)man. In her feminist politics 'The Posthuman' (2013:80), Braidotti describes the posthuman subject as a becoming-animal – “a she wolf and a breeder.” Representing the symbiosis of the female and animal, Braidotti’s she wolf embodies all living organisms. In the stories, by structuring the crises of animal and maternal abjection on the posthuman, subjectivity transcends beyond human language, society and gender to reconstruct a multiple subject, the Wolf Girl, fueled by ethical and political agency. Using creativity, relationality, collectiveness and healing, the results show that the new ethical and political register, what I refer to as girl agency, reflect on animal rights together with the sustainability of the Earth.
In a close reading of the color red as a female motif, this paper examines sexual trauma in Rego’s Little Red Riding Hood Suite, through abjection and intertextuality. In Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (1982), Julia Kristeva examines the abject from the perspectives of social and maternal abjection, which can be further developed in the context of trauma. Overcoming the abject provides healing and thus reconstructs female subjectivity in the narrative. By structuring the traditional male hero cycle on abjection and using theories of trauma, intertextuality, and close reading, I demonstrate how Rego’s visual story redresses the trauma of the color red through abjection; on the one hand, by repeating what is abjected, which is the female gender and rape in the written tradition; on the other hand, by overcoming the abject and thus completing the hero cycle through the mother’s seeking justice by killing the wolf. By first exposing and then resolving the abject trauma of rape through murder, a new female subjectivity, where the mother transmogrifies from victim to avenger, is grafted on symbolic consciousness. In Rego’s work, the traditional roles of victim and victimizer are questioned. In this hero cycle, abjection, murder, and revenge vindicate the old narrative of red, which using ambiguity, creativity, and resurrection morph into a new reading of the color red constructed on female subjectivity, heroism, and agency.
Unni Lindell’s crime novel Rødhette (2008) is a subversion of the traditional folktale “Little Red Riding Hood”. Through its introduction of a female murderer, a hunter who kills men, the novel draws on the medieval oral tale tradition of female storytellers and the later versions cemented by male writers. In the female tradition, the color red is a powerful marker of female initiation signified through menarche. In the written tradition, submission to patriarchy is highlighted, whereby the color red turns into a symbol of rejected female agency. In the novel the subconscious narrative of the stigmatized color is reproduced and criticized. In contemporary socially-engaged crime fiction, female perpetrators are often critics of patriarchy and marginalized to the liminality of the abject in society.
This paper examines a woman who kills, the abject and red in Lindell’s Rødhette. Female initiation is in her story constructed on the masculine hero narrative and the abject as activating a cycle of female violence. The analysis draws on the social abject and female initiation in order to discuss transgressions of gender, body and sexuality related to feminine identity. In the novel, the abject, female initiation and the hero narrative intersect in the violent crossings of the protagonist, through which she transforms from an innocent child to a sexually violated and traumatized victim, a female hunter-killer, and finally, a mother. Only by successfully overcoming the abject can the protagonist complete the murder cycle, the hero quest and the initiation and achieve equality and justice.
Keywords: crime fiction, hero narrative, intertextuality, Little Red Riding Hood, the abject
KEYWORDS: Little Red Riding Hood, the abject, revolt, the she-wolf, visuality, intertextuality, Kiki Smith, Ulla Jokisalo
In this paper, I map the ways in which the protagonist gains agency through abject time in Unni Lindell’s Rødhette and Mia Damberg’s Bruises I-IV. I structure female initiation on the abject and intersect it with the girl and the color red to examine abject time. With abject time, I refer to the specific moment when the abject intersects with personal and historical identity to rewrite the narratives of the female body and history. In the analysis, I apply theories of the abject and intertextuality by Julia Kristeva together with theories of femininity, trauma, visuality and narrative as well as memory studies. The analysis draws on two aspects of the abject namely the social and the maternal abject to comment on patriarchal and institutional violence and to discuss abject times of trauma, shame and violence related to the female body, gender and sexuality. In the process of overcoming the abject, the main characters complete the initiation cycles and thus achieve liberation from patriarchal authority.
