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Little Red Riding Hood

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A depiction by Gustave Dore

Little Red Riding Hood is a famous folktale about a young girl's encounter with a wolf. The story has changed much in its history, and been subject to numerous modern adaptations and readings.

The tale is categorised as Aarne-Thompson type 333, "The Glutton"/"Red Riding Hood".

Contents

[edit] The Tale and its History

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The version most widely known today is based on the Brothers Grimm version [1]. It is about a girl called Little Red Riding Hood, after the red hood she always wears. The girl walks through the woods to deliver food to her grandmother. A wolf (often identified as the Big Bad Wolf) wants to eat the girl but is afraid to do so in public (sometimes there are woodcutters watching). He approaches the girl, and she naïvely tells him where she is going. He suggests the girl pick some flowers, which she does. In the meantime, he goes to the grandmother's house and gains entry by pretending to be the girl. He eats the grandmother and waits for the girl, disguised as the grandmother. When the girl arrives, he eats her too. A woodcutter, however, comes to the rescue and cuts the wolf open. Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother emerge unharmed. They fill the wolf's body with heavy stones, which kills him. Other versions of the story have had the grandmother shut in the closet instead of eaten, and some have Little Red Riding Hood saved by the woodcutter as the wolf advances on her rather than after she is eaten.

The tale makes the clearest contrast between the safe world of the village and the dangers of the forest, conventional antitheses that are essentially medieval, though no versions are as old as that. It also seems to be a strong morality tale, teaching children not to ‘wander off the path’.

The theme of the ravening wolf and of the creature released unharmed from its belly is reflected in the Russian tale Peter and the Wolf, and the other Grimm tale The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids, but its general theme of restoration is at least as old as Jonah and the whale.

[edit] Pre-Perrault

The origins of the Little Red Riding Hood story can be traced to oral versions from various European countries and more than likely preceding the 17th century, of which several exist, some significantly different from the currently-known, Grimms-inspired version. It was told by French peasants in the 14th century as well as in Italy, where a number of versions exist, including La finta nonna (The False Grandmother). It is also possible that this early tale has roots in very similar Oriental tales.

These early variations of the tale differ from the currently known version in several ways. The antagonist is not always a wolf, but sometimes an ogre or a ‘bzou’ (werewolf), making these tales relevant to the werewolf-trials (similar to witch trials) of the time. The wolf usually leaves the grandmother’s blood and meat for the girl to eat, who then unwittingly cannibalises her own grandmother. Also, once the girl is in bed with the wolf she sees through his disguise and tries to escape, complaining to her ‘grandmother’ that she needs to defecate and would not wish to do so in the bed. The wolf reluctantly lets her go, tied to a piece of string so she does not get away. However, the girl slips the string over something else and gets away.

It has been noted that in these stories she escapes with no help from any male or older female figure, but instead utilises her own cunning. The woodcutter/huntsman figure, added later, would limit the girl to a relatively passive role. This has led to criticisms that the story was changed to keep women "in their place", needing the help of a physically superior man such as the woodcutter to save them.

[edit] Charles Perrault

The earliest known printed version was known as Le Petit Chaperon Rouge and had its origins in 17th century French folklore. It was included in the collection Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals. Tales of Mother Goose (Histoires et contes du temps passé, avec des moralités. Contes de ma mère l'Oye), in 1697, by Charles Perrault. As the title implies, this version is both more sinister and more overtly moralized than the later ones.

The story had as its subject an "attractive, well-bred young lady", a village girl of the country being deceived into giving a wolf she encountered the information he needed to successfully find her grandmother's house and eat the old woman while at the same time avoiding being noticed by woodcutters working in the nearby forest. Then he proceeded to lay a trap for the Red Riding Hood. The latter ends up eaten by the wolf and there the story ends. The wolf emerges the victor of the encounter and there is no happy ending.

