The following version of this poem was used to create this guide: Barlow, Devan. “Dear Charles Perrault”. Strange Horizons, http://strangehorizons.com/wordpress/poetry/dear-charles-perrault/. Note that all parenthetical citations refer to the line number from which the quotation is taken.

“Dear Charles Perrault” is addressed to the 17th-century writer, academic, and scholar Charles Perrault. Perrault is best known for his fairy tale retellings, each of which concludes with a moral for the development of children (particularly little girls). These morals cautioned against things like curiosity, vanity, disobedience, and trusting strange “wolves” (a thinly veiled metaphor for young men). Barlow enters into conversation with these supposed morals and highlights their inherently toxic nature.