Episode 9. Little Red Riding Hood.
Little Red Riding Hood (1881) by Carl Larsson
The tale of Little Red Riding hood has stranger and darker ideas than you may think.
This isn’t necessarily due to the Grimm’s retelling the tale to scare adults with stories of mayhem, blood and violence but simply because of the sinister situation Red finds herself in. A young girl facing a predator on her own is something most of us have feared for ourselves or our loved ones at some point in our lives.
According to research, the story dates back to well before the 17th century, with some tales identified as being told as far back as the 10th century and has appeared in French, Italian and East Asian Lore.
In the story we are all used to hearing, Little Red takes a basket of bread and goodies to her grandmother’s house to share. To get there she has to walk along a winding path through a dark forest. When she arrives at her grandmother’s house, she sees that her grandmother is sick in bed and looks quite different than she should. Her eyes are too big, her teeth too sharp. As Little Red points these out to the grandmother, her grandmother becomes increasingly fierce at last claiming her sharp teeth were “all the better to eat you with!”
The story ends with Little Red Riding Hood attempting to escape the wolf, which she does with the help of a woodsman who hears her distress. He kills the wolf, cuts the true grandmother from its belly, and saves the day.
Many of these elements are maintained from the original recorded tales. The story was told among many European peoples, it was shared in France in the early 10th century, for example and also in Italy where it was known as La Finta Nonna, or The False Grandmother.
In the earlier versions, Little Red doesn’t always come up against a wolf. She may be attacked or frightened by an ogre or a vampire and her grandmother may be either captured or dead and eaten. Her escape definitely isn’t always the same. We’ll get to that shortly, and I’ll leave it to you to guess my favourite version.
The figure of the wolf has been linked to the werewolf trials which are similar to the witch trials of Salem. Both of which I definitely want to cover in a future episode. In most tellings, the wolf kills the grandmother and cooks her flesh for Little Red to eat, so that she will unknowingly cannibalise her own Nanna.
On a disturbing note, in some versions, the wolf who is almost always presented as male, has been known to ask Little Red to strip down naked and throw her clothing in the fire before getting in bed with him.
In one escape version, while Little Red is in bed with the wolf, she claims that she needs to defecate and doesn’t want to do it in the bed. So, the wolf agrees to let her use the bathroom, but first he ties a string to her that he keeps hold of so that she cannot escape. Being a clever young girl, she takes the string and ties it to another object in the bathroom so that it feels as though she is still connected. She then makes her escape and runs away with no saviour but herself.
In other versions, she would run away and the wolf would give chase. She would then be saved by maids who were nearby and who would help her and drown the wolf, tangling him up in the sheets they were washing in the river. In Hansel and Gretel style, there is also a version where she would push the wolf into the open fire where her grandmother is being cooked.
Not very Disney or child friendly, at all.
The woodsman, or huntsman didn’t exist in the early tales. He was dreamed up by the Brothers Grimm, who included him as the hero in the first part of their story. Apparently even then, it was believed that a woman needed a man to save her. The woodsman would save Little Red and her grandmother from the wolf with the help of his axe. Surprisingly, not quite as violent or sinister as the original tales of cannibalism and “stranger danger”, to put it mildly.
Like most young fairy-tale figures, over time Little Red has been adapted, recreated and even sexualised. Red is a colour usually associated with passion. Red lips, red clothing, and Little Red doesn’t escape this. There are allusions in the original tales and modern interpretations to sexual assault and manipulation. Personally, that is what makes me feel so uneasy about this story, more so than the cannibalism. People eating people, sure, but a wolf, an older male, preying on a child? Disturbing.
As for where Disney would take this story, who knows. As far as I’m aware they have never made a feature length film based on just this tale. There was a short 1922 cartoon that was released as part of the Laugh-O-Gram Series and it is one of the first ever Disney cartoons. She was also featured in Into the Woods.
I wouldn’t mind seeing this revisited and perhaps seeing an ending where Little Red saves herself. It’s such an untouched story in popular media and there is so much that could be done with the story.
Movie makers, and novel writers, please note: She didn’t need a prince centuries ago and she doesn’t need one now.
If you’re interested in further reading Charles Perault and the Grimm Brothers have both written their own versions and if you don’t mind some YA sci-fi, I highly recommend reading The Lunar Chronicles series by Marissa Meyer which features classic fairy tale characters including Little Red.
Good Nightmare 