Charles Perrault explained the 'moral' at the end so that no doubt is left to his intended meaning:

From this story one learns that children, especially young lasses, pretty, courteous and well-bred, do very wrong to listen to strangers, And it is not an unheard thing if the Wolf is thereby provided with his dinner. I say Wolf, for all wolves are not of the same sort; there is one kind with an amenable disposition — neither noisy, nor hateful, nor angry, but tame, obliging and gentle, following the young maids in the streets, even into their homes. Alas! Who does not know that these gentle wolves are of all such creatures the most dangerous!

In this version the tale has been adapted for late 17th century French salon culture, an entirely different audience from what it had before, and has become a harsh morality tale warning women of the advances of men.

[edit] The Brothers Grimm

In the 19th century two separate German versions were retold to Jacob Grimm and his younger brother Wilhelm Grimm, known as the Brothers Grimm, the first by Jeanette Hassenpflug (1791–1860) and the second by Marie Hassenpflug (1788–1856). The brothers turned the first version to the main body of the story and the second into a sequel of it. The story as Rotkäppchen was included in the first edition of their collection Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales (1812)).

This version had the girl and her grandmother saved by a huntsman who was after the wolf's skin. The second part featured the girl and her grandmother trapping and killing another wolf, this time anticipating his moves based on their experience with the previous one.

The Brothers further revised the story in later editions and it reached the above mentioned final and better known version in the 1857 edition of their work. It is notably tamer than the older ones which contained darker themes. Modern scholars and audiences have often dismissed it as a mere watered-down version of the older story.

[edit] After the Grimms

Numerous authors have rewritten or adapted this tale.

Andrew Lang retold the story as "The True History of Little Goldenhood" [2] in The Red Fairy Book, explicitly saying that the story had been mistold. The girl was saved, but not by the huntsman; when the wolf tried to eat her, its mouth was burned by the golden hood she wore, which was enchanted.

Bruno Bettelheim, in The Uses of Enchantment, recast the Little Red Riding Hood motif in terms of classic Freudian analysis, that shows how fairy tales educate, support, and liberate the emotions of children.

In the twentieth century, the popularity of the tale appeared to snowball, with many new versions being written and produced, especially in the wake of Freudian analysis, deconstruction and feminist critical theory. See below for a number of modern adaptations[3]. This trend has also led to a number of academic texts being written that focus on Little Red Riding Hood, including works by Alan Dundes and Jack Zipes.

[edit] Interpretations

Image:George Frederic Watts - Red Riding Hood - Project Gutenberg eText 17395.jpg There are many interpretations of the classic fairy tale, many of them sexual. Some are listed below.

[edit] Prostitution

One of the more common interpretations refers to a classic warning against becoming a "working girl." This builds off the fundamental "young girl in the woods" stereotype. The red cloak was also a classic signal of a prostitute in 17th century France. A Colombian charity recently used this theme in a poster campaign that showed various fairy tale characters reduced to child labour, including Red Riding Hood as a child prostitute [4]

[edit] Sexual awakening

Red Riding Hood has also been seen as a parable of sexual maturity. In this interpretation, the red cloak symbolizes the blood of the menstrual cycle and the entry into puberty, braving the "dark forest" of womanhood. Or the cloak could symbolize the hymen (earlier versions of the tale generally do not state that the cloak is red--the word "red" in the title may refer to the girl's hair color or a nickname). In this case, the wolf threatens the girl's virginity. The anthropomorphic wolf symbolizes a man, who could be a lover, seducer or sexual predator.

[edit] Into The Woods

In Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's musical Into the Woods, the wolf's attempt to eat Little Red Riding Hood is seductive. In the original Broadway and in many other productions, the wolf costume features an obvious penis. When Little Red matures, she gives up her cloak, deciding she doesn't need it anymore. This can be viewed as deciding to no longer hide from the wolf (representing her own sexuality), or as the literal giving up of the cloak of the hymen, i.e. her virginity.

