[In this excerpt, Zipes discusses the origins of the “Little Red Riding Hood” tale and analyzes how Perrault transforms it for a bourgeois-aristocratic audience.]

Little Red Riding Hood has never enjoyed an easy life. She began her career by being gobbled up by the wicked wolf. Later she was saved by an assortment of well-meaning hunters, gamekeepers, woodcutters, fathers, grandmothers, and fairies. Of course they all scolded her for being too carefree, and she obediently promised to mend her ways. However, she was not always compelled to be obedient and rely upon saviors. Using her wits, Little Red Riding Hood also managed to trick the wolf all by herself in many different ways. Sometimes she cut her way out of the wolf's dark belly and filled it with stones so that he would topple over dead. One time she shot him with an automatic, which she carried in her basket. It has always been difficult for Little Red Riding Hood to suppress her fear of the wolf especially when his lust ultimately forces him to bare his dreadful fangs. Yet, on a few occasions she does overcome her fear, realizes that the wolf himself is a victim of slander, and even decides to marry him. In other, more prudish, versions of her life, it is said that she prevented the wolf from laying his vulgar sexual paws on her and her granny.

As for her character, Little Red Riding Hood has been described as pretty and lovely, but too gullible and naive. Sometimes she has appeared vain and foolish, sometimes sassy and courageous. Much ado has been made about her fetish of the red hood or cap. Clearly her innocence in the story has been suspect. There is a touch of nonconformity and sexual promiscuity in her character. But whatever her reputation and destiny, she has always been used as a warning to children, particularly girls, a symbol and embodiment of what might happen if they are disobedient and careless. She epitomizes the good girl gone wrong, and her history appears to be an open-and-shut case. Yet, the hidden motives in the different versions of her life suggest that she may be the victim of circumstantial evidence. Given the fact that the plot and signs have varied in the course of 300 years, there is something suspiciously manipulative about the way Little Red Riding Hood has been treated. She has suffered abuse after abuse, and it is time that the true history of this seductively innocent girl be revealed.

BACKGROUND: THE TALE PRIOR TO PERRAULT

For a long time, anthropologists, folklorists, and historians maintained that the plot of “Little Red Riding Hood” had been derived from ancient myths about the sunrise and sunset.¹ The red garment of Little Red Riding Hood was associated with the sun, and the wolf was considered to be the personification of darkness. From another erudite perspective, the tale was regarded as an offshoot of legends about swallowing, which hark back to Jonah and the whale.² Other scholars equated the tale with traditional Manichean myths about the forces of darkness seeking to engulf the purity of Christian goodness.³ Undoubtedly parallels may be drawn to ancient myths, beliefs, and rituals, but recent research has proven rather conclusively that “Little Red Riding Hood” is of fairly modern vintage. By modern, I mean that the basic elements of the tale were developed in an oral tradition during the late Middle Ages, largely in France, Tyrol, and northern Italy, and they gave rise to a group of tales intended explicitly for children.⁴ These warning tales were so widespread in France that they undoubtedly influenced Charles Perrault's literary version of 1697, which is generally considered to be his own creation. … Again, critical research has now amply demonstrated that Perrault did not invent the plot and characters of “Little Red Riding Hood.” Rather, he borrowed elements from popular folklore and recreated “Little Red Riding Hood” to suit the needs of an upper-class audience whose social and aesthetic standards were different from those of the common folk.

But, before we turn to Perrault's tale and consider his major accomplishments, it will be important to examine the “rowdy” oral folk tradition that actually gave birth to the more “refined” bourgeois literary tale. Here the work of Marianne Rumpf,⁵ Paul Delarue,⁶ and Marc Soriano⁷ is most useful for restoring our sense of authentic history. Rumpf has revealed that one of the most common European warning tales (Schreckmärchen or Warnmärchen) in the Middle Ages involved hostile forces threatening children who were without protection. Either an ogre, ogress, man-eater, wild person, werewolf, or wolf was portrayed as attacking a child in the forest or at home. The social function of the story was to show how dangerous it could be for children to talk to strangers in the woods or to let strangers enter the house. Rumpf argues that the original villain in French folklore was probably a werewolf, and that it was Perrault who transformed him into a simple, but ferocious, wolf. She supports her case with a wealth of historical material.

