Little Red Riding Hood
Little Red Riding Hood
[p.3]--Fairy tales have their roots in a peasant
culture relatively uninhibited in its expressive
energy.
e.g. “The Story of Grandmother”
Perrault, “Little Red Riding Hood”
Moral: sending a message about vanity, idleness,
and ignorance
Perrault, “Little Red Riding Hood”
[p.4] Little Red Riding Hood’s failure to fight
back or to resist in any way led the
psychoanalytically oriented Bruno Bettelheim to
declare that the girl must be “stupid or she wants to
be seduced.”
Perrault, “Little Red Riding Hood”
Once a rapacious beast, he was turned by Perrault
into a metaphor, a stand-in for male seducers who
lure young women into their beds.
[p.5]--The Grimms’ “Little Red Cap” erased all
traces of the erotic playfulness found in “The Story
of Grandmother” and placed the action in the
service of teaching lessons to the child inside and
outside the story.
Adult oral entertainment literary
fare for children
[p.6-7]--Once a folktale full of earthy humor and high
melodrama, it was transformed into a heavy-handed
narrative with a pedagogical agenda designed by adults.
In the process, the surreal violence of the original was
converted into a frightening punishment for a relatively
miner infraction.
Rewriting LRRH
P.7 Although the strategies for reframing the story
vary from one author to the next, they generally
aim to turn Little Red Riding Hood into a clever,
resourceful heroine.
Interpretation 1
Allegorical reading 1
Erich Fromm finds in the tale the “expression of a
deep antagonism against men and sex.”
Interpretation 2
Allegorical reading 2
Susan Brownmiller: “Little Red Riding Hood”
perpetuates the notion that women are at once
victims of male violence and beneficiaries of male
protection.
Red Riding Hood is a parable of rape.
Maria Tartar’s comment
--an eternal battle of the sexes (but with different
conclusions)
--looking for timeless and universal truths
Interpretation 3
Alan Dundes
Infantile fantasy, children’s anxieties about being
devoured
[p.9]--the meaning of a tale is generated in its
performance. The scene of reading or acting out a
text can affect its reception far more powerfully
than the morals and timeless truths inserted into the
text by Perrault, the Grimms, and others.
Path of the needles and path of the pins
lay cable: defecate
striptease
a trickster figure
Question
Why is the story “more faithful to the oral
tradition”?
Little Red Riding Hood
From this story one learns that children,
Especially young girls,
Pretty, well-bred, and genteel,
Are wrong to listen to just anyone,
And it’s not at all strange,
If a wolf ends up eating them.
Isay a wolf, but not all wolves
Are exactly the same.
Some are perfectly charming,
Not loud, brutal, or angry,
But tame, pleasant, and gentle,
Following young ladies
Right into their homes, into their chambers,
But watch out if you haven't learned that tame wolves
Are the most dangerous of all.
Little Red Cap
Little Red Cap thought to herself: “Never again
will you stray from the path and go into the woods,
when your mother has forbidden it.”
Metro-Goldwyn lion
Calvin Coolidge (American
President 1923-1929)
James Thurber
James Grover Thurber (December 8, 1894 –
November 2, 1961) was an American cartoonist, author,
humorist, journalist, playwright, and celebrated wit. He
was best known for his cartoons and short stories
published mainly in The New Yorker magazine. He was
one of the most popular humorists of his time, as he
celebrated the comic frustrations and eccentricities of
ordinary people.
Roald Dahl (1916-1990)
SillySymphony
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Into the woods
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfJzvAWt
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AFYjny9
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question
1. There are four types of ending: (1) the girl is
eaten by the wolf; (2) the girl is saved by the
hunter; (3) the girl escapes by using her wits; (4)
the girl kills the wolf. Which ending do you prefer?
2. Writers in the twentieth century made the girl
kill the wolf. As a person in the twenty-first
century, how do you rewrite the ending of the story
so that the story reflects the “spirit” of our time?
