Little Red Cap" Summary
Little Red Cap" Summary
female
poet laureate of the United Kingdom between 2009 and 2019. It is the first poem in her 1999
collection The World's Wife, which depicts figures from history or mythology through a feminist lens.
In "Little Red Cap," this figure is Little Red Riding Hood, from the classic fairy tale. Though usually
portrayed as a naive girl hoodwinked and eaten by a wolf, Duffy's Little Red Cap is a young woman
brimming with sexual curiosity, artistic ambition, and personal agency. Her relationship with the
wolf, though marked by a predatory power imbalance, serves as the catalyst for her coming-of-age.
Line 1Lines 5-6 Lines 7-11Lines 11-12Lines 14-22Lines 31-32Lines 32-34Lines 34-39Lines
39-41Line 42
Artistic Coming-of-Age
In “Little Red Cap,” the speaker’s relationship with the wolf also facilitates her artistic
coming-of-age. The two themes run in parallel: just as the poem’s depiction of sexual
awakening is defined by a journey from innocence to maturity, the poem depicts the
speaker’s artistic coming-of-age as a journey from inexperience to mastery, with the speaker
exerting the power of her own poetic voice over the wolf’s at the poem’s conclusion.
Ultimately, the poem depicts achieving artistic expression as a vital part of establishing
personal agency, and as a method of empowerment for women in a male-dominated
world.From the start, the speaker is drawn to the wolf as much by his literary knowledge as
by his sexual prowess, and hopes to learn from him. At the opening of the third stanza, she
explicitly explains her motivations for pursuing the wolf: “I made quite sure he spotted me …
You might ask why. Here’s why. Poetry.” Just as she hopes the wolf will initiate her into
adult sexuality, she also hopes he will teach her what he knows about creating art.
Unfortunately, the wolf is as selfish a literary instructor as he is a lover. After their first
sexual encounter, the speaker must disentangle herself from the wolf's firm grasp in order to
search for her own poetic voice, independent of the wolf's influence. However, when she tries
to share her poetry with him, the wolf callously gobbles up her offering (“one bite, dead”)
and goes back to sleep.
Nevertheless, as a result of their relationship, the speaker still gains access to the world of
poetry, which the poem depicts as the real reward of their liaison. At the back of the wolf's
lair, "where a whole wall was ... aglow with books," the speaker has a deep, pleasurable
response to the power of poetry. Indeed, the poem depicts her discovery of her own poetic
voice as much more exhilarating than her sexual experience with the wolf, and also a vital
step in her artistic evolution: “Words, words were truly alive on the tongue, in the head /
warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and blood.” This stanza also captures the necessity for
female artists to discover their own means of expression within male-dominated artistic
tradition.
From then on, poetry plays a vital role in the speaker’s growing maturity and is the means by
which she empowers herself to leave the wolf and the woods. The sixth stanza's use of natural
imagery suggests that the speaker's ability to better understand the woods indicates her
growing artistic mastery, developed over ten years. It may have taken a decade "to tell ... that
birds are the uttered thought of trees," but in that time the speaker has become fully confident
in this space. Wielding an axe, the speaker begins to attack the woods, the symbol of her
adolescence, and assert her own artistic voice and vision. Importantly, the poem attributes the
speaker’s disenchantment with the wolf to his repetitious art, "the same old song ... year in,
year out," as much as to his aging. It’s time for the speaker to look elsewhere for artistic
inspiration: to herself. When she murders the wolf, the speaker not only silences his voice,
but carves out space for her own. At the poem's conclusion, she emerges from the woods
alone but singing, suggesting that the speaker is fully confident in her poetic abilities. Having
found her own artistic voice, she wields it triumphantly and independently.
Where this theme appears in the poem:Lines 7-8Lines 13-16Lines 23-30Lines 31-32Lines
33-36Lines 38-39Line 42
Gender and PowerEven as “Little Red Cap” celebrates the empowerment of a young
woman in search of sexual and artistic agency, it also examines the power dynamics at play
when a girl’s coming-of-age takes place at the hands of an older man. Through the subversion of a
well-known fairy tale, the poem demands that the reader reconsider the roles of predator and prey
within broader societal systems of gender and power. By foregrounding the violence that accompanies
the wolf’s sexual appetite, “Little Red Cap” makes the case that even in a consensual relationship,
driven in part by female sexual agency, misogyny and oppression are still major forces. This is
particularly true of a relationship like the one in the poem, where the power imbalance between the
wolf and Little Red Cap reinforces patriarchal influences on relations between men and women.From
the start, when Little Red Cap pursues the wolf, the poem upends traditional understandings of
predator and prey. Though she calls him "the wolf," it is Little Red Cap who preys on him, making
"quite sure he spotted me, / sweet sixteen, never been, babe, waif." Each of these descriptors imply
innocence and inexperience, even frailty, which is not entirely inaccurate—the speaker is indeed a
teenager with limited sexual experience. Nevertheless, by drawing attention to these attributes, the
speaker shows an awareness of the role she must play to catch the wolf’s eye, even as she subverts
that role through her active efforts to embody it. In other words, the speaker knows she can play up
her naiveté to attract the wolf—a fact that in itself reflects some of the twisted dynamics at play, given
that the speaker’s power comes, paradoxically, from her lack of power. Though the wolf is initially
introduced as more prey than predator, once he becomes interested in the speaker, the poem shows
him dominating their relationship. He “leads [her]” into the woods, dominates her with his “thrashing
fur” and “heavy matted paws,” and “lick[s] his chops” as he crushes the speaker’s first forays into
artistic independence. Even if the speaker has sexual desire and agency, it’s still being
expressed within a broader world where men like the wolf hold more power. To that end, the poem
does not shy away from depicting the violence and brutality of the wolf’s sexual desire. The speaker
notes “better beware” as she enters the "wolf's lair" before their first sexual encounter, and describes
the clothes she leaves behind—both an act of undressing and a loss of innocence—as “murder clues.”
Ultimately, as the speaker gains experience and wisdom, she realizes that despite having sexual
agency, she still lacks true independence. The sixth stanza captures her disillusionment with the wolf
and shows her growing awareness of the oppressive nature of their relationship. She compares her
situation to a “mushroom / stopper[ing] the mouth of a buried corpse.” By murdering the wolf,
however, the speaker breaks free from the age-old power dynamic playing out between them and
upends the patriarchal norms that have shaped her. What's more, when the speaker discovers “my
grandmother’s [virgin white] bones” inside the wolf's body, the poem implies that their relationship
should be understood as part of a larger history of men exploiting women. It suggests that not only
has the speaker exerted her own independence, she has also struck a blow at generations of male
domination.The final image of the speaker as triumphant and independent supports a reading
of “Little Red Cap” as a feminist depiction of an empowered woman with agency.
Nevertheless, the poem has taken great pains to show us that she does not emerge unscathed.
In order to achieve true sexual and personal agency, she has had to withstand, recognize, and
ultimately put an end to the predator and patriarchal norms that have shaped her coming-of-
age.