Huckleberry Finn dressed up as a girl called Sarah or Mary, Mr.
Our stories are full of travestied characters: female into male is commonplace in Shakespeare-Rosalind, Portia, Imogen, Viola-as is male into female: Falstaff as Mistress Ford’s fat aunt. “That’s because she was so anxious to see you,” Loki answers once more, “that she hasn’t slept in eight long nights.” “Why does she have such a terrible look?” asks Thrym, perceiving the fierce thundering eyes behind the bridal veil. “That’s because she was so anxious to see you,” Loki answers, “that she didn’t eat anything for eight days.” “I’ve never seen a bride eat and drink so much,” says the bewildered Thrym after watching the supposed lady devour eight salmons and a whole ox. It tells how Loki, the trickster, must explain to the giant Thrym why the giant’s betrothed (who is none other than Thor, the god of thunder, in disguise) has such a decidedly unfeminine aspect. Her story is well known: the errand on which her mother sends her (to deliver a cake and a pot of butter to her sick grandmother), the meeting with the treacherous beast (pivotal to the story), the distractions she finds on her way (picking up acorns and pursuing butterflies), the tragic fate of the grandmother (reminiscent of the fate of both Jonah and Gepetto), her questioning of the impersonator and the cross dressing wolf ’s answers that end up revealing the true identity of the fiend (a catechism commonplace in folktales).Ī precursor of the story is tucked away in the Prose Edda, composed in Iceland in the thirteenth century. “I felt that if I could have married Little Red Riding Hood,” he admitted, “I should have known perfect bliss.” She has a whiff of the guileless temptress, this creature who is at the same time polite and daring, and who exudes something so subtly attractive that it made the adult Charles Dickens confess that she had been his first love. A short blood-colored cape defines the adventurous girl dreamt up by Charles Perrault towards the end of the seventeenth century. There are characters whose name reveals their skin color (Snow White), their ability (Spiderman), their size (Thumbelina).
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