For instance, Rumpf points out that superstitious tales about werewolves flourished more in France during early Christianity and the Middle Ages than in any other European country. There was a virtual epidemic of trials against men accused of being werewolves in the 16th and 17th centuries similar to the trials against women as witches.⁸ The men were generally charged with having devoured children and having committed other sinful acts. There were literally thousands if not hundreds of thousands of such cases, and Rumpf cites some of the more notorious ones, culled from the work of the historians Rudolph Leubuscher and Wilhelm Hertz.⁹ One of the most famous incidents took place in December 1521, and involved Pierre Bourgot and Michel Verdun, who stood trial in Besançon. They were convicted of having attacked and killed children after having assumed the shape of werewolves. Bourgot described his transformation and feats in great detail. He admitted to having killed a seven-year-old boy with his wolf's teeth and paws. However, he was chased away by a peasant, so that he never had time to eat his victim. Verdun admitted to having killed a small girl as she was gathering pears in a garden. However, he, too, was chased away before he could eat his victim. Four other attacks on small girls, which the two accused were supposed to have carried out, were mentioned in the same report, which included particulars as to the ages of the children and the places and dates of the incidents.¹⁰ In certain areas of 16th-century France people of all ages became afraid to pass through fields or woods alone because of werewolves or wolves. Rumpf's major point—and one that should carry great weight—is that wherever oral versions of the “Little Red Riding Hood” tale were found later in the 19th and 20th centuries, they were primarily discovered in those regions where werewolf trials were most common in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries.

Perrault's literary tale of 1697 was probably derived from stories about werewolves that were circulating in Touraine when his mother grew up there. In 1598 there was the sensational case of Jacques Raollet, who was sentenced to death in Angers, Touraine, for attacking and killing children as a werewolf. His case was appealed at the Parliament of Paris, and Raollet was declared insane and placed in the Hospital Saint Germaine des Pres. This trial took place at a time when Perrault's parents and his nursemaid could have witnessed the events. Though we do not have concrete proof, the major authority on Perrault, Marc Soriano, tends to agree with Rumpf's general assertions:¹¹ Perrault knew oral folk versions of “Little Red Riding Hood” before he wrote his own fairy tale.

Soriano corroborates Rumpf's findings by demonstrating that Perrault took truncated elements from folklore to form his own creation. If we look at this independent oral tradition and its existence up through the present, a number of elements

have continued to survive in spite of the celebrity of the text published in 1697: the motif of cruelty—probably a reflection of a “primitive structure”—the motif of the blood and flesh of the grandmother which are placed on the bread-bin and which the little girl is invited to eat; the motif of the “familiar animal”—a cat or bird (or mysterious voice) which informs the child of what she is eating; the episode of the “ritual undressing,” a sort of strip-tease by Little Red Riding Hood, who each time she takes off a garment asks the wolf where she should put it, which leads to an enigmatic or frankly menacing response from the ferocious animal; and finally, a “happy ending” of a particular type, built on the scatological overtone of the “tie which sets free”: the little girl pretends that she urgently needs to relieve herself, a pretext to escape from the monster.¹²

All of these elements, which were expurgated or refined in Perrault's literary text, have been kept alive in an independent oral tradition, and, thanks to the research of Paul Delarue, it has been possible to reconstitute an integral text uniting most of the elements not employed in Perrault's tale, though Perrault was probably familiar with them. Delarue's version of “Little Red Riding Hood” was recorded in Nièvre, about 1885.¹³ Entitled The Story of Grandmother, it reads as follows:

There was a woman who had made some bread. She said to her daughter: “Go carry this hot loaf and a bottle of milk to your granny.”

So the little girl departed. At the crossway she met bzou, the werewolf, who said to her:

“Where are you going?”

“I’m taking this hot loaf and a bottle of milk to my granny.”

“What path are you taking,” said the werewolf, “the path of needles or the path of pins?”

“The path of needles,” the little girl said.

“All right, then I’ll take the path of pins.”

The little girl entertained herself by gathering needles. Meanwhile the werewolf arrived at the grandmother's house, killed her, put some of her meat in the cupboard and a bottle of her blood on the shelf. The little girl arrived and knocked at the door.

“Push the door,” said the werewolf, “it’s barred by a piece of wet straw.”

“Good day, granny. I’ve brought you a hot loaf of bread and a bottle of milk.”

“Put it in the cupboard, my child. Take some of the meat which is inside and the bottle of wine on the shelf.”

After she had eaten, there was a little cat which said: “Phooey! …

A slut is she who eats the flesh and drinks the blood of her granny. “Undress yourself, my child,” the werewolf said, “and come lie down beside me.”

“Where should I put my apron?”

“Throw it into the fire, my child, you won’t be needing it anymore.”

And each time she asked where she should put all her other clothes, the bodice, the dress, the petticoat, and the long stockings, the wolf responded:

“Throw them into the fire, my child, you won’t be needing them any more.”

When she laid herself down in the bed, the little girl said:

“Oh, Granny, how hairy you are!”

“The better to keep myself warm, my child!”

“Oh, Granny, what big nails you have!”

“The better to scratch me with, my child!”

“Oh, Granny, what big shoulders you have!”

“The better to carry the firewood, my child!”

“Oh, Granny, what big ears you have!”

“The better to hear you with, my child!”

“Oh, Granny, what big nostrils you have!”

“The better to snuff my tobacco with, my child!”

“Oh, Granny, what a big mouth you have!”

“The better to eat you with, my child!”

