Western fairy tale. Genealogy of Little Red Riding Hood - Research Paper Example

Western Fairy Tale Introduction To explore the genealogy of a specific Western fairy tale and deduce what values its versions tend to convey to the audience, we need to clarify the very meaning of the term ‘fairy tale’ and the status that fairy tales have had in society. Scholars agree that there is always something behind fairy tales that makes them more than nursery stories told for amusement. In particular, fairy tales contain representations of the general character of a people or, as Orenstein believes, of collective truths (Orenstein 12). They are reflections of visions of class, gender, and sexuality typical for specific historical periods (Martin 13). As for the definition of the term ‘fairy tale’, literary scholars have yet to come up with it. While the Oxford Dictionary defines a fairy tale as “an unreal or incredible story” or “a tale about fairies”, these definitions seem rather ambiguous: either too broad or too narrow. Thus, a few explanations of fairy tales are accepted in the world of fairy tales scholarship that tend to include the major distinctive features of the genre. One of them was formulated by Jack Zipes, one of the greatest researchers of fairy tales of the modern time. According to Zipes, the fairy tales takes place in “a universe where anything can happen at any time’ owing to the presence of ‘opportunistic’ heroes. The fairy tale is based on the sense of wonder, which produces ‘admiration, fear, awe, and reverence’ for life and for nature (Zipes 5). This paper seeks to explore one particular fairy tale popular in the Western culture in terms of its genealogy and differences of adaptations throughout time, as well as in terms of hidden meanings and morals it tends to convey. Specifically, the paper focuses on Little Red Riding Hood, a well-known fairy tale that is still popular in the Western culture. Genealogy of “Little Red Riding Hood” The story of a small girl that is wearing a red cape or a red hood and is carrying a basket full of food and beverages to her grandmother remains one of the most popular and adored fairy tales in many countries. In the European versions of this fairy tale, the little girl, known as “Le petit chaperon rouge” in France, as “Rot-kappchen” in Germany, and as “Little Red Riding Hood” in Great Britain, according to the plot, encounters a nefarious wolf. While modern accounts of Little Red Riding Hood that are well-known to children have been based on Perrault’s version of this fairy tale which dates back to 1697, as well as on the version of Little Red Riding Hood published by the Grimm brothers in 1812, which evidently derived from the one published by Perrault, the origins of this fairy tale are found in earlier oral narratives that revolved around a similar plot (Orenstein 6). Knight in his exploration of the Little Red Riding Hood and its implied meanings observes that the Little Red Riding Hood had had a lengthy tradition in France before it was published by Perrault. In particular, it is said to have originated from the late Middle Ages and to have enjoyed great popularity in the period between the fifteenth and the seventeenth centuries (Knight 7). Whereas Perrault’s and subsequent printed versions of Little Red Riding Hood followed the general plot pattern which varied insignificantly, oral versions of the fairy tale that were retold by the peasants during the days of the Old Regime contain a few interesting differences and seem to place emphasis on different things (Knight 7). The basic pattern of Little Red Riding Hood was classified by Stith Thompson in 1961 as follows: there are two major segments, which include the Wolf’s Feast and the Rescue. The former is about the masked wolf’s deception of a little girl who he encounters on her way to her granny’s home. The latter is about the wolf’s being cut open with his victims jumping out of the belly alive; the wolf’s abdomen being sewed full of heavy stones so that he drowns; the wolf’s own jumping to his death (Dundes ix). In earlier versions of Little Red Riding Hood that had been passed by a word of mouth, the girl is not little but young, so already in her puberty. Then, in the French oral varieties of the fairy tale, the wolf is a werewolf, who has “a ravenous cannibalistic appetite” (Knight 8). In those versions of the fairy tale, which subsequently became the basis of the one published by Perrault, the focus remains on the changed looks of the young girl’s grandmother. As a matter of fact, it appears that the elderly woman has somehow grown huge eyes, big teeth and ears. Besides, the “granny” is described as having a cannibalistic craving for human blood and flesh. Specifivcally, the wolf “....arrives at the grandmother’s house, eats her, and puts part of her flesh in a bin and her blood in a bottle. Then the little girl arrives. The werewolf disguised as the grandmother gives her the flesh to eat and the blood