The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood

Jack Zipes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781135205324
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Crítica literaria

Jack Zipes presents the many faces of Little Red Riding Hood. Bringing together 35 of the best versions of the tale, from the Brothers Grimm to Anne Sexton, Zipes uses the tales to explore questions of Western culture, sexism and politics.

The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood

LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD has never enjoyed an easy life. She began her career by being gobbled up by the wicked wolf. Later she was saved by an assortment of well-meaning hunters, gamekeepers, woodcutters, fathers, grandmothers, and fairies. Of course they all scolded her for being too carefree, and she obediently promised to mend her ways. However, she was not always compelled to be obedient and rely upon saviors. Using her wits, Little Red Riding Hood also managed to trick the wolf all by herself in many different ways. Sometimes she cut her way out of the wolf's dark belly and filled it with stones so that he would topple over dead. One time she shot him with an automatic, which she carried in her basket. It has always been difficult for Little Red Riding Hood to suppress her fear of the wolf especially when his lust ultimately forces him to bare his dreadful fangs. Yet, on a few occasions she does overcome her fear, realizes that the wolf himself is a victim of slander, and even decides to marry him. In other, more prudish, versions of her life, it is said that she prevented the wolf from laying his vulgar sexual paws on her and her granny.

As for her character, Little Red Riding Hood has been described as pretty and lovely, but too gullible and naive. Sometimes she has appeared vain and foolish, sometimes sassy and courageous. Much ado has been made about her fetish of the red hood or cap. Clearly her innocence in the story has been suspect. There is a touch of nonconformity and sexual promiscuity in her character. But whatever her reputation and destiny, she has always been used as a warning to children, particularly girls, a symbol and embodiment of what might happen if they are disobedient and careless. She epitomizes the good girl gone wrong, and her history appears to be an open-and-shut case. Yet, the hidden motives in the different versions of her life suggest that she may be the victim of circumstantial evidence. Given the fact that the plot and signs have varied in the course of 300 years, there is something suspiciously manipulative about the way Little Red Riding Hood has been treated. She has suffered abuse after abuse, and it is time that the true history of this seductively innocent girl be revealed.

Background: The Tale Prior to Perrault

For a long time, anthropologists, folklorists, and historians maintained that the plot of Little Red Riding Hood had been derived from ancient myths about the sunrise and sunset.¹ The red garment of Little Red Riding Hood was associated with the sun, and the wolf was considered to be the personification of darkness. From another erudite perspective, the tale was regarded as an offshoot of legends about swallowing, which hark back to Jonah and the whale.² Other scholars equated the tale with traditional Manichean myths about the forces of darkness seeking to engulf the purity of Christian goodness.³ Undoubtedly parallels may be drawn to ancient myths, beliefs, and rituals, but recent research has proven rather conclusively that Little Red Riding Hood is of fairly modern vintage. By modern, I mean that the basic elements of the tale were developed in an oral tradition during the late Middle Ages, largely in France, Tyrol, and northern Italy, and they gave rise to a group of tales intended explicitly for children.⁴ These warning tales were so widespread in France that they undoubtedly influenced Charles Perrault's literary version of 1697, which is generally considered to be his own creation (Tale 1). Again, critical research has now amply demonstrated that Perrault did not invent the plot and characters of Little Red Riding Hood. Rather, he borrowed elements from popular folklore and recreated Little Red Riding Hood to suit the needs of an upper-class audience whose social and aesthetic standards were different from those of the common folk.

But, before we turn to Perrault's tale and consider his major accomplishments, it will be important to examine the "rowdy" oral folk tradition that actually gave birth to the more "refined" bourgeois literary tale. Here the work of Marianne Rumpf,⁵ Paul De larue,⁶ and Marc Soriano⁷ is most useful for restoring our sense of authentic history. Rumpf has revealed that one of the most common European warning tales (Schreckmärchen or Warnmärchen) in the Middle Ages involved hostile forces threatening children who were without protection. Either an ogre, ogress, man-eater, wild person, werewolf, or wolf was portrayed as attacking a child in the forest or at home. The social function of the story was to show how dangerous it could be for children to talk to strangers in the woods or to let strangers enter the house. Rumpf argues that the original villain in French folklore was probably a werewolf, and that it was Perrault who transformed him into a simple, but ferocious, wolf. She supports her case with a wealth of historical material.

