Little Red Riding Hood

Little Red Riding Hood


In reading the four versions of Little Red Riding Hood, it's interesting to note the differences between them. The two more traditional versions are those of Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm. Both these versions present Little Red as a pretty village girl, adored by her mother and grandmother, and the red cap or hood made for her by her grandmother easily identifies her. In both versions she is an innocent charged with taking cakes to her ill grandmother and to do so, she must travel through the woods where a wily Wolf lurks. When she encounters the Wolf he pretends to be her friend but the reader knows he intends to trick her so that he can make a meal of both her and her grandmother.

Never having read the Perrault version, I was surprised to read that Little Red takes off her clothes and climbs into bed with the Wolf - she surely must have recognized him at close range! Also, the finality of both Grandmother's and Little Red's deaths is somewhat shocking, a triumph of evil over innocence. Perrault's heavy-handed "Moral" at the end of the story appears to be targeting young ladies rather than little girls, warning them of the dangers of being deceived by men who, like the wolf, may seem "tame, pleasant, and gentle" but are to be guarded against at all costs.

The Grimms' tale, however, provides the reader with the proverbial "happy ending" by bringing resolution to the narrative. Although the Wolf succeeds in eating both Grandmother and Little Red, he has apparently swallowed them whole (a bit of magic to be sure.) When the huntsman hears the Wolf snoring in Grandmother's bed, he realizes the Wolf has eaten Grandmother and cuts her out of the sleeping wolf's belly because "she could still be saved." Out come an intact Grandmother and Little Red, and the huntsman, Grandmother, and Little Red all profit from the near-fatal experience. Not wanting to leave the reader without an alternative rendition of how Little Red and Grandmother could have avoided the nasty situation all together, the Grimms also present a short tale demonstrating how Grandmother and Little Red could have out-maneuvered the Wolf without the huntsman's help if they had been less trusting. They turn the tables on the Wolf and lure him to his death by exploiting his hunger and drowning him in a trough of broth!

In contrast, “The Story of Grandmother” published by Paul Delarue and “The Little Girl and the Wolf” by James Thurber are not morality tales. There is no personalization of any of the characters - no names, no illumination of motivation or emotion displayed, and the Little Girl is no innocent, but clever enough to extricate herself from the Wolf's clutches, in one version by pretending to have to "go" outside and escaping back to her home in safety and in Thurber’s version by pulling an automatic revolver out of her basket of food for Grandmother and shooting the Wolf dead. No magic or moral needed here.

When I finished last week's reading in Beginning Theory by Barry, I did the activity he listed about why I decided to study English on page 8. I wrote that one of the reasons I decided to study English was because of learning experiences I had in high school when reading books like Melville's Billy Budd, Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, and Shakespeare's Macbeth. These works provided me with new ways of thinking about the human condition and man's relationship to others and to God, the natural and supernatural planes, and man's place in the universe, and also allowed for exploration of these issues in thought-provoking class discussions.

In this week's readings from the books on Theory, I discovered that my view of the function and value of literature is one that was prevalent prior to the 19th century but is no longer in vogue with modern literary theorists. From Barry's chapter on "Liberal Humanism," I'm apparently in Aristotle's camp because I have a "reader-centered" approach to literature, and believe that individual character is revealed through actions that lead to decisions readers can identify with. I think this is why fairy tales like Little Red Riding Hood remain popular through generations of children, because tragedy or near-tragedy create "pity and fear," sympathy for and empathy with the plight of the protagonist, and are cathartic in nature, helping us as children and adults to deal with our own fears. I also believe a story should have some point or significance, making the effort to read it "worth it," as Culler discusses in Literary Theory. Both Culler and Barry highlight the movement of British critics in the 19th century to view the function of literature as a vehicle to replace a declining national belief in religion, with literature providing a special place of moral scenarios which would unify society by giving the "middle class and aristocrats alternative values” and giving “the lower class a stake in the culture." Culler cites the novels of Jane Eyre and Uncle Tom's Cabin as examples of vehicles of ideology that were also instruments for that ideology's undoing; however, Culler then goes on to state that modern criticism rejects this as a legitimate function of literature.

I thought the chapter on “Author/ity” in the Theory Toolbox was interesting in its discussion of why certain works of literature are considered worthy of study and how the word "author" is both a verb and a noun. "To become an author is to be invested with author/ity, to be taken seriously and respected for your accomplishments." While I agree that the author is not always in control of the meaning of his or her text and that there can be multiple meanings for readers because each reader is a unique individual who is capable of discerning meaning apart from the author, I disagree that the author therefore has no control over his or her meaning, as Foucault claims. I believe an author's meaning depends on the credibility that the community of readers gives to his or her works and that the text, apart from the author, cannot produce its own meaning. I find myself more in agreement with Matthew Arnold's view that if readers will read the best works by the great masters (Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton) it will encourage "a direct relationship between the individual reader and the literary greats" and help readers establish a basis for judging new writing, a view that Barry calls a "protestant aesthetic."