[edit] Transactional Analysis

In Eric Berne's version in What Do You Say After You Say Hello?, the story also deals with sexuality, and is seen as part of parental programming. In Berne's version, the grandfather of Little Red Riding Hood fondled her under her dress, awakening her latent sexuality. It also tells of an intimate relationship between the wolf and the grandmother. The tale can be viewed as a parental warning against adult sexuality, one which ironically thwarts Little Red's healthy sexual development.

[edit] Natural Cycles

Folklorists and cultural anthropologists such as P. Saintyves and Edward Burnett Tylor saw Little Red Riding Hood in terms of solar myths and other naturally-occurring cycles (though not the cycle of menstruation, mentioned above). Her red hood could represent the bright sun which is ultimately swallowed by the terrible night (the wolf). Alternatively, the tale could be about the May Queen ritual that represents the coming of Spring, with the crown of flowers replaced by the red hood.[5]

[edit] Controversy

In 1989 an illustrated version of Little Red Riding Hood was banned in two California school districts. This was apparently because Little Red Riding Hood was shown carrying alcohol (presumably wine) to her grandmother, and some were worried about the inclusion of alcohol in a children's story.[6]

[edit] Trivia

Author Charles Dickens is known to have said "Little Red Riding Hood was my first love. I have the impression that, if I had been able to marry her, I would have known perfect happiness."

[edit] Modern uses and adaptations

WPA poster by Kenneth Whitley, 1939 There have been many modern uses and adaptations of Little Red Riding Hood, generally with a mock-serious reversal of Red Riding Hood's naïveté or some twist of social satire; they range across a number of different media and styles. Multiple variations have been written in the past century, which adapt the Grimm’s tale to their own interests. Most either empower Little Red or give the wolf victim status under the term ‘misunderstood’. Many notable examples are cited below, but this is not an exhaustive list.

[edit] Literature and Drama

[edit] Novels

  • Wolf by Gillian Cross (1990), winner of the 1991 Carnegie Medal. This is a very loose adaptation of the tale set in the modern day.
  • Caperucita en Manhattan by Carmen Martín Gaite (1990).
  • Little Red Riding Hood in the Red Light District by Manlio Argueta (1998).
  • Darkest Desire: The Wolf's Own Tale by Anthony Schmitz (1998).

[edit] Short Stories

  • An especially notable adaptation is Angela Carter's The Company of Wolves from her collection The Bloody Chamber (1979), which focuses on the sexual aspect of the Red/Wolf relationship. This was also adapted into a film by Neil Jordan.
  • "Wolfland" by Tanith Lee, published in Red as Blood (1983).
  • "I Shall Do Thee Mischief in the Woods" by Kathe Koja, published in Snow White, Blood Red (1993).
  • "Little Red" by Wendy Wheeler, published in Snow White, Blood Red (1993).
  • The Apprentice" by Miriam Grace Monfredo, published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (November, 1993).
  • "The Good Mother" by Patricia Galloway, published in Truly Grim Tales (1995).
  • "Riding the Red" by Nalo Hopkinson, published in Black Swan, White Raven (1997).
  • "Wolf" by Francesca La Block, published in The Rose and the Beast (2000).
  • "Little Red and the Big Bad" by Will Shetterly, published in Swan Sister (2003).

[edit] Poetry

  • "Little Red Riding Hood" by Olga Broumas, pubished in Beginning With O (1977).
  • "Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf" by Roald Dahl, published in Revolting Rhymes (1983) - features a comical and violent twist in which Red turns the wolf into a wolf-skin coat.[7]
  • "The Waiting Wolf" by Gwen Strauss, published in Trail of Stones (1990).
  • "On a Nineteenth Century Color Lithograph of Red Riding Hood by the Artist J.H." by Alice Wirth Gray, published in What the Poor Eat (1993).
  • "Journeybread Recipe" by Lawrence Schimel, published in Black Thorn, White Rose (1994).
  • "Little Red Cap" by Carol Ann Duffy, published in The World's Wife (1999).
  • "Silver and Gold" by Ellen Steiber, published in The Armless Maiden(1996).
  • "Grandmother" by Lawrence Syndal, published in Conjunctions #31 (1999).
  • "What Her Mother Said" by Theodora Goss, published in The Journal of Mythic Arts (2004).