to drink.” (Zipes 28). Responding to her “granny’s” offer, the young girl proceeds to eat the flesh of her grandmother and drink her grandmother’s wine. Further, the earlier versions of Little Red Riding Hood have been known to differ in several more ways. Specifically, the main bad hero of the fairy tale is either a werewolf or sometimes an ogre (Orenstein 102). Apart from the scene of cannibalism by a girl of her grandmother, the old versions of Little Red Riding Hood contain the episode when the wolf asks the heroine to take off her clothes and throw it into the fire. Still, in other oral versions the girl identifies the disguised wolf and makes an attempt to flee from the house. The girl pretends she badly needs to excrete and would not like to do so in a bed. She manages to flee from the wolf despite being tied to some string, which she somehow slips over some object. Other varieties of the fairy tale end at the moment the wolf (or the werewolf) eats the girl, so no rescue is included. In some versions, the girl does not wear the red hood. While the foregoing passage has evoked a multitude of interpretations, they will be explored later in the paper. In this section, the focus is on the differences between the contents of the adaptations of Little Red Riding Hood. Perrault’s version of the fairy tale basically follows the pattern found in earlier, oral versions of Little Red Riding Hood. The subject of the fairy tale is a young village girl, with good manners, and “the prettiest anyone ever saw” (Perrault). In Perrault’s version, the girl is invited by the wolf to join him in the bed. She undresses and slips under the cover. She says, “What big arms you have”. The wolf replies, “The better to hug you with, my child”. Baring his fangs, the wolf devours the girl a moment later. This is how the fairy tale comes to an end. In other words, as Orenstein rightfully observes, “there is neither salvation nor redemption as in later versions of the story that children know today” (Orenstein 25). Besides, the morality of the fairy tale summed by Perrault at the end of the story basically warns girls against stopping their way to talk to a stranger and against having trust in “a stranger-friend”. Because “no one knows how it will end”. The girls need to be as wise as they are pretty, since wolves might take any guise. They may be handsome and often seem kind, charming, and merry. Yet, all they want is to deceive since “sweetest tooth has sharpest tongue” (Perrault). More than a century later, at the time when the Grimm brothers, created and published their own version of Little Red Riding Hood, the focus shifted from the “bed” scene to the story of the Red Riding Hood – a willfully naughty child that neglected the instructions given by her mother and indulged herself with a desire to go on exploring the forest. Notably, the emphasis is not on the naivete of the heroine but on her willful disobedience, as well as on her responsibility for what happens. While the plot is almost the same as in Perrault’s version, the Grimm brothers’ version has a new ending. Specifically, Little Red Riding Hood and her granny get rescued by a huntsman who traced the wolf to kill him for he wanted his skin. Apart from that, the adaptation of the oral version of Little Red Riding Hood made by the Grimm Brothers produced a kind of a sequel to the basic pattern of the fairy tale which is well-known. To specify, in the next part of the fairy tale the grandmother and the girl use their wit to lure the wolf and make him drown in the water where sausages had been cooked (Tatar 149). Modern Adaptations of Little Red Riding Hood vs Old Versions While in the years that followed Little Red Riding Hood was rewritten and adapted copious times, we would like to stop at the versions of this fairy tale common at the beginning and at the end of the 20th century. In particular, the Disney version of Little Red Riding Hood appeared in 1922. It was a silent black-and-white brief adaptation which came in the form of an animated cartoon. As for the end of the 20th century, one of the best-known filmic adaptations of this fairy tale is Matthew Bright’s thriller Freeway (1996). Judging by the fact that Little Red Riding Hood remains one of the most popular fairy tales today, one may easily predict that to the 1920s audience the tale was not unfamiliar. Indeed, tropes from the versions of the fairy tale published by Perrault (1697) and by the Grimm Brothers (1812) might have been as recognizable to the public at that time as they are today. Expectedly, the cartoon directors who decided to introduce the girl in a red riding hood from the screen were to follow the well-established pattern. It was supposed to be a story of a young girl wearing a red cape and carrying a basket which she was said she should deliver to her ailing granny. Having met the evil wolf, the girl deviates from the assigned path and later will reap the fruit of her disobedience. Indeed, it was this