“Oh, Granny, I’ve got to go badly. Let me go outside.”

“Do it in the bed, my child!”

“Oh, no, Granny, I want to go outside.”

“All right, but make it quick.”

The werewolf attached a woolen rope to her foot and let her go outside. When the little girl was outside, she tied the end of the rope to a plum tree in the courtyard. The werewolf became impatient and said: “Are you making a load out there? Are you making a load?”

When he realized that nobody was answering him, he jumped out of bed and saw that the little girl had escaped. He followed her but arrived at her house just at the moment she entered.¹⁴

By collecting the different but related independent oral folk tales that contain the same elements missing in the literary tale of Perrault, Delarue has proven that a vital oral tradition in France preceded the conception of Perrault's “civilized” Little Red Riding Hood. Moreover, Gottfried Henssen has shown that similar tales of warning spread throughout Europe and Asia, which reveal that Perrault might have been influenced in a number of different ways.¹⁵ One of the most important discoveries is the fact that the independent oral tales lack the motif of the red riding hood or the color red. So much for the traditional interpretation of sunrise/sunset, or the Christian view of Manichean forces in combat!

The direct forebears of Perrault's literary tale were not influenced by sun worship or Christian theology, but by the very material conditions of their existence and traditional pagan superstition. Little children were attacked and killed by animals and grown-ups in the woods and fields. Hunger often drove people to commit atrocious acts. In the 15th and 16th centuries, violence was difficult to explain on rational grounds. There was a strong superstitious belief in werewolves and witches, uncontrollable magical forces of nature, which threatened the lives of the peasant population. Since antiquity, tales had been spread about vicious creatures in France, and they continued to be spread. Consequently, the warning tale became part of a stock oral repertoire of storytellers. Evidence indicates that the teller would grab hold of the child or children nearby when the final line in the well-known dramatic dialogue with the wolf was to be pronounced—“the better to eat you with!” We must remember that storytelling was a dynamic process, with give and take between narrator and listeners. But the child was not devoured by the teller, who was more interested in showing care for children, nor does it seem that the little girl was killed in any of the folk-tale versions. She shrewdly outwits the wolf and saves herself. No help from granny, hunter, or father!

Clearly, the folk tale was not just a warning tale, but also a celebration of a young girl's coming of age. This has been substantiated in the recent study by Yvonne Verdier,¹⁶ who convincingly demonstrates that the references to the pins and needles were related to the needlework apprenticeship undergone by young peasant girls, and designated the arrival of puberty and initiation into society in specific regions of France where the oral tale was common: districts of the Loire, Nièvre, Forez, Velay, and the Alps. The young girl symbolically replaces the grandmother by eating her flesh and drinking her blood. It is a matter of self-assertion through learning and conflict. Unlike the literary versions, where the grandmother is reified and reduced to a sex object, her death in the folk tale signifies the continuity and reinvigoration of custom, which was important for the preservation of society. As Verdier maintains,

the tale effectively reveals the fact that women transmitted the physical capacity of procreation among themselves, even though the radical character of this transmission illuminates the conflictual aspect, a rivalry which ends in physical elimination, the relationship of women among themselves concerning this matter. Classified by the maturation of their bodies, women find themselves divided and unequal. Perhaps one can see here the principal source of the violence in their conflicts? There are a number of tales which develop this aspect of elimination in the relationships among women, whether they be among women of the same generation (recalling the theme of the “hidden fiancée”) or among women of different generations: mother and daughter, step-mother and step-daughter, grandmother and granddaughter, old and young.

Moreover, it is remarkable that each successful conquest of physiological capacity concerning the female destiny is marked in the tale by the acquisition of technique which is the equivalent in the stage of learning, and even in a certain order—the proper order—in the society: needlework for puberty, kitchen for the proper procreative function, flushing out for the hour of birth. All this knowledge and technique are in the hands of women in the traditional peasant society. These are the true “cultural goods” which are opposed in the tale to the ways of “nature” (the wolf devours the grandmother in the flesh). This knowledge imparts the “domestic” vocation and its rights of war upon women, a function which again underlines the autonomy and power of women in regard to their own destiny in this traditional peasant society.¹⁷

Although Verdier pays little attention to the werewolf aspect and warning motif in her interpretation of the folk tale, her overall perspective does not actually contradict the views of Delarue, Rumpf, and Soriano, but rather amplifies them and makes them more concrete. Whether the story is about initiation, warning, or both, one thing is clear: the folk tale celebrates the self-reliance of a young peasant girl.

