Little Red Riding Hood (narrative)

Little Red Riding Hood

While folk roots of the Little Red Riding Hood story reach back many centuries and across cultures, the first codified record of the story is in Charles Perrault’s 1697 book Histoires ou Contes du Temps Passé under the name "Le Petit Chaperon Rouge" (Zipes 1983, 2). The book was first translated into English in 1729, where it became colloquially known as “Mother Goose’s Tales” (in French, “mother goose tales” simply refers to folk tales, but thanks to Perrault’s popularity in England, the English turn of phrase became synonymous with that particular volume of stories) (Daniels 2002, 6). The book was on its eleventh edition by the end of the 18th century, and “individual stories were quickly pirated for chapbook versions” (Daniels 2002, 8).

Histoires ou Contes du Temps Passé was a book of stories for adults—and not just any adults, but the courtiers at the notoriously sexually scandalous court of Louis XIV of France. The original story is, without a doubt, a parable about the dangers of young women indulging in sexual relations with certain “wolfish” men (Orenstein 2002, 23). (In the original version, the wolf has Little Red remove her clothing and climb into bed with him [Orenstein 2002, 21].) When the book travelled to more sexually conservative England and, in short order, became marketed to children, the sexual overtones were buried deeper into subtext (with the assistance of the Grimm version of the story). There was still a layer of the sexual cautionary tale, but that element of the story could be overlooked. What cannot be overlooked about the Perrault version of the story, however, is that the wolf eats not only the grandmother, but Little Red herself—and no enterprising woodcutter arrives to save them (Orenstein 2002, 21).

While other Red Riding Hood stories were recorded between Perrault in 1697 and the early 19th Century, the other key adaptation, the complement and successor to the Perrault, is the Brothers Grimm version, “Rotkappchen,” first seen in their 1812 text Kinderund Hausmarchen. The Grimms were aware of Perrault, but they found his version “too cruel, too sexual, and too tragic” (Zipes 1983, 14), and among the changes they made, the most significant is that after the wolf consumes Little Red and her grandmother, a woodsman kills the wolf and rescues them from inside of him (Orenstein 2002, 44). In England and America, the Perrault and Grimm versions were blended together with aspects of each featured in different retellings (Zipes 1983, 24). Almost every post-1812 English language Red Riding Hood story is based on a combination of these two fundamental versions (Nodelman 1978, p.70).

Little Red Riding Hood in this collection

This sample of the Historical Children’s Collection at University of Washington Libraries Special Collections contains two contrasting copies of Little Red Riding Hood—one from 1819 and one from 1954.

On the one hand, we have a telling of Little Red Riding Hood (titled simply Little Red Riding Hood) from 1954. The bright colors, the tactile element (Little Red’s cloak is, on every page, depicted in what the book describes as “fuzzy wuzzy” material that stands out from the rest of the page), and, primarily, the lack of any discernible struggle by way of the plot, indicate that this large picture book was only ever intended for small children. The illustrations not only depict Little Red as a cherubic, dimple-kneed toddler, but also depict her family and the woodcutter with round, blushing, childlike faces (Little Red 1954, 1). In this version, the wolf beats Little Red to her grandmother’s house and menaces Granny, who jumps out the window (unscathed) and runs to fetch help (Little Red 1954, 10). The wolf then dresses as the grandmother and, when Little Red arrives, they have the ubiquitous “what big ears/eyes/teeth you have” conversation (Little Red 1954, 14, 15) before Granny comes back with a woodcutter who saves the day (and their lives) by killing the wolf (Little Red 1954, 16). There is no inherent lesson that Little Red might suffer a comeuppance for being distracted by forest flora or fauna or for speaking to the wolf.

On the other hand, we have a telling of Little Red Riding Hood (The Renowned History of Little Red Riding Hood; in verse) from 1819. This is based on the Perrault version. From the illustrations, this Little Red is a young woman, not a child (Souter 1819, [2] ill 1). When the wolf asks Little Red where she is going, she "answer[s] at once without caution or fear” (Souter 1819, [7] p.5) (unwise when sharing with strange wolves), and on the way to her grandmother’s house she becomes distracted by pretty flowers (Souter 1819, [10] p.6) and dawdles. When the wolf reaches the grandmother’s house, he eats Granny (Souter 1819, [14] p.8), and, after Little Red’s arrival and the “big ears” conversation, he promptly devours the heroine as well (Souter 1819, [19] p.11). The book ends with a moralizing verse:

This story demonstrates that children discreet/Should never confide in each stranger they meet;/For often a Knave, in an artful disguise,/Will mark out an innocent prey for his prize:/Take warning, dear children, before ‘tis too late,/By Little Red Riding-hood’s tragical fate (Souter 1819, [22]).

Clearly, the idea here is to illustrate to children all the ill that might befall them, should they place their trust in the wrong persons, and the purpose of the horrifying story is to frighten them into behaving.