familiarity that inspired cartoon directors to produce cinematic adaptations of Little Red Riding Hood at the beginning of the 1920s (Ludwig 8). One of them was Walt Disney, whose Little Red Riding Hood appeared in 1922. Before discussing the contents of the adaptation made by Walt Disney, one needs to explore the context in which it was produced. Unlike Perrault’s and Grimm’s versions, which had been written for some generous purpose (for example, to instruct and to instill morals in younger generation), Disney’s was a purely commercial project. Merritt points out that it is not the desire to achieve artistic mastery that drives Walt Disney in his early cartoons (by the way, at the time of the cartoon’s production Disney was twenty-one), but “a fight for commercial stability” (Merritt in Ludwig 9). Critics agree that the adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood was done by Disney at the time when he lacked expertise as a director, a producer and also as an animator (Ludwig 9). Yet, Disney had a strong desire “to show the skeptics that the cartoon was deserving of a better place”, which compensated for all other shortcomings (Ludwig 10). Those were the circumstances in which the cartoon was created, which certainly influenced its contents and essence. In the opening scene, one sees a country farmstead and some woman, apparently a housewife, who is making donuts by throwing dough into the air while her cat makes holes in the cookies by shooting in them. The cookies are then placed onto a frying pan. Apart from the anthropomorphised cat, the woman is being watched by an old gentleman within the frame on the wall, who surrealistically leans over the picture frame to see how uncooked cookies get into the frying pan. The old man, presumably Red’s grandfather, is laughing. In a while, the viewers see how the housecat eats a donut and dies, and his alleged nine lives fly away. Red’s mother gives her the donuts obviously to take them to her granny. Tasked with getting to her grandmother, Red decides to go by car. She opens the garage, on which her name is clearly written, and sits in her car, which is powered by a dog. The dog is made to run forward by pursuing the sausages dangling on a stick that is seen to go from behind the vehicle. Red goes in such way until she has a flat tire. She uses one of her mom’s donuts to mend her tire when suddenly the Wolf appears on screen. The Wolf in this cartoon version is an ugly old man who is driving his car in the opposite direction. After the viewers see the Wolf make some weird overtures to the heroine, he departs. Then one sees the Wolf at the Grandma’s door, which implies he has gotten there before Red. Red’s Granny, it appears, has written a note where she explained that she was out in the cinema. The Wolf lurks inside the house. Then Red comes, enters the house, and the viewers see how it shakes , with cries of “Help!” heard from the house (Disney, “Little Red Riding Hood”). The dog that accompanied Red is shown running to find help and save his mistress. The dog encounters a man with an airplane. After the dog gets on the airplane, the pilot flies above the house and drags the building off the top of the heroine and the antagonist. On the second hook, Red is taken into the plane by a courageous pilot and we see how she kisses him. The cartoon ends with two hearts on the screen and a rhetorical question as a caption: “And they lived happily ever after???” (Disney, “Little Red Riding Hood”) Little Red Riding Hood encounters the Wolf in Disney’s 1922 adaptation Commenting on the differences between Disney and Perrault’s versions of Little Red Riding Hood, one can’t help mentioning that the setting is different as well as the very idea of the main heroine, the ending, and encoded messages. In terms of the plot and characters, Red in the 1922 animated version is energetic and urbane. She is far cry from the village girl portrayed by Charles Perrault back in 1697. Red in Disney’s version is fashionable and trendy, her short haircut was chic in the 1920s – a bob with fringe (Ludwig 11). Moreover, Red’s cape is not a homemade piece of clothes made by her granny, but rather a stylish garment designed by some modeler. Besides, in her basket she carries donuts – food that was immensely popular in the United States, but had low value in terms nutrition. If one remembers, in the texts by Perrault and by the Grimm brothers, Little Red Riding Hood was to bring butter and cake or wine and cake to her granny. Further, Red in Disney’s adaptation is an independent and ingenuous young lady. She goes to her granny in a car chauffeured by her dog at a high speed and manages to fix the flat tire with help of a donut, which she inflates. Besides, in Disney’s version one will not find an ailing granny lying in her bed and waiting until the nefarious Wolf comes and eats her up. Disney’s grandmother has been out in the cinema, evidently having fun. In addition, the portrayal of