PERRAULT'S TRANSFORMATION OF THE TALE

Perrault, who appears to have had a low opinion of women and of the superstitious customs of the peasantry, changed all of this, and his “contaminated” upper-class version of the “pure” lower-class version makes the little girl totally helpless. Delarue maintains that

the common elements which are lacking in the literary story are precisely those which would have shocked the society of his epoch by their cruelty (the flesh and blood of the grandmother devoured by the child), their puerility (the path of needles and the path of pins) or their impropriety (the question of the little girl about the hairy body of the grandmother). And it appears likely that Perrault eliminated them, while preserving a folk flavor and freshness in the tale which have made it an imperishable masterpiece.¹⁸

Perrault's changes were substantive both in style and content, and they demand an even closer look if we are to grasp the continual impulse of later writers to make free with the fate of Little Red Riding Hood. To begin with, Perrault wrote for both children and adults of the upper educated classes. The irony of his narration suggests that he sought to appeal to the erotic and playful side of adult readers who took pleasure in naughty stories of seduction. This irony was lost on younger readers, who could still enjoy the warning aspect of the tale and the play between the wolf and Little Red Riding Hood that has a didactic anti-climax in the moralité.

If we focus for a moment on the tale as written for children, the changes can be seen to reflect an appreciable difference in the way the upper classes, particularly the haute bourgeoisie, were coming to view children. We must bear in mind that, because of changes in the socialization process, the term “child” as separate from “adult” was in the process of assuming a new meaning. As Philippe Aries has demonstrated in Centuries of Childhood,¹⁹ an independent children's literature and culture were being developed to civilize children according to stringent codes of class behavior. Thus it is no surprise that the character of the little girl in Perrault's literary tale is totally different from the one in the oral tradition. The “peasant girl” is forthright, brave, and shrewd. She knows how to use her wits to escape preying beasts. Perrault's Little Red Riding Hood is pretty, spoiled, gullible, and helpless. The moral of the tale does nothing to alter her character or to suggest what would improve her character; it simply warns children to be more alert and to beware of strangers. The elaborate details added by Perrault to the oral tale all contribute to the portrait of a pretty, defenseless girl, who moreover may have been slightly vain because of her red hood. Exactly why Perrault added the red hood is not clear. However, we know that red was generally associated at the time with sin, sensuality, and the devil.²⁰ As a present from a doting grandmother, it refers directly to the child's “spoiled nature,” and Perrault obviously intended to warn little girls that this spoiled child could be “spoiled” in another way by a wolf/man who sought to ravish her. Accustomed to being the center of attention, Little Red Riding Hood stops to listen to the wolf and tarries in the woods. The child seeks to amuse herself, and she ends her short life by being the object of the wolf's amusement.

Perrault's great artistic achievement consisted in his appropriating folk motifs, imbuing them with a different ideological content, and stylizing the elements of the plot so that they would be more acceptable for upper-class audiences of children and adults. Whereas the oral tale referred directly to actual conditions in the country faced by peasants and villagers, Perrault's literary version assumed a more general aspect. It talked about vanity, power, and seduction, and it introduced a new child, the helpless girl, who subconsciously contributed to her own rape. Gone are the alleged cruelty and coarseness of the oral tale. However, the refined elements of the literary tale contributed to an image of Little Red Riding Hood which was to make her life more difficult than it had ever been.

Perrault's historical contribution to the image of Little Red Riding Hood is a contradictory one, and it must be viewed in light of French social history and Perrault's own personal prejudices. On the one hand, he is responsible for shaping folklore into an exquisite literary form and endowing it with an earnest and moral purpose, the influencing of behavior of children in a tasteful way. On the other, he set rigorous standards of comportment, which were intended to regulate and limit the nature of children's development. This contradictory position was also evident in the works of French writers of fairy tales, like Prechac, L’Héritier, D’Aulnoy, Murat, de la Force, and scores of others during Louis XIV's reign:²¹ they sought to civilize children to inhibit them, and as a result they contributed to a socially perverted configuration of natural growth. This is not to argue that Perrault and his contemporaries had nefarious plans and conspired to fill children's heads with illusions. On the contrary, despite his ironic attitude toward folklore and his double intention of writing for children and adults with moral fervor and charm, Perrault sincerely intended to improve the minds and manners of young people.

In the preface to his Contes en Vers (1695), Perrault argued that people of good taste recognized the substantial value of the tales. And he repeated this argument in the 1697 dedication to Elizabeth-Charlotte d’Orléans in Histoires ou contes du temps passé:

They all contain a very sensible moral which can be discovered more or less according to the degree of perception of the reader. Moreover, as nothing can stamp the vast scope of a mind but the elevating power of great things and the degrading power of little things, one will no longer be surprised that even the Princess whom Nature and education have made acquainted with everything that is most elevated, does not disdain to take pleasure from trifles (stories). It is true that these tales present a picture of what happens in the inferior families where the praiseworthy impatience of instructing children make them imagine stories devoid of reason to prepare these same children who still lack reason. Yet, who but those persons whom heaven has destined to lead the people is most suited to learn how the children live?²²