[edit] Other retellings of the tale

  • Little Red Riding Wolf, in which a game warden arrives at the last moment to save the wolf from poachers.
  • Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's musical Into the Woods plays with the typical devices of a number of different fairytales, including Little Red Riding Hood.
  • Radio humorist Stan Freberg performed a radio play spoofing both Little Red Riding Hood and Dragnet called "Little Blue Riding Hood".
  • In 1940, Howard L. Chace, a professor of French, wrote Ladle Rat Rotten Hut, where the story is told using incorrect homonyms of the correct English words.
  • James Thurber's short story "The Little Girl and the Wolf," features the heroine turning tables on the Wolf. The Moral says it all: "It is not so easy to fool little girls nowadays as it used to be."
  • "Little Red Riding Hood" published in James Finn Garner's "Politically Correct Bedtime Stories" satirises politically correct speech, focusing on such things as womyn's rights.[8] See also Politically Correct Red Riding Hood, which features a very different outcome.[9]
  • The tale seems to hold a particular attraction for Greek composers; opera versions of it have been produced by George Kouroupos (1988), Charalampos Goyios (1998), and Georges Aperghis (2001).

Many of the above short stories and poems (as well as many older texts) are collected in The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood by Jack Zipes.

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[edit] Film

  • Liza Minnelli starred in the 1965 TV film The Dangerous Christmas of Red Riding Hood with Cyril Ritchard as the Wolf and Vic Damone as the huntsman. This revisionist fairy tale is told from the Wolf's point of view.
  • Filmmaker Neil Jordan's horror fiction/fantasy fiction The Company of Wolves, based on the short story by Angela Carter, told an interweaving series of folkloric tales loosely based on Red Riding Hood that fully exploited its subtexts of lycanthropy, violence and sexual awakening.
  • Freeway, a feature film adaptation, starring Kiefer Sutherland and Reese Witherspoon adapts it into a modern setting in which the major characters become a psychotic but charming serial killer and a sexually abused teenage girl.
  • In the 1987 Japanese live-action movie The Red Spectacles (aka Akai Megane), the featured "young lady" (as mentioned in the French and German versions of the tale), an allegory for Fate, is dressed like the Little Red Riding Hood. A anime version of this character appeared later in the film's sequel, Jin-Roh.
  • Christina Ricci starred in a 1997 short film based on the subject matter. See Little Red Riding Hood.
  • The 2003 horror film Red Riding Hood directed by Giacomo Cimini was a darker take on the classic story.
  • The 2004 Kevin Bacon film The Woodsman took its title from the woodsman of the fable. In a speech given by Mos Def's policeman character, he compared pedophiles to the wolf and observed that there seems to be no "woodsman" to save victimized children.
  • Red Riding Hood was adapted into a Musical film directed by Randal Kleiser, and test-released first in late 2004. The experimental virtual reality features were then enhanced for over an additional year. The film stars Morgan Thompson as "Red". Also among the actors are Henry Cavill, Ashley Rose Orr, Andrea Bowen, and music opera entertainers well known on Broadway Lainie Kazan, Debi Mazar and Joey Fatone.
  • In the 2005 film, The Brothers Grimm, one minor character was a young girl who was clearly designed to resemble the classic Red Riding Hood figure, even paraphrasing some of her most famous lines when talking to a (predatory) horse she discovers in the woods ("What big eyes you have, what big ears you have, and such a pretty, pretty mouth.").
  • Hard Candy (2005) is a modern take on the Red Riding Hood character that turns the tables: a teenage girl tortures a man whom she is convinced is a paedophile. The film is only loosely based on the tale, however, the film ends with the girl wearing a bright red hoodie (an image also used for the film's marketing poster), acknowledging the story's influence.
  • Singapore cult director Tzang Merwyn Tong directed a 45 minute short film in 2005 titled A Wicked Tale. Tzang's postmodern re-imagination of the fable is presented in a chilling style that combines the silent-era revivalism of Guy Maddin with the shock/sadistic horror of Audition-era Takashi Miike.

