Rethinking fairytales as feminist fables is rescuing them, not ruining them | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

There’s a book called , written by James Finn Garner, which used to be on my parents’ shelves, and is now on mine. Published in 1994, it was a massive bestseller in its time, satirising changing social attitudes and acting as an amusing corrective for the holier-than-thou: Little Red Riding Hood, for example, finds the wolf’s suggestion that it isn’t safe for a little girl to walk through the woods alone “sexist” and “offensive in the extreme… ” but, she says, “I will ignore it because of your traditional status as an outcast from society, the stress of which has