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Author
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Comment
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Colleen
Unregistered User
(5/10/04 9:56 am)
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Question Re Little Red Riding Hood
DH was watching something on the History Channel the other night about werewolves throughout history. There was a historian on the show that claimed that Little Red Riding Hood was definitely a werewolf story - basically implied there's really no other way to interpret it. In my admittedly very limited experience, I've never heard it interpreted that way before. How common, among folklorists, is this interpretation of LRRH as a werewolf tale? Just curious, really. (Hmm, what's a good synonym for "interpret"? Guess I overused that word a bit!)
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Helen
J Pilinovsky
Registered User
(5/10/04 10:16 am)
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Re: Question Re Little Red Riding Hood
Actually, it depends on what "breed" of folklorist it
is that you're dealing with. Medievalists with an interest in folklore
seem to feel that it *is* a werewolf story: social scientists read
it as a behavioral etiology; fairy tale scholars, curiously or perhaps
not so curiously, tend to ignore the historical belief in werewolves
in favor of the trope of the anthropomorphized animal. It depends
on background/perspective as much as anything else. Two works that
you might want to take a look at: Montague Summers Werewolf
(Universe Books, 1933)
is one of the most oft-referred to sources in the field. Summers
(editor of the common English text of the Malleus Malificarum
of Kramer and Spengler) is very knowledgeable in his field, but
also somewhat biased as a critical reader of sources. His prejudices
are, however, quite authentic to the period in question. A slightly
less biased examination of the period can be found in Claude Lecouteux's
Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles
in the Middle Ages (Inner Traditions, Rochester Vermont, 2003).
He provides an invaluable resource in this brief examination of
the idea of the Double, manifesting particularly through the figure
of the shapechanger. Lecouteux’s text is primarily historical and
psychoanalytic, delving occasionally into the literary: it makes
for an odd, but effective blend. Lecouteux also claims that the
hereditary form of the werewolf is reserved largely for men, and
that of the nightmare for women: he acknowledges voluntary shifts
into other shapes for the latter, most often feline in nature. In
his section on werewolves, Lecouteux produces the most interesting
material in the book, examining both testimonials from the period
and the work of St. Augustine as a foundation for the nature of
shapeshifting in the Middle Ages (“The City of God”), concluding
that Augustine is responsible for a paradigm shift in the perception
of shapeshifting, from physical reality to illusion and demonic
manipulation. I believe that he references LRRH there (as I recall,
his reading of the Wolf as a werewolf, and the witchy grandmother's
verbal defense by the cat avatar is fascinating) ... Just a few
suggestions.
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Terri
Windling
Registered User
(5/11/04 8:30 am)
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Little Red Riding Hood
I've just written a magazine article on this very subject, as it happens.
In early French versions of the tale (older than Perrault's literary re-telling), the wolf was often a bzou, which is a kind of werewolf. In the older stories, usually called The Grandmother's Tale, the girl (who does not wear a red cap or hood, which was an invention of Perrault's) meets a bzou in the woods as she travels to take food to her grandmother. "Are you taking the Path of Needles or the Path of Pins?" he asks her. In some versions she chooses needles, in other versions, pins. Some folklorists have dismissed this as unimportant -- a nonsense choice that was included in the story merely as an amusement. French scholor Yvonne Verdier, however, wrote a fascinating study of the story which examines each element of the tale in relation to women's rites of passage (involving sewing and pins) in rural French society. This terrific article can be found in English translation in Marvels & Tales, Vol. II, Numbers 1 - 2, 1997.
There are other elements of the tale that are quite different from the Perrault and Grimms versions we know today: cannabilism, for one (she ends up unwittingly eating her grandmother's flesh) and more overtly sexual overtones. (The bzou commands her to her undresss, garment by garment, and to throw each item on the fire, as she won't need it anymore.) She pleads that she has to go outside to relieve herself. "Do it in the bed, my child," says the bzou. She insists on going outside, and he ties a cord to her ankle. Outside, she slips free of the cord, ties it to a plum tree, and escapes.
In these versions, the girl escapes by using her own wits -- as opposed to the Perrault version, in which the wolf gobbles her up, or the Grimms version, in which he gobbles her up but a huntsman comes along to resurrect her and her granny.
If you'd like to know more about the tale, read The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood by Jack Zipes, The Little Red Riding Hood Casebook by Alan Dundes, and Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked by Catherine Orenstein. The latter book is aimed at casual readers rather than folklore scholars, so it's an entertaining way to find out more about the history of the tale and about fairy tales in general. My own article on Little Red Riding Hood will be out in the next issue of Realms of Fantasy, and it will be on-line in the Autumn 2004 of the Endicott Journal of Mythic Arts.
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janeyolen
Registered User
(5/11/04 8:43 am)
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Zipes
Terri--Zipes was writing about the needle/pins and the sewing society connection long before Verdier.
Jane
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Terri
Windling
Registered User
(5/12/04 7:13 am)
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Red Riding Hood
Sorry, Jane, didn't mean to imply that this was only Verdier's idea.
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Colleen
Unregistered User
(5/12/04 9:49 am)
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Thanks
Thanks for your information on the LRRH/werewolf connection and for the book suggestions. I knew this would be the right place to ask!
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Don
Registered User
(5/13/04 7:08 am)
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Verdier
The Verdier essay in Marvels & Tales is a translation of an article that first appeared in the late 1970s. Zipes cites Verdier's work extensively when he takes up "The Story of Grandmother" in 1983 in The Trials and Tribulations of LRRH.
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Terri
Registered User
(5/13/04 8:59 am)
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Verdier
Thanks for the further clarification, Don. And for publishing the English translation of Verdier's article in Marvels and Tales.
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janeyolen
Registered User
(5/13/04 1:11 pm)
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Earlier date
Ah--that makes more sense. Thanks.
Jane
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M Quintar
Unregistered User
(5/24/04 1:29 pm)
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Re: Question Re Little Red Riding Hood
As fas as I can remember from Year 11 English class, there's also an element of that original folktale involving wet straw (?) being the only thing keeping the door locked and it breaks when the little girl enters the cabin. This was meant to be a metaphor (don't you love them) for the breaking of the hymen and so forth.
I'm actually currently working on an short CG animated movie based
on 'Red Riding Hood', taking into account the 'Bzou' version of
the tale. It won't be a classic piece of cinema, by no means. It
will pretty much be a contemporary hacking of the story with an
old world look to it.
This discussion thread was definately a delightful refresher course
for me.
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