[edit] Animation and Anime

  • Walt Disney produced a black and white silent short cartoon called Little Red Riding Hood in 1922 for Laugh-O-gram Cartoons. This early work of Disney's is extremely rare.
  • Early Bugs Bunny cartoons such as Little Red Riding Rabbit utilise the characters from fairytales such as Little Red Riding Hood.
  • A very famous variation is the short animated cartoon, Red Hot Riding Hood by Tex Avery where the story is recast in an adult-oriented urban setting, with the suave, suited wolf howling after the stripper Red. Tex Avery also utilised the same cast and themes in a number of other cartoons in this series.
  • The 1999 Japanese animated film Jin-Roh (aka 'Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade'), about a secret society within an anti-terrorist unit of an alternative post-World War II Japan, makes several literary and visual references to the German oral version of the story (most notably a Rotkäppchen book offered to the main character by one of the female bomb couriers), which is closer to the Perrault version, than the tale of Grimm, with an anti-terrorist commando as the wolf (the title is literally "Man-wolf" in Japanese, or, better still, could be translated as "a Wolf as a Man"), and a mysterious woman as the young lady.
  • The Japanese children's anime TV series Akazukin Chacha features the eponymous heroine Chacha who is visually reminiscent of Little Red Riding Hood ('akazukin' relates to her red hood and cape). One of the major themes of the series is a sort of pre-adolescent love triangle between Chacha and her two male friends, one of whom is a werewolf, the other a boy-witch.
  • A 2006 computer-animated children's film, Hoodwinked, uses the anachronistic parody approach to the tale typified by the Shrek films, envisioning the story as a Rashomon-like mystery in which the anthropomorphised animal police of the forest question the four participants of the story (Red, the Wolf, Granny and the Woodsman) after they arrive at Granny's house, with each participant telling their own version of how they arrived there and why.
  • An Anime named Otogi Jushi Akazukin has as Main Character a girl named Akazukin, who is a Fairy Musketeer and has to protect a boy named Souta, who's the Elde Key, from the world of Science. Akazukin comes from Fandavale, the world of Magic, and for protect Souta, she has help of Val, her Wolf Familiar and the others two Musketeers, Shirayuki (Snow White) and Ibara (Sleeping Beauty). The Enemies are Randagio (one of the Bremen Town Musicians), Hansel and Gretel, who works for Cinderella, who wants the Elde's Key.