It is apparent from his statements that Perrault composed his narratives to set standards and models of refined virtuous behavior for the children of his time. More precisely, he was interested in contributing to the prevalent discourse on civilité through the fairy tale. Here it is important to understand the cultural and political input of large sectors of the bourgeoisie in France if we are to grasp Perrault's role in “civilizing” the folk tale and transforming it into a literary tale for upper-class children. The French aristocracy of the 16th and 17th centuries displayed a unique capacity to adopt and use the best elements from other classes. The nobility provided access to its circles for a select group of reliable people of the third estate; these circles expanded as the need arose to secure aristocratic rule throughout the nation. Perrault was among the fortunate members of the haute bourgeoisie to be honored by the court.²³ He was a high royal civil servant, one of the first members of the Académie Française, a respected polemicist, and a significant figure in literary salons. Moreover, he endorsed the expansive political wars of Louis XIV, and believed in the exalted mission of the French absolutist regime to “civilize” Europe and the rest of the world. Perrault supported the “manifest destiny” of 17th-century France not only as a public representative of the court but privately in his family; he was also one of the first writers of children's books who explicitly sought to “colonize” the internal and external development of children in the mutual interests of a bourgeois-aristocratic elite.

The interaction between the French nobility and bourgeoisic must be carefully studied if one is to grasp the socio-genetic import of literary fairy tales for children in Western culture. Norbert Elias makes this connection clear.

Both the courtly bourgeoisie and the courtly aristocracy spoke the same language, read the same books, and had, with particular gradations, the same manners. And when the social and economical disproportionalities burst the institutional framework of the ancien régime, when the bourgeoisie became a nation, much of what had originally been the specific and distinctive social character of the courtly aristocracy and then also of the courtly bourgeois groups, became, in an ever widening movement and doubtless with some modification, the national character. Stylistic conventions, the forms of social intercourse, affect molding, esteem for courtesy, the importance of good speech and conversation, articulateness of language and much else—all this is first formed in France within courtly society, then slowly changes, in a continuous diffusion, from a social into a national character.²⁴

By the time Perrault had begun writing his fairy tales, the major crises of the Reformation, which had been manifested drastically in the massive witch hunts between 1490 and 1650, had been temporarily resolved, and they resulted in greater rationalization and regulation of social and spiritual life. This civilizing process coincided with an increase in socio-economic power by the bourgeoisie, particularly in France and England, so that the transformed social, religious, and political views represented a blend of bourgeois-aristocratic interests. The homme civilisé was the former homme courteois, whose polite manners and style of speech were altered to include bourgeois qualities of honesty, diligence, responsibility, and asceticism. To increase its influence and assume more political control the French bourgeoisie was confronted with a twofold task: to adapt courtly models in a manner which would allow greater laissez-faire for the expansion and consolidation of bourgeois interests; and to appropriate folk customs and the most industrious, virtuous, and profitable components of the lower classes to strengthen the economic and cultural power of the bourgeoisie. In this regard the French bourgeoisie was indeed a middle or mediating class, although its ultimate goal was to become self-sufficient and to make the national interests identical with its own.

One way of disseminating its values and interests and of subliminally strengthening its hold on the civilizing process was through literary socialization. Since childhood had become more distinct as a phase of growth and was considered as the crucial base for the future development of individual character, special attention was now paid to children's manners, clothes, books, toys, and general education. Numerous books, pamphlets, and brochures appeared in the 16th and 17th centuries dealing with table manners, natural functions, bedroom etiquette, sexual relations, and correct speech.²⁵ The most classic example was Erasmus of Rotterdam's De civilitate morum puerilum (On Civility in Children, 1530). Also important were the works of Giovanni della Casa (Galateo, 1558); C. Calviac (Civilité, 1560); Antoine de Courtin (Nouveau traité de civilité, 1672); François de Callieres (De la science du monde et des connoissances utiles à la conduite de la vie, 1717); and LaSalle (Les Règles de la bienséance et de la civilité chrétienne, 1729). It was impossible for a member of the aristocratic or bourgeois class to escape the influence of such manuals, which became part of the informal and formal schooling of all upper-class children. Coercion by members of high society to act according to new precepts of good behavior increased, so that the codes of dress and manner become extremely stringent and hierarchical by the end of the 17th century. Though not conspired, the rational purpose of such social pressure was to bring about an internalization of social norms and mores so that they would appear as second nature or habit. Yet, self-control was actual social control, and it was a mark of social distinction not to “let go of oneself” or to “lose one's senses” in public. As Elias has noted, the system of standardization and social conditioning had assumed fairly concrete contours with multi-level controls by the mid-17th century.

There is a more or less limited courtly circle which first stamps the models only for the needs of its own social situation and in conformity with the psychological condition corresponding to it. But clearly the structure and development of French society as a whole gradually makes ever broader strata willing and anxious to adopt the models developed above them; they spread, also very gradually, throughout the whole of society, certainly not without undergoing some modification in the process.