the Wolf is different. In Disney’s cartoon this is a modern, thought dirty and ugly, man. He looks as if he could belong to the upper class. The similarity with the Perrault’s fairy tale is in the idea of the Wolf as a seducer. While Disney’s Wolf lacks animal appearance, his intentions seem to be the same. He is an epitome of the most dangerous Wolf that ruins young girls by his luring tongue, as described in the concluding moral of Perrault’s story. Indeed, Disney’s antagonist with his bulging eyes and sinister smile is an example of a sexually interested man, who has a desire for Red (Ludwig 11). At the same time, the shabby car he is driving shows how shabby he is himself. Unlike Perrault or Grimm’s versions, the cartoon directed by Walt Disney has the Wolf with magical powers – he is able to make his car pocket-size by the move of his hand. Yet, the Wolf does not use his magical ability to succeed in his sinister intentions. When the girl gets entrapped in her Grandma’s house, the fight takes place. This can be inferred by the way how house is shaking and rocking, while the cries for help are implied and numerous explosions of smoke. Thus, in Disney’s cartoon Red defies the Wolf and manages to protect herself from the beast. As Ludwig observes, “with his humanized form, he (the Wolf) makes explicit the threat of rape merely implied in the Perrault and Grimm tales” (Ludwig 13). Finally, Disney’s cartoon has a totally different ending and moral in comparison with the versions published by Charles Perrault. Specifically, Disney uses a happy ending to finish the story. While in Perrault’s tale, the young girl is eaten up by the Wolf, Disney’s story sees Red being rescued by a handsome and courageous pilot, who also punishes the antagonist of the story – the Wolf – by throwing him to the lake from above. The pilot seems to perform here the function similar to the one performed by the huntsman in Grimm’s version of Little Red Riding Hood. Yet, his role is even greater. He rescues nit just Red, he rescues his future wife, as implied by the director. At the same time, Red is seen in a traditional role of a woman who dreams of being saved by some handsome hero. She follows a stereotypical scenario and gets confined to a usual romantic relationship. In his turn, the Wolf receives the punishment in an orthodox way. This, by the way, is in tune with the version of the Grimm Brothers, whose Wolf dies in the end. As for the filmic version of Little Red Riding Hood, the thriller Freeway directed by Matthew Bright will be considered. While The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairytales lists Freeway (1996) as a filmic version of the well-known fairy tale little Red Riding Hood, one may definitely say that the connection is quite loose (Haase 587). Yet, can easily be traced if to look closer at the plot of the thriller. The plot of the film revolves around Vanessa Lutz, an illiterate girl in her teens that lives in the heart of Los Angeles poverty-stricken areas. Having witnessed how her mom was imprisoned for prostitution, the girl decides to flee from the city to Stockton, where her mother lives. On her way she drops by to see her boyfriend Chopper who gives her a gun. She leaves him only to find her car broken and starts seeking help on the road (Bright, “Freeway”). Vanessa is picked by Bob Wolverton, the well-known killer and cruel rapist. He promises to deliver the girl to her grandmother. When Vanessa rejects him, Bob tries to kill her. Yet, the girl escapes having made a few shots in Bob. Having escaped from the food facility, Vanessa gets under arrest. She is accused of carjacking. Bob, who remains alive, persuades everyone that he is an innocent victim of Vanessa. So the girl goes to jail. There she finds a friend, with whom she manages to escape. At that time, the detectives who interrogated Vanessa come to the conclusion that Bob is not an innocent victim, but a real serial killer. When they come to take him under arrest, Bob gets panicky and escapes. He intends to get to the house where Vanessa’s grandmother lives. Meanwhile, Vanessa gets to her granny’s house (or better, trailer) in a stolen car. There she discovers a dead grandmother and Bob holding a gun. Vanessa manages to defeat Bob. She kills him and leaves the trailer. The detectives that have been around see her exiting. The film ends with Vanessa asking the detectives whether she could have a cigarette and getting one (Bright, “Freeway”). Gender Roles and Values in Little Red Riding Hood Children are believed to form their idea of gender roles through listening to fairy tales (Smith 69). Generally, the construction of female gender in fairy tales popular in the Western society stresses women’s obedience and passive behavior. As Smith rightfully observes, whenever they deviate from this scheme, they get punished in one way or another. While it is certainly true that fairy tales we know today just reflect the way the gender roles were