[edit] Comics, videogames and other assorted media

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  • Neil Gaiman worked a darker, more erotic, pre-Perrault version of the Red Riding Hood tale in The Doll's House arc of the Sandman comics. In this version, the wolf kills the old lady, tricks the girl into eating her grandmother's meat and drinking her blood, order the girl to undress and lay in bed with him and finally devours her. According to Gaiman, his portrayal of the tale was based on the one reported in the book The Great Cat Massacre: and other episodes in French cultural history by Robert Darnton[10].
  • Both the Big Bad Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood are characters in the Fables comic book universe. The Big Bad Wolf has taken on human form and become known as Bigby Wolf. He is the sheriff of Fabletown when the series begins. The figure of Red Riding Hood ('Ride') appears three times. The first two instances are actually spies working for the Fables' enemy The Adversary, magically disguising themselves as Little Red Riding Hood (the second of which is actually the witch Baba yaga). The third Red Riding Hood seems to be the genuine article.
  • The webcomic No Rest for the Wicked has a character called "Red". She lives alone in the woods and always carries an axe with her. After being attacked by a wolf (presumably killed and eaten) she has gone and systematically killed many of the wolves in the forest.
  • The webcomic Everafter by illustrator Shaun Healey features well-known fairy tale characters who have been placed in an asylum because of their traumatizing experiences in the fairy tales. As the main character, Little Red Riding Hood must deal with her harrowing experiences with the wolf. The webcomic can be viewed here.
  • The fighting game series Darkstalkers has a twisted take on the story: A girl named B.B. Hood (called Bulletta in Japan), a young girl who is actually a bounty hunter of werewolves, who killed her parents. She carries an Uzi, hides land mines underneath her dress, and her basket conceals a variety of weapons, from knives to a built-in rocket launcher and a flamethrower disguised as a wine bottle. She is also good friends with a very large huntsman and soldier.
  • The video game Fable also features a reference to the story, in the form of Scarlet Robe, "slayer of Balverines (werewolf-like creatures featured in the game)." A flashback in the game shows a young Scarlet engaged in battle with a group of Balverines, dressed in the familiar red hood and cloak.
  • A flash animation by Dirty Doll Creations also shows a much darker version of the tale here.
  • Implicit adult sexuality is a theme of Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs 1966 hit song Lil' Red Riding Hood.
  • Tamaoki Benkyo created a twisted and dark version of Red Riding Hood in the manga Tokyo Akazukin. It is about a demonic girl dressed as red riding hood who wanted to be devoured by the big bad wolf himself.
  • A comic created by Hector Sevilla and Mike S. Miller called Lullaby features a Red Ridng Hood character who is half girl and half wolf (Because she got bitten by The Big Bad Wolf). The art can be viewed here here.
  • An adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood in the Grimm Fairy Tales comic series by Zenescope depicted Red Riding Hood as a teenage girl nicknamed Red who is going off to bring food to her sick grandmother who lives deep in the woods. She gets attacked by a werewolf who kills her grandmother and attacks her there. She is saved by the woodsman, named Samson, and the wolf turns out be a former lover. This story was a teenager's dream sequence after she gets into a fight with her boyfriend who wanted to have sex with her.
  • The last four tracks of Japanese black metal band Kadenzza's The Second Renaissance follow the plot of Little Red Riding Hood.
  • Evanescence's music video for the song "Call Me When You're Sober" is heavily inspired by Little Red Riding Hood.
  • Todd McFarlane's "Twisted Fairy Tales" action figure line includes a more voluptuous Red Riding Hood holding a dead wolf with its entrails and Grandma dripping out of its stomach. A similar but less gory figure is part of the "Scary Tales" line of figures (not by McFarlane).

[edit] Other cultures' names for Little Red Riding Hood

  • Albanian: Kesulkuqja, meaning 'Red Cap'
  • Arabic: ليلى و الذئب, meaning 'lyla and the wolf'
  • Basque: Txano Gorritxo
  • Catalan: La Caputxeta Vermella
  • Czech: Červená karkulka
  • Chinese: 小紅帽, meaning 'Little Red Hat'
  • Croatian: Crvenkapica, meaning 'Little Red Hat'
  • Danish: Den lille Rødhætte, meaning 'the Little Redhood'
  • Dutch: Roodkapje
  • Estonian: Punamütsike, meaning 'Little Red Hat'
  • Finnish: Punahilkka
  • French: Le Petit Chaperon Rouge, meaning 'the Little Red Hood'
  • German: Rotkäppchen, meaning 'Little Red Cap'
  • Greek: Κοκκινοσκουφίτσα (Kokkinoskoufitsa), meaning 'Little Red Cap'
  • Hebrew: כיפה אדומה (Kippah Addumah), meaning 'Red Kippah'
  • Hungarian: Piroska és a farkas, meaning 'Little Red and the Wolf'

[edit] See also

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[edit] External links

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Wikisource has original text related to this article:

de:Rotkäppchen es:Caperucita Roja eo:Ruĝkufulino fr:Le Petit Chaperon rouge it:Cappuccetto Rosso he:כיפה אדומה lt:Raudonkepuraitė hu:Piroska és a farkas nl:Roodkapje ja:赤ずきん no:Rødhette og ulven pl:Czerwony Kapturek pt:Capuchinho Vermelho ksh:Rudkäppche op kölsch fi:Punahilkka sv:Rödluvan th:หนูน้อยหมวกแดง zh:小红帽

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