In Lindell’s crime story, the scarlet hood is sewed and forced upon the little girl by her grandmother, and the subconscious narrative of the stigmatized color red is reproduced, reappropriated and criticized. Thus, the novel questions social values by commenting on the patriarchal restrictions disseminated through the male versions of the tale. In contemporary socially-engaged crime fiction, female perpetrators are often critics of patriarchy; concurrently, women overall and particularly violent women are marginalized to the liminal space of the abject in society. This paper examines a woman who kills, murder and the abject in Lindell’s Rödluvan. Female initiation is in her story constructed on the typically masculine hero narrative and the abject, which activates a cycle of female violence.
The analysis draws on two theoretical aspects of the abject namely the cultural abject and female initiation in order to discuss transgressions of cultural boundaries of gender, body and sexuality related to feminine identity and to criticize patriarchal and institutional violence. In the novel, the abject, female initiation and the hero narrative intersect in the violent crossings of the protagonist, through which she transforms from an innocent child to a sexually violated and traumatized victim, a female hunter-killer, and finally, a mother. Only by successfully overcoming the abject can the protagonist complete the murder cycle, the hero quest and the initiation and achieve equality and justice.
KEYWORDS: Little Red Riding Hood, the abject, the maternal abject, intertextuality, multimodality, fairytale
Thesis Chapters by Carola Maria Wide
ISSN 2489-9003; 802)
ISBN 978-952-86-0214-9 (PDF)
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.
Unni Lindell’s crime novel Rødhette (2008) is a subversion of the traditional folktale “Little Red Riding Hood”. Through its introduction of a female murderer, a hunter who kills men, the novel draws on the medieval oral tale tradition of female storytellers and the later versions cemented by male writers. In the female tradition, the color red is a powerful marker of female initiation signified through menarche. In the written tradition, submission to patriarchy is highlighted, whereby the color red turns into a symbol of rejected female agency. In the novel the subconscious narrative of the stigmatized color is reproduced and criticized. In contemporary socially-engaged crime fiction, female perpetrators are often critics of patriarchy and marginalized to the liminality of the abject in society. This paper examines a woman who kills, the abject and red in Lindell’s Rødhette. Female initiation is in her story constructed on the masculine hero narrative and the abject as activating a cycle of female violence. The analysis draws on the social abject and female initiation in order to discuss transgressions of gender, body and sexuality related to feminine identity. In the novel, the abject, female initiation and the hero narrative intersect in the violent crossings of the protagonist, through which she transforms from an innocent child to a sexually violated and traumatized victim, a female hunter-killer, and finally, a mother. Only by successfully overcoming the abject can the protagonist complete the murder cycle, the hero quest and the initiation and achieve equality and justice.
intertextualitet och intermedialitet i förhållande till text och bild i fem postmoderna och
feministiska vuxenberättelser om “Rödluvan.” I min avhandling analyserar jag tre
noveller av den brittiska författaren Angela Carter, som går under den gemensamma
benämningen varg trilogin: “The Werewolf,” “In Company of the Wolves” och “Wolf-
Alice.” Dessa literära verk utgavs i en större samling noveller kallad The Bloody
Chamber år 1979. Dessutom har jag uvärderat två konstverk, s.k. visuella berättelser, av
den amerikanska konstnären Kiki Smith nämligen skulpturen Daughter (1999) och
litografin Born (2002). I min avhandling undersöker jag hur Angela Carter och Kiki
Smith i rollen som sagoberättare ger uttryck åt huvudkaraktärernas övergång från barn
till kvinna. Jag är intresserad av de olika feministiska uttryck som skapas under dessa
övergångsriter och hur den intertextuella dialogen som uppstår runt den kvinnliga
huvudkaraktären i berättelserna skapar ett kreativt tillstånd av ett kvinnligt geni.