The passage of models from one social unit to another, now from the centers of a society to its outposts (for example, from the Parisian court to other courts), now within the same political-social unit (within France or Saxony, from above to below, or below to above), is to be counted, in the whole civilizing process, among the most important individual movements. What the examples show is only a limited segment of these. Not only the eating manners but also forms of thinking and speaking—in short, of behavior in general—are molded in a similar way throughout France, even if there are significant differences in timing and structure of their patterns of development.²⁶

Within the French civilizing process, Perrault's tales provided behavioral patterns and models for children which were intended to reinforce the prestige and superiority of bourgeois-aristocratic values and styles. Like the civilizing process itself, the tales also perpetuated strong notions of male dominance, and here it is important to take Perrault's own biases into account. In her Introduction aux contes de Grimm et Perrault, Lilyane Mourey has aptly demonstrated how Perrault portrayed women in his tales:

The concept of “morality” assumes here a very particular value mixed with irony and satire. Perrault argues for the total submission of the woman to her husband. Feminine coquetry (which is only the privilege of the dominant class) disturbs and upsets him: it could be the sign of female independence. It opens the way for the amorous conquest which endangers one of the fundamental values of society—the couple, the family. As we have seen, the heroines of the tales are very pretty, loyal, dedicated to their household chores, modest and docile and sometimes a little stupid insofar as it is true that stupidity is almost a quality in women for Perrault. Intelligence could be dangerous. In his mind as in that of many men (and women) beauty is an attribute of woman just as intelligence is the attribute of man.²⁷

If “Little Red Riding Hood” is studied in light of Perrault's personal prejudices and the male-dominated civilizing process, the underlying history of the tale and its reception, as it spread throughout western Europe and America in its changing literary form, assumes greater significance than the history of the original oral tale. “Little Red Riding Hood” is a projection of male phantasy in a literary discourse considered to be civilized and aimed at curbing the natural inclinations of children. The changes made in the discourse about the fictional helpless girl dubbed Little Red Riding Hood—her discipline and punishment—indicate real shifts, conflicts, and ruptures in the Western civilizing process.

.....

The cultural code and pattern embedded in “Little Red Riding Hood” make it obvious that this tale in particular was bound to become an immediate favorite in the 18th and 19th centuries, particularly among members of the aristocracy and bourgeoisie. However, it was not until the Grimms morally improved upon the Perrault version, showing more clemency for Little Red Riding Hood, that the tale became an explicit narrative of law and order. As we know, by the time the Grimms touched up Perrault's tale, a bourgeois Red Riding Hood syndrome had been established throughout Europe and America, and it went under the name of “virtue seduced.” Obviously, the middle classes were reflecting in general upon the fact that, if they did not discipline themselves and their children and rationalize their lives, they would be “raped” by the depraved aristocracy or experience a fall due to unruly natural forces. Then they would have to succumb to the uncouth lower classes. Fear of chaos as dangerous for sound and orderly business was overwhelming among members of the third estate, and, even though the French Revolution had brought turmoil with it, this upheaval had been deemed necessary in order to clean out decadent aristocratic squalor and to bring more order, rationality, and just conditions into France. The effect that the French Revolution had on Ludwig Tieck and the Brothers Grimm has already been documented. Now it is more important to note how the Grimms doctored “Little Red Riding Hood” as Little Red Cap to make a comment on sexual norms and sex roles.

The Grimms were responsible for making Little Red Riding Hood definitively into a disobedient, helpless little girl. Before she makes a pact with the devil, she makes one with her good mother. Thus, they also prepared the way for clemency. Yet, with this clemency they also introduced more phrases and images suggestive of authority and order, and they elaborated on the woods scene to show that Little Red Riding Hood wants to break from the moral restraints of her society to enjoy her own sensuality (inner nature) and nature's pleasures (outer nature). She is much more fully to blame for her rape by the wolf because she has a nonconformist streak which must be eradicated. But times had changed since Perrault, and the 19th-century moralists no longer argued for killing or burning heretics, especially not their own children. First they displayed the power of their authority in the form of the police, in this case the hunter-gamekeeper, and then they set an example of punishment using a misfit or outsider from the lower classes—that is, the wolf. Foucault has thoroughly outlined the panopticum principle of discipline and punishment in the 19th century, where a watchful eye is constantly on the alert for social deviates.²⁸ Thus, in the Grimms' tale, a policeman appears out of nowhere to save Little Red Riding Hood, and, when she is granted the opportunity to punish the wolf by filling his stomach with rocks, she is actually punishing herself. The sterile rocks in his stomach will also prevent her from rising and fulfilling her potential. As she carries out this punishment, she internalizes the restraining norms of sexuality in a political manner. The actual form of the fairy-tale narrative partakes in such repressive socialization.

