In Western European culture in the sixteenth century, particulary in France, people of all ages were afraid to pass through the woods in fear of the werewolf. They believed that men turned into werewolves at night. At the time, many females were also accused of witchery. Furthermore, between the sixteenth and nineteenth century, men were accused of committing harmful acts towards young female children. Apparently, these brutal acts could not have been imagined by anyone (Beresford, 2013; ABC, 2015). Therefore, in Western European folktale, the werewolf is a metaphorical representation of man (Dundes, 1989).

Rumpf argues that the original villain in French folklore was probably a werewolf. In Perrault’s Le Petite Chaperon Rogue the antagonist has been transformed into a simple, ferocious wolf (Orenstein, 2002). Folklorists believe this was because werewolves lost their significance as the witch cases subsided.