Huvudteorin fokuserar på den intertextuella linjen av Julia Kristeva, som också har
utformat teorin om det kvinnliga geniet. Analysen är indelad i tre delar. I den första
delen behandlas ideologemet den röda luvan och dess betydelse i relation till den
mångfasetterade sagotraditionen Rödluvan, som består dels av en muntlig tradition av
kvinnliga sagoberättare, dels av Charles Perrault och Jacob och Wilhem Grimms
skriftliga berättelser. Del två fokuserar på ideologemet vargen och dess funktion som
varning. Del tre behandlar de fem olika övergångsriterna. ”The Werewolf” presenterar
en relativt traditionell övergångsrit där kunskap förmedlas från en äldre till en yngre
generation, i vilken Carter kritiserar rådande könsnormer genom att skapa två
självständiga och starka kvinnoporträtt. ”In Company of the Wolves” är en initiering till
kvinnliga sexualitet. I den här berättelsen alluderar Carter direkt till myten om den
passiva kvinnan och den heterosexuella manliga blicken. I ”Wolf-Alice” tar Carter upp
begrepp som kvinnlig och manlig tid. Daughter berättar om hur det är att växa upp till
kvinna med skägg, vilket väcker kritiska frågor som anspelar på sexuell identitet,
traditionella könsroller och stereotypa kvinnobilder. Born tar upp frågor som kvinnlig
tid, pånyttfödelse och stereotypa kvinnobilder. Genom de intertextuella företeelserna
och det kvinnliga geniet inför Carter och Smith en ny feministisk och estetisk form av
sagoberättande.
In my study, animal and maternal abjection materialize in the wolf, familiar from the Eurocentric fairy tale “Little Red Riding Hood.” Using abjection, the paper examines wolf-girl transmogrifications, in three contemporary narratives of “Little Red Riding Hood.” These are Angela Carter’s short story “Wolf-Alice” (1979), Kiki Smith’s sculpture Daughter (1999) and Ulla Jokisalo’s cut-out print Little Red Riding Hood (2015). For analyzing the written and visual narrative modalities, I use a cross-modalities method, which I name crossmodal storytelling. In the narratives, the wolf and the girl in red are merged into what I call the Wolf Girl. I am interested in how girl agency is constructed, through the crisis of abjection, represented by the Wolf Girl. According to Kristeva (1982: 10), abjection is only experienced through the synthesis of the self with an Other that the self violently essays to expel. In the narratives, the wolf represents this encounter with an Other. Marked by ambiguity, abjection destructs and reconstructs human development and relationships, through which process the human subject is formed and reformed. Through animal and maternal abjection, the Wolf Girl is marked by emotions of pain, destruction and paradoxically healing together with creation.
In addition to the theory on abjection, I identify the Wolf Girl with Rosi Braidotti’s notion of the posthuman that decenters the Eurocentric (hu)man. In her feminist politics 'The Posthuman' (2013:80), Braidotti describes the posthuman subject as a becoming-animal – “a she wolf and a breeder.” Representing the symbiosis of the female and animal, Braidotti’s she wolf embodies all living organisms. In the stories, by structuring the crises of animal and maternal abjection on the posthuman, subjectivity transcends beyond human language, society and gender to reconstruct a multiple subject, the Wolf Girl, fueled by ethical and political agency. Using creativity, relationality, collectiveness and healing, the results show that the new ethical and political register, what I refer to as girl agency, reflect on animal rights together with the sustainability of the Earth.
In a close reading of the color red as a female motif, this paper examines sexual trauma in Rego’s Little Red Riding Hood Suite, through abjection and intertextuality. In Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (1982), Julia Kristeva examines the abject from the perspectives of social and maternal abjection, which can be further developed in the context of trauma. Overcoming the abject provides healing and thus reconstructs female subjectivity in the narrative. By structuring the traditional male hero cycle on abjection and using theories of trauma, intertextuality, and close reading, I demonstrate how Rego’s visual story redresses the trauma of the color red through abjection; on the one hand, by repeating what is abjected, which is the female gender and rape in the written tradition; on the other hand, by overcoming the abject and thus completing the hero cycle through the mother’s seeking justice by killing the wolf. By first exposing and then resolving the abject trauma of rape through murder, a new female subjectivity, where the mother transmogrifies from victim to avenger, is grafted on symbolic consciousness. In Rego’s work, the traditional roles of victim and victimizer are questioned. In this hero cycle, abjection, murder, and revenge vindicate the old narrative of red, which using ambiguity, creativity, and resurrection morph into a new reading of the color red constructed on female subjectivity, heroism, and agency.