The Entertaining Story of Little Red Riding Hood, York; J. Kendrew, ca. 1825.

For instance, Rumpf points out that superstitious tales about werewolves flourished more in France during early Christianity and the Middle Ages than in any other European country. There was a virtual epidemic of trials against men accused of being werewolves in the 16th and 17th centuries similar to the trials against women as witches.⁸ The men were generally charged with having devoured children and having committed other sinful acts. There were literally thousands if not hundreds of thousands of such cases, and Rumpf cites some of the more notorious ones, culled from the work of the historians Rudolph Leubuscher and Wilhelm Hertz.⁹ One of the most famous incidents took place in December 1521, and involved Pierre Bourgot and Michel Verdun, who stood trial in Besançon, They were convicted of having attacked and killed children after having assumed the shape of werewolves. Bourgot described his transformation and feats in great detail. He admitted to having killed a seven-year-old boy with his wolf's teeth and paws. However, he was chased away by a peasant, so that he never had time to eat his victim. Verdun admitted to having killed a small girl as she was gathering pears in a garden. However, he, too, was chased away before he could eat his victim. Four other attacks on small girls, which the two accused were supposed to have carried out, were mentioned in the same report, which included particulars as to the ages of the children and the places and dates of the incidents.¹⁰ In certain areas of 16th-century France people of all ages became afraid to pass through fields or woods alone because of werewolves or wolves. Rumpf's major point—and one that should carry great weight—is that wherever oral versions of the Little Red Riding Hood tale were found later in the 19th and 20th centuries, they were primarily discovered in those regions where werewolf trials were most common in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries.

Perrault's literary tale of 1697 was probably derived from stories about werewolves that were circulating in Touraine when his mother grew up there. In 1598 there was the sensational case of Jacques Raollet, who was sentenced to death in Angers, Touraine, for attacking and killing children as a werewolf. His case was appealed at the Parliament of Paris, and Raollet was declared insane and placed in the Hospital Saint Germaine des Pres. This trial took place at a time when Perrault's parents and his nursemaid could have witnessed the events. Though we do not have concrete proof, the major authority on Perrault, Marc Soriano, tends to agree with Rumpf's general assertions:¹¹ Perrault knew oral folk versions of Little Red Riding Hood before he wrote his own fairy tale.

Soriano corroborates Rumpf's findings by demonstrating that Perrault took truncated elements from folklore to form his own creation. If we look at this independent oral tradition and its existence up through the present, a number of elements

have continued to survive in spite of the celebrity of the text published in 1697: the motif of cruelty—probably a reflection of a "primitive structure"—the motif of the blood and flesh of the grandmother which are placed on the bread-bin and which the little girl is invited to eat; the motif of the: "familiar animal"—a cat or bird (or mysterious voice) which informs the child of what she is eating; the episode of the "ritual undressing," a sort of strip-tease by Little Red Riding, Hood, who each time she takes off a garment asks the wolf where she should put it, which leads to an enigmatic or frankly menacing response from the ferocious animal; and finally, a "happy ending" of a particular type, built on the scatological overtone of the "tie which sets free": the little girl pretends that she urgently needs to relieve herself, a pretext to escape from the monster.¹²

All of these elements, which were expurgated or refined in Perrault's literary text, have been kept alive in an independent oral tradition, and, thanks to the research of Paul Delarue, it has been possible to reconstitute an integral text uniting most of the elements' not employed in Perrault's tale, though Perrault was probably familiar with them. Delarue's version of Little Red Riding Hood was recorded in Nièvre, about 1885.¹³ Entitled The Story of Grandmother, it reads as follows:

There was a woman who had made some bread. She said to her daughter: "Go carry this hot loaf and a bottle of milk to your granny."