It is impossible to exaggerate the impact and importance of the Little Red Riding Hood syndrome as a dominant cultural pattern in Western societies. In this regard, I want to stress that in her two most popular literary forms, which have fully captured the mass-mediated common imagination in our own day, Little Red Riding Hood is a male creation and projection. Not women but men—Perrault and the Brothers Grimm—gave birth to our common image of Little Red Riding Hood. “The point is,” as Andrea Dworkin rightly maintains in her book Woman Hating:

We have not formed that ancient world—it has formed us. We ingested it as children whole, had its values and consciousness imprinted on our minds as cultural absolutes long before we were in fact men and women. We have taken the fairy tales of childhood with us into maturity, chewed but still lying in the stomach, as real identity. Between Snow-white and her heroic prince, our two great fictions, we never did have much of a chance. At some point, the Great Divide took place: they (the boys) dreamed of mounting the Great Steed and buying Snow-white from the dwarfs; we (the girls) aspired to become that object of every necrophiliac's lust—the innocent, victimized Sleeping Beauty, beauteous lump of ultimate, sleeping good. Despite ourselves, sometimes unknowing, sometimes knowing, unwilling, unable to do otherwise, we act out the roles we were taught.²⁹

Viewed in this light, “Little Red Riding Hood” reflects men's fear of women's sexuality—and of their own as well. The curbing and regulation of sexual drives is fully portrayed in this bourgeois literary fairy tale on the basis of deprived male needs. Red Riding Hood is to blame for her own rape. The wolf is not really a male but symbolizes natural urges and social nonconformity. The real hero of the tale, the hunter-gamekeeper, is male governance. If the tale has enjoyed such a widespread friendly reception in the Perrault and Grimm forms, then this can only be attributed to a general acceptance of the cultural notions of sexuality, sex roles, and domination embedded in it.

All this is not to say that the tale is outmoded and totally negative, that it should be censored by the women's movement and local school boards, or that it should be replaced by non-sexist versions. The problem is not in the literature, nor can it be solved through censorship. Given the conditions in Western society where women have been prey for men, there is a positive feature to the tale: its warning about the possibility of sexual molestation continues to serve a social purpose. At present, where I teach, women are forced to carry whistles (not a red cap) in the library and classroom buildings and on campus because of rape and violence, and this institution of academic learning is not an exception. Until men learn that they need not be wolves or gamekeepers to fulfill their lives, the tale offers a valuable lesson for young girls and women—albeit a lesson based on the perversion of sexuality.

As we have seen, signs of change have already been depicted in the radical “Little Red Riding Hood” adaptations of the 20th century. However, it took 200 years of hunting witches and werewolves to give birth to the traditional helpless Red Riding Hood and restrictive notions of sex and nature, then another 200 years to establish the proper bourgeois image of the obedient Red Riding Hood learning her lessons of discipline; it may take another 200 years for us to undo all the lessons Red Riding Hood, and the wolf as well, were forced to learn.

Notes

1. For the mythological interpretations of sunrise and sunset, see Hyacinthe Husson, La chaîne traditionelle (Paris: Franck, 1874), p. 7; Franz Linnig, Deutsche Mythenmärchen (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1883), p. 184; Andrew Lang, Myth, Ritual and Religion (London: Longmans, Green, 1882); idem, Perrault's Popular Tales (London: Longmans, Green, 1888), p. lix; Hermann Zech, Perrault's-Contes de ma mère l’oye und die Grimmischen Märchen (Stuttgart: Schulprogramm, 1906), p. 25; p. Saintyres, Les Contes de Perrault et les récits parallèles (Paris: Nourry, 1923), pp. 215-229; Henry Brett, Nursery Rhymes and Tales (Detroit, 1924), pp. 20-22.

2. See Macleod Yearsley, The Folklore of Fairy Tales (London: Watts, 1924), pp. 218-221. C. G. Jung uses this notion as the basis of his psychological interpretation to explain certain neuroses involving sexual intercourse. The wolf is the father, and the fear of being swallowed concerns fear of intercourse and conception. See Jung's “Versuch einer Darstellung der psychoanalytischen Theorie” (1913), in Gesammelte Werke, vol. 4 (Zurich: Rasch, 1971), p. 237. For a more Freudian approach, cf. Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment (New York: Knopf, 1976), pp. 166-183.

3. The mythological interpretations have helped to stimulate this notion and have often included it. See Lee Burns, “Red Riding Hood,” Children's Literature, 1 (1972), p. 31. The depiction of the wolf as the absolute category of evil led racist folklorists in Germany to equate the beast with alien or racially inimical forces.

4. See Gottfried Henssen, “Deutsche Schreckmärchen und ihre europäischen Anverwandten,” Zeitschrift für Volkskunde, 51 (1953), pp. 84-97; and Marianne Rumpf, “Ursprung und Entstehung von Warn- und Schreckmärchen,” FF Communications, 160 (1955), pp. 3-16.