Unni Lindell’s crime novel Rødhette (2008) is a subversion of the traditional folktale “Little Red Riding Hood”. Through its introduction of a female murderer, a hunter who kills men, the novel draws on the medieval oral tale tradition of female storytellers and the later versions cemented by male writers. In the female tradition, the color red is a powerful marker of female initiation signified through menarche. In the written tradition, submission to patriarchy is highlighted, whereby the color red turns into a symbol of rejected female agency. In the novel the subconscious narrative of the stigmatized color is reproduced and criticized. In contemporary socially-engaged crime fiction, female perpetrators are often critics of patriarchy and marginalized to the liminality of the abject in society.
This paper examines a woman who kills, the abject and red in Lindell’s Rødhette. Female initiation is in her story constructed on the masculine hero narrative and the abject as activating a cycle of female violence. The analysis draws on the social abject and female initiation in order to discuss transgressions of gender, body and sexuality related to feminine identity. In the novel, the abject, female initiation and the hero narrative intersect in the violent crossings of the protagonist, through which she transforms from an innocent child to a sexually violated and traumatized victim, a female hunter-killer, and finally, a mother. Only by successfully overcoming the abject can the protagonist complete the murder cycle, the hero quest and the initiation and achieve equality and justice.
Keywords: crime fiction, hero narrative, intertextuality, Little Red Riding Hood, the abject
KEYWORDS: Little Red Riding Hood, the abject, revolt, the she-wolf, visuality, intertextuality, Kiki Smith, Ulla Jokisalo
In this paper, I map the ways in which the protagonist gains agency through abject time in Unni Lindell’s Rødhette and Mia Damberg’s Bruises I-IV. I structure female initiation on the abject and intersect it with the girl and the color red to examine abject time. With abject time, I refer to the specific moment when the abject intersects with personal and historical identity to rewrite the narratives of the female body and history. In the analysis, I apply theories of the abject and intertextuality by Julia Kristeva together with theories of femininity, trauma, visuality and narrative as well as memory studies. The analysis draws on two aspects of the abject namely the social and the maternal abject to comment on patriarchal and institutional violence and to discuss abject times of trauma, shame and violence related to the female body, gender and sexuality. In the process of overcoming the abject, the main characters complete the initiation cycles and thus achieve liberation from patriarchal authority.
In Lindell’s crime story, the scarlet hood is sewed and forced upon the little girl by her grandmother, and the subconscious narrative of the stigmatized color red is reproduced, reappropriated and criticized. Thus, the novel questions social values by commenting on the patriarchal restrictions disseminated through the male versions of the tale. In contemporary socially-engaged crime fiction, female perpetrators are often critics of patriarchy; concurrently, women overall and particularly violent women are marginalized to the liminal space of the abject in society. This paper examines a woman who kills, murder and the abject in Lindell’s Rödluvan. Female initiation is in her story constructed on the typically masculine hero narrative and the abject, which activates a cycle of female violence.
The analysis draws on two theoretical aspects of the abject namely the cultural abject and female initiation in order to discuss transgressions of cultural boundaries of gender, body and sexuality related to feminine identity and to criticize patriarchal and institutional violence. In the novel, the abject, female initiation and the hero narrative intersect in the violent crossings of the protagonist, through which she transforms from an innocent child to a sexually violated and traumatized victim, a female hunter-killer, and finally, a mother. Only by successfully overcoming the abject can the protagonist complete the murder cycle, the hero quest and the initiation and achieve equality and justice.
KEYWORDS: Little Red Riding Hood, the abject, the maternal abject, intertextuality, multimodality, fairytale
ISSN 2489-9003; 802)
ISBN 978-952-86-0214-9 (PDF)