Little Red Riding Hood
From the Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can change
Little Red Riding Hood is a famous fairy tale for young children. It is a story about a young girl and a wolf. The story comes from a folktale which means that it was a spoken story for a long time before it was a written story. It was first written down in the late 1600s. The best-known version (the way the story is told) of Little Red Riding Hood is by the Brothers Grimm and dates from the 19th century (1800s).
Contents |
[change] Story
The most common version of the story is the one written by the Brothers Grimm in the 19th century. The Brothers Grimm listened to many traditional stories from old people and wrote them into a book. Many "fairy stories" as they are usually called, were made famous by the Grimm's book. The title of the story is properly translated as "Little Red Cap" even though it is usually known in English as "Little Red Riding Hood" [1]
A girl has been given red cap (or cloak and hood) to wear. Her mother sends her to take food to her sick grandmother. The mother tells her she must not stop on the way. A wolf sees the girl walking through the woods and makes a plan to eat her. The wolf politely asks the girl where she is going. The girl answers him, because he seems friendly. The wolf tells the girl to pick some flowers for her grandmother. While she is picking flowers, the wolf goes to grandmother's house and eats her. He puts on the grandmother's night-cap and gets into her bed. When the girl goes into grandmother's house the wolf eats the girl too. A woodcutter (lumberjack) comes and cuts opens the wolf's body. He saves the grandmother and the girl who are still alive. Then, stones are put in the wolf's body to kill the wolf.
[change] History of the story
The story of Little Red Riding Hood seems to have been told for hundreds of years in different countries, under different names. In France, the story has probably been told for at least 700 years. In Italy there are several versions. One is called The False Grandmother. There is a story from China which is like this, called The Grand Aunt Tiger.
In the old versions of the story the wolf is sometimes an monster or a werewolf. In one version of the story, the wolf gives the girl some food to eat. It is part of the body of her grandmother. The wolf tells the girl to throw all her clothes in the fire, and get into bed. She says that she needs to use the toilet first. The wolf ties her with a long string so that she cannot run away without him knowing. But the girl puts the rope around something else, and escapes.
[change] In Tales of Mother Goose
The story was first written and published in a book in 1697 by the French Writer Charles Perrault. The name of the book, in English, is Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals- Tales of Mother Goose. The story is call The Little Red Cap (Le Petit Chaperon Rouge). The story is a little different from the way that the Brother's Grimm tell it. This is because Perrault wanted to make a strong point about wise and foolish behaviour. He wanted to show that a beautiful young woman was in danger of having men with bad morals try to trick her into "wrong behaviour". In Perrault's story the girl gets eaten and there is no happy ending.
[change] Telling the story for young children
Little Red Riding Hood often appears as a picture book or in collections of stories for very young children. Like a folktale, these books are for telling and listening, not for reading alone. In many re-tellings of the story for very young children, having grandmother get eaten is thought of as too frightening. So grandmother hides in the cupboard. In these tellings, Red Riding Hood is rescued by a hunter or the woodcutter just as the wolf is catching at her apron.
An important part of the story is the questions and answers. A young child can learn and say these parts with the person who is reading the story. In the story, the wolf knocks at the grandmother's door. The story goes:
- "Knock! Knock!"
- "Who's there?"
- "Little Red Riding Hood!"
- "Lift up the latch and walk in!"
The second section of repeating parts of the story happens when Red Riding Hood sees the wolf in her grandmother's bed.
- Red Riding Hood says "Oh Granny, what big eyes you've got!" and the wolf replies "All the better to see you with, my dear!"
- Red Riding Hood says "Oh Granny, what big ears you've got!" and the wolf replies "All the better to hear you with, my dear!"
- Red Riding Hood says "Oh Granny, what big teeth you've got!" and the wolf replies "All the better to eat you with, my dear!"
These lines are the best-known part of the story and are often quoted. They are thought of as an important part of good "story-telling" which makes the story more exciting for young children.
This has led to a series of jokes which are called "Knock, knocks!" It has also led to a feeding-time game for little children in which the parent opens the child's mouth by using the nose as a "latch", and pops a spoonful of food in the child's mouth at "walk in!"
[change] Stories with some of the same ideas
There are many stories in which a hungry wolf threatens a young person or animal. In most of these story, the young one escapes by cunning (cleverness). One famous story is the Russian folktale Peter and the Wolf. The Brothers Grimm told the story of the Little Kids and the Wolf. Another story like this is The Three Little Pigs, first published by James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps.