5. In addition to Rumpf's significant essay “Ursprung und Entstehung von Warn- und Scherckmärchen,” see her doctoral dissertation Rotkäppchen: Eine vergleichende Märchenuntersuchung. University of Göttingen, 1951, and “Caterinella: Ein italienisches Warnmärchen,” Fabula, 1 (1957), pp. 76-84.

6. “Les conres merveilleux de Perrault et la tradition populaire,” Bulletin folklorique d’lle-de-France (1951), pp. 221-228, 251-260, 283-291; (1953), pp. 511-517; “Le Petit Chaperon Rouge,” Le Conte Populaire Français, vol. I (Paris: Erasme, 1957), pp. 373-383.

7. “Le Petit Chaperon Rouge,” Nouvelle Revue Française, 16 (1968), pp. 429-443; and “From Tales of Warning to Formulettes: The Oral Tradition in French Children's Literature,” Yale French Studies, 43 (1969), pp. 2-3.

8. See Elliott O’Donnell, Werwolves (London: Methuen, 1912), pp. 110-125; and Montague Summers, The Werewolf (New York: Dutton, 1934), pp. 217-241.

9. Cf. Leubuscher, Ueber die Wehrwolfe und die Thierverwandlungen im Mittelalter (Berlin: Reimer, 1850); and Wilhelm Hertz, Der Werwolf (Stuttgart: Kröner, 1862).

10. This case has been repeatedly documented in histories of werewolves. See Summers, The Werewolf, pp. 223-225.

11. Cf. Soriano, “Le petit chaperon rouge,” pp. 429-43. See also Soriano's excellent critical biography, Les Contes de Perrault: Culture savante et traditions populaires (Paris: Gallimard, 1968).

12. Soriano, “From Tales of Warning,” pp. 27-28.

13. See “Conte de la mère grande,” in Delarue, Le Conte Populaire Français, pp. 373-74.

14. A slightly different version translated by Austin E. Fife can be found in Paul Delarue, ed., The Borzoi Book of French Folk Tales (New York: Knopf, 1956), pp. 230-232.

15. Henssen, “Deutsche Schreckmärchen.”

16. “Grand-mères, sie vous saviez: le Petit Chaperon Rouge dans la tradition orale,” Cahiers de Littérature Orale, 4 (1978), pp. 17-55.

17. Ibid., pp. 43-44.

18. “Le Petit Chaperon Rouge,” Le Conte Populaire Français, p. 383.

19. A Social History of Family Life (New York: Knopf, 1962). See also his essay “At the Point of Origin,” Yale French Studies, 43 (1969), pp. 15-23.

20. The use of a red sign or hat to stigmatize social nonconformists or outcasts was common throughout the Middle Ages and Reformation. For instance, Venetia Newall in her article “The Jew as a Witch Figure” reports that Jews in Central Europe were obliged to wear a Judenhut in the later Middle Ages. “This was a special hat, usually red, the brim shaped to resemble a pair of horns. The demoniacal implications of this item of headgear need not be enlarged upon, and there is additional evidence of alleged links between satanism and Jewry.” See The Witch Figure, ed. Venetia Newall (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973), p. 104. In France and Germany Jews were supposed to appear in mystery plays wearing satanic pointed caps. Sidney Oldall Addy has also recorded that in parts of England witches were

    dressed exactly like fairies. They wear a red mantle and hood, which covers the whole body. They always wear these hoods. An old woman living at Holmesfield, in the parish of Dronfield, in Derbyshire, who wore “one of those hoods called ‘little red riding hoods,’ used to be called the old witch.” The favourite meeting-places of witches are cross-ways, or “four lane ends,” or toll-bars, where they bewitch people.

    See Folk Tales and Superstitions (London: E.P. Publishing, 1973), pp. 70-71, a reprint of the 1895 edition. The connection between the devil, Jews, werewolves, witches, and fairies with Little Red Riding Hood will be made clearer later in this Introduction.

21. Cf. Mary Elizabeth Storer, La Mode des contes des fées (1685-1700) (Paris: Champion, 1928).

22. Charles Perrault, Contes, ed. Gilbert Rouger (Paris: Garnier, 1967), p. 89.

23. Cf. Marc Soriano, Les Contes de Perrault, Culture savante et traditions populaires (Paris: Gallimard, 1968), and Le Dossier Perrault (Paris: Hachette, 1972).

24. The Civilizing Process: The History of Manners, vol. 1, trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York: Urizen, 1978), p. 36.

25. Ibid., pp. 59-143.

26. Ibid., p. 108.

27. Paris: Minard, 1978, p. 40. …

28. See Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Pantheon, 1978).

29. Woman Hating, p. 33. Cf. Kay Stone, “Things Walt Disney Never Told Us,” in Women and Folklore, ed. Claire R. Farrer (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1975), pp. 42-50; and Madonna Kolbenschlag, Kiss Sleeping Beauty Good-Bye (New York: Doubleday, 1979).