So the little girl departed. At the crossway she met bzou, the werewolf, who said to her:

"Where are you going?"

"I'm taking this hot loaf and a bottle of milk to my granny."

"What path are you taking," said the werewolf, "the path of needles or the path of pins?"

"The path of needles," the little girl said.

"All right, then I'll take the path of pins."

The little girl entertained herself by gathering needles. Meanwhile the werewolf arrived at the grandmother's house, killed her, put some of her meat in the cupboard and a bottle of her blood on the shelf. The little girl arrived and knocked at the door.

"Push the door," said the werewolf, "it's barred by a piece of wet straw."

"Good day, granny. I've brought you a hot loaf of bread and a bottle of milk."

"Put it in the cupboard, my child. Take some of the meat which is inside and the bottle of wine on the shelf."

After she had eaten, there was a little cat which said: "Phooey! . . .

A slut is she who eats the flesh and drinks the blood of her granny. "Undress yourself, my child," the werewolf said, "and come lie down beside me."

"Where should I put my apron?"

"Throw it into the fire, my child, you won't be needing it anymore."

And each time she asked where she should put all her other

Original artwork by Catherine Orenstein, 1990.

clothes, the bodice, the dress, the petticoat, and the long stockings, the wolf responded:

"Throw them into the fire, my child, you won't be needing them and more."

When she laid herself down in the bed, the little girl said:
"Oh, Granny, how hairy you are!"
"The better to keep myself warm, my-child!"
"Oh, Granny, what big nails you have!"
"The better to scratch me with, my child!"
"Oh, Granny, what big shoulders you have!"
"The better to carry the firewood, my child!"
"Oh, Granny, what big ears you have!"
"The better to hear you with, my child!"
"Oh, Granny, what big nostrils you have!"
"The better to snuff my tobacco with, my child!"
"Oh, Granny, what a big mouth you have!"
"The better to eat you with, my child!"
"Oh, Granny, I've got to go badly. Let me go outside."
"Do it in the bed, my child!"
"Oh, no, Granny, I want to go outside."

"All right, but make it quick."

The werewolf attached a woolen rope to her foot and let her go outside. When the little girl was outside, she tied the end of the rope to a plum tree in the courtyard. The werewolf became impatient and said: "Are you making a load out there? Are you making a load?"

When he realized that nobody was answering him, he jumped out of bed and saw that the little girl had escaped. He followed her but arrived at her house just at the moment she entered.¹⁴

By collecting the different but related independent oral folk tales that contain the same elements missing in the literary tale of Perrault, Delarue has proven that a vital oral tradition in France preceded the conception of Perrault's "civilized" Little Red Riding Hood. Moreover, Gottfried Henssen has shown that similar tales of warning spread throughout Europe and Asia, which reveal that Perrault might have been influenced in a number of different ways.¹⁵ One of the most important discoveries is the fact that the independent oral tales lack the motif of the red riding hood or the color red. So much for the traditional interpretation of sunrise/sunset, or the Christian view of Manichean forces in combat!

The direct forebears of Perrault's literary tale were not influenced by sun worship or Christian theology, but by the very material conditions of their existence and traditional pagan superstition. Little children were attacked and killed by animals and grown-ups in the woods and fields. Hunger often drove people to commit atrocious acts. In the 15th and 16th centuries, violence was difficult to explain on rational grounds. There was a strong superstitious belief in werewolves and witches, uncontrollable magical forces of nature, which threatened the lives of the peasant population. Since antiquity, tales had been spread about vicious creatures in France, and they continued to be spread. Consequently, the warning tale became part: of a Stock oral repertoire of storytellers. Evidence indicates that the teller would grab hold of the child or children nearby when the final line in the well-known dramatic dialogue with the wolf was to be pronounced—"the better to eat you with!" We must remember that storytelling was a dynamic...