Little Red Riding Hood and Frightening Children into Morality

The 1819 book is a translation of the Perrault story—based on the size and the fact that it was published alone, it is likely one of those unauthorized publications--while the 1954 book is based on the Grimm story. One of these is a morality tale and one is not, and, “the changes in the texts [are] neither random nor insignificant” (Shavit 1983, 66), but rather indicative of the attitudes toward both children and morality at the time. Perrault’s Little Red’s “troubles stemmed from her ignorance of the great world” (Nodelman 1978, 71), while Grimm’s Little Red chooses to act against her mother’s behest to stick to the path (Nodelman 1978, 72). In the 20th century “we work hard to protect the innocence of children” (Nodelman 1978, 72) and the story tells kids that if they obey their parents nothing bad will happen to them. The Grimm story, the one that most 20th century interpretations of Red Riding Hood are based on, is not particularly addressed to children. Perrault’s story, however, is addressed expressly to children in the moral verse at the end (Shavit 1983, 64). In the 19th century, “knowledge of the wicked ways of the world is essential, even for children” (Nodelman 1978, 72), and the best way to teach those children is by telling children that terrible things will happen to them, not just if they are immoral, but also when they make guileless mistakes.

I have noticed three different patterns with regard to the way these stories address frightening children into morality. Little Red Riding Hood is an example of cautioning innocents: an innocent is thrust into a situation, fails to navigate it through naivete, and suffers a horrible fate. Red Riding Hood should not have spoken to the wolf or gotten distracted on the path to her grandmother’s house, but she didn’t know any better, and she was eaten by a wolf. The fact that she doesn’t know any better doesn’t matter; “innocence is stupid” (Nodelman 1978, 72) and she should have learned faster. Other stories that have this style of moral frightening are the Babes in the Woods stories (the children are innocents and have done nothing wrong), though those stories are split half and half into cautioning innocents and also into punishing wickedness (in the case of the evil uncle and his henchmen, who all meet terrible ends for their crimes) and The Little Spark and the Great Fire (the mother was ignorant of the danger she put herself in as a young girl and was burned).

By far the most common pattern is that of punishing wickedness: a child (or anthropomorphized animal) is ill-behaved and, as a result, suffers terribly. Stories featuring this kind of moral frightening include (as previously mentioned) The Babes in the Woods (the uncle and henchmen murder innocent children and are fully punished), The Frog Who Would a Wooing Go (the frog disobeys his mother and is eaten), The Little Spark and the Great Fire (the boy who was disobedient and burned to death, and the boy who played with fire and couldn’t put it out), and, in part, The History of Little King Pippen (the naughty and unrepentant boys are eaten by lions). A subset of this pattern comes in the form of stories where the just and good are rewarded for righteousness, such as in the case of Little King Pippen (Pippen is without reproach) Farmer Wilkins (the second story in The Children in the Wood) and the scullion-boy in Lady Isabella's Tragedy (the second story in The Doleful Story of the Babes in the Wood).

The final (and rarest) pattern is that of forgiving repentance: a wrongdoer (usually a child) is truly sorry for what he or she has done, expresses that repentance, and manages to avoid the disastrous fate that would otherwise have befallen. The book in this collection that represents forgiving repentance is The History of Little King Pippen (in the case of Harry Harmless).

Some insight into these different takes on children and morality might come from the opposing concepts of what children are, as embodied in the Dionysian child and the Apollonian child. The Dionysian child is wild, willful, and sensual, and “must be inculcated through external discipline” (Smith 2011). The Apollonian child is intrinsically good, pure, and innocent, and must be “allowed to develop ‘naturally’” (Smith 2011). The Dionysian concept is older; just as there was not, up to the late 1600s, a concept of “childhood” as distinct from adulthood, there was not a concept of “the child” as a sweet, innocent, angelic being (Shavit 1983, 61). Indeed, the first influential instances of this view of childhood occur in the writings of Locke and Rousseau. Locke states that children are pure and innocent, and Rousseau goes so far as to say that children are inherently good (though also inherently ignorant) (Saha 2011). That said, when the Victorian Romantic movement adopted Rousseau’s ideas, the concept of the Apollonian child became much more pervasive (Smith 2011). There are parallels between this concept of the Apollonian child and the pattern of cautioning innocents, and between the Dionysian child and the pattern of punishing wickedness.

Sources

Daniels, M. (2002) “The Tale of Charles Perrault and Puss in Boots.” Electronic British Library Journal, 0, np. Retrieved from http://www.bl.uk/eblj/2002articles/pdf/article5.pdf. Accessed May 3, 2017.

Little Red Riding Hood. (Tell-a-tale books). (1954). Racine, Wis.: Whitman Pub.

Nodelman, P. (1978) “Little Red Riding Hood Rides Again — and Again and Again and Again.” Children's Literature Association Quarterly, Proceedings: 70-77. https://doi.org/10.1353/chq.1978.0002. Accessed May 4, 2017.

Orenstein, C. (2002) Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: Sex, Morality, and the Evolution of a Fairy Tale. New York: Basic Books.

Shavit, Z. (1983). “The Notion of Childhood and the Child as Implied Reader (Test Case: ‘Little Red Riding Hood’).” Journal of Research and Development in Education 16:3, 60-67.

Smith, K. (2011). “Producing governable subjects: Images of childhood old and new.” Childhood 19:1, 24-37. doi 10.1177/0907568211401434. Accessed May 2nd, 2017.

Souter, J., & Hemsted, Edmund. (1819). The renowned history of Little Red Riding-Hood : In verse (New ed.). London: Printed for John Souter, at the School Library.

Zipes, J. (1983). The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood: Versions of the Tale in Sociocultural Context. South Hadley: Bergin & Garvey Publishers, Inc.