perceived in the past, we cannot omit the fact that often fairy tales fix the promotion of male sexual aggression, i.e. rape, and “place the burden of chastity solely on women” (Smith 69). It seems Little Red Riding Hood is just the case. In its earliest versions and in the one published by Charles Perrault, Little Red was a story of a young girl who loses her virginity to a seductive male (the Wolf). Surprising as it may see, this fairy tale was designated for adults or those girls who neared adulthood to warn them against spoiling their reputation. The moral of the story was that a young woman had to protect her chastity even if she is being seduced by a sweet talking wolf. By the way, in Perrault’s time the expression “she’d seen the wolf” was popular, which was used to talk about a young lady that lost her virginity (Smith 69). In case the message remained unclear for some of his readers, Perrault included an illustrative picture of an undressed Red with the Wolf on top of her in the bed. The version of the Grimm brothers seems to have lost the meaning of a sexual parable. Yet, the gender role of a woman was constructed due to the same pattern. Disobedience and lack of submissiveness of the girl (she fails to keep to the path according to her mother’s instructions) leads her to trouble. Thus, the focus of moral is on the girl’s inability to passively perform the task she was given and her troublesome disobedience. In Disney’s version, the gender is constructed a bit differently. At first, Red is portrayed as an ambitious and independent girl who drives a car and handles difficult situations. She is able to resist the Wolf in his rape attempt and is not seduced by his sweet talking. However, the end of the cartoon reveals that the basic gender role has remained unchanged: Red longs to be rescued and is happy to become a wife of the brave pilot. The difference between this adaptation and the previously discussed versions is a shift of responsibility for rape. Red is no longer blamed for her disobedience. Instead, the Wolf is shown as the major cause of what happens. Therefore, the tale loses its old moral here, but invents a new one, based on the values of the modern society. Women’s independence is good and may be admired, yet women still need men to take care of them. Similarly to Disney’s version, Freeway constructs the gender in a manner different from the old versions of Little Red Riding Hood. The woman’s independence is praised, as well as her ability to defend herself. In this version, Red kills the Wold herself. This presumably marks the culmination of the gender construction, with its feministic background. As a matter of fact, Red does not need a man to rescue her and to be happy. She can cope herself. While Red is again a victim of male aggression in Freeway, she manages to defy it. By doing so, she establishes her new status, which is equal to that of men’s. Conclusion In summary, the versions of Little Red Riding Hood absorbed the changes of the historical periods they were created in. While the older variants focus more on morality and on woman’s submissive role, the cartoon and the film produced in the 20th century offer a contrasting view. Red grows into an independent and men-like woman, who is able to protect herself from the wolf. This reflects the major changes in perception of women that took place in the 20th century. A woman, in our case Red, reaches the status of equality with a man and no longer waits until he comes to rescue her. The Little Red Riding Hood destroys the wolf today, not vice versa. Works Cited Dundes, Alan. Little Red Riding Hood: A Casebook. University of Wisconsin Press, 1989. Print. Haase, Donald. The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairytales: G-P. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2008. Print. Freeway. Dir. Matthew Bright. Perf. Reese Witherspoon, Kiefer Sutherland, Wolfgang Bodison. The Kushner-Locke Company, 1996. Film. Little Red Riding Hood. Dir. Walt Disney. The Laugh-O-Gram Company, 1922. Cartoon. Ludwig, Robyn. Animated Fairy Tale Adaptations (1922-1925). ProQuest, 2011. Martin, Ann. Red Riding Hood and the Wolf in Bed: Modernism’s Fairy Tales. University of Toronto Press, 2006. Print. Orenstein, Catherine. Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: Sex, Morality, and the Evolution of a Fairy Tale. Basic Books, 2003. Print. Oxford English Dictionary. Perrault, Charles. The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault. Trans. Robert Samber and J. E. Mansion. 1 June 2009. Web. 30 Nov 2012. Smith, Merry. Encyclopedia of Rape. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004. Print. Tatar, Maria, ed. The Classic Fairy Tales. New York: Norton, 1999. Zipes, Jack. The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood. London: Heinemann, 1983. Print. Zipes, Jack. Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales, Children, and the Culture Industry. London: Routledge, 1997. Print. Read More