There is a Norse Legend which has a question and answer part that is like the questions that Red Riding Hood asks the wolf. In this story Thor is pretending to be a giant's beautiful bride. The giant asks the same sort of questions about Thor, who is reallly a man in disguise.
[change] Meanings
As with many fairy tales, hidden messages can be found in Little Red Riding Hood. People have very different interpretations (ways of understanding the hidden meanings). There are two main ways that the story of Little Red Riding Hood can be interpretted.
The first type of interpretation is about morality. It is about what is right and what is wrong.
- The easiest message for children to understand is that it can be dangerous to trust strangers.
- A more adult interpretation is about sexuality. Some people think that the story of the girl being "eaten" is really a symbol for rape. Susan Brownmiller wrote a book about it, called Against Our Will. Some of the other versions of the story seem to be more about rape than the way that the Brothers Grimm wrote it, which was for children.
- Charles Perrault makes his meaning quite clear. At the end of the story he writes:
- "From this story one learns that children, especially young lasses, pretty, courteous and well-bred, do very wrong to listen to strangers.... all wolves are not of the same sort.... there is one kind [that is not] noisy, nor hateful, nor angry, but tame, obliging and gentle, following the young maids in the streets, even into their homes. Alas! .... these gentle wolves are ... the most dangerous!"
- Perrault was not just writing about rape, but about having sex before marriage which would cause terrible dishonour for the girl and her family.
- Erich Fromm based his ideas only on the story the Brothers Grimm wrote. He sees the red cap of Little Red Riding Hood as a symbol for menstruation.
- Some people who are feminsts (supporters of the rights of women) do not like this story and say that it does not show women in a good way. This is because, through the story, Red Riding Hood does not think or act for herself. She does not do any of the actions of the story; she only does what she is told to do by a male character, and has things done to her male characters. She does what wolf tells her to do, even though it is against the advice of her mother. She comes near the male wolf when he tells her, against her own fear. She is eaten by the male character. She cannot help herself and is saved only because a strong male character comes along at the right time. Feminists believe that stories like this do not help girls to be independent.
- In old French and Italian versions of the story, the girl is independent and clever. She tricks the wolf and escapes without any help.
The second way of seeing the stories has nothing to do with peoples' behaviour or feelings. These interpretations have to do with the cycle of the sun and the seasons, and with the cycle of life, with people dying and being born.
- One interpretation is about night and day. In this interpretation, Red Riding Hood's bright red cap is be a symbol for the sun. The sun is swallowed by the terrible night (the wolf). When she is cut out again, it represent the dawn.[2] This bears a resemblance to the Norse Legend of the wolf Skoll (or Fenrir) who swallows the sun at Ragnarök.[3]
- Another interpretation is that the tale is about the season of spring, or the month of May, escaping the winter.[4] The story could be seen as a description of the May Queen ritual that represents the coming of Spring, with the crown of flowers replaced by the red hood.[5]
[change] Adaptations
[change] Other re-tellings
François Adrien Boieldieu (1775 - 1834) made an opera from the story. The opera is called Le petit chaperon rouge. Its first performance was in Paris, in the year 1818.
In 1927, Sir Compton MacKenzie used Little Red Riding Hood as the central character of a novel for children "Santa Claus in Summer". Red Riding Hood, in this re-telling, is the daughter of a highway man called Riding Hood.
The story has been adapted to various media. Tex Avery made a cartoon out of it, Red Hot Riding Hood. He adapted the story to be more appealing to adults. Little Red Riding Hood works at a striptease club. The wolf, dressed in a suit, goes after the stripper (a stripper is a person who takes off his or her clothes in public).
Roald Dahl re-told the story in funny poem about Little Red Riding Hood. It is in his collection Revolting Rhymes.
[change] Art
Many paintings have been done of Little Red Rding Hood. Artists who have painted pictures of this story are George Frederick Watts, Samuel Albrecht Anker, and François Richard Fleury.
[change] References
- ↑ Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, "Little Red Cap"
- ↑ Maria Tatar, p 25, The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, ISBN 0-393-05163-3
- ↑ Alan Dundes, "Intrepreting Little Red Riding Hood Psychoanalytically", p 26-7, James M. McGlathery, ed. The Brothers Grimm and Folktale, ISBN 0-252-01549-5
- ↑ Alan Dundes, "Intrepreting Little Red Riding Hood Psychoanalytically", p 27, James M. McGlathery, ed. The Brothers Grimm and Folktale, ISBN 0-252-01549-5
- ↑ Little Red Riding Hood at Northern State University
[change] Other websites
