I am trying to ascertain the accuracy of the below quote and if the role of washerwomen in France (or other places) was associated with something meaningful.
"This double role held by the laundresses — on the one hand allowing the girl [Little REd Riding Hood] to pass, thereby rescuing her, on the other drowning the wolf, killing him — is consistent with their role in the social reality of village life. In fact the job of assisting in 'passages,' of helping in childbirth and helping people to die, is held-at least in the Châtillonnais-by one and the same person, an aged woman, a woman who can at the same time handle the swaddling and the shroud, who washes infants as she washes the dead....If the laundresses bring about the death of the wolf, they bring about the [re-]birth of the girl."
Yvonne Verdier, as quoted in this essay by Terri Windling