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Author
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Comment
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Mirjana1
Registered User
(12/30/05 11:01 am)
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Red Riding Hood - single mother?
Is it just me or isn't RRH's mother single? Can't recall hearing about a father, and that hunter was "a friend"?
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princessterribel
Registered User
(1/1/06 6:46 am)
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Re: Red Riding Hood - single mother?
Father's never seem to feature very prominantly in fairytales, they may be there at the start but they quickly fade into insignificance. Guess the story didn't need any mention of a father figure, a role wich the 'hunter' probably fills.
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coinilius
Registered User
(1/1/06 7:15 am)
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Re: Red Riding Hood - single mother?
Or perhaps in some twisted way, the Wolf could sub in as a 'father' figure... going by the non-woodchopper including versions of the tale, the Wolf is the only male figure present in the story.
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princessterribel
Registered User
(1/1/06 2:06 pm)
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Re: Red Riding Hood - single mother?
or perhaps in those stories that feature both the wood cutter and the wolf could symbolise the two aspects of the father...one aspect being threatening and the other being the caring figure. I am sure there is some deep oedipal meaning somewhere.hehe
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bnelle
Registered User
(1/8/06 3:48 am)
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Re: Red Riding Hood - single mother?
I could be wrong about this, but I'm sure I've read about folklore like this being part of women's wisdom, being passed down from older generations to younger, usually around some sort of common work (spinning, sewing, whatever.) As such, it might make sense that men play a smaller part, at least in the oldest versions (the woodcutter didn't show up till later, more bowlderized versions). Since the stories were from women, about women, men may simply not have shown up on the radar, as it were. Also, I know that some scholars suggest that the wolf is of the two legged, smooth skinned variety, so that might be all the man we get in the story:)
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Gypsy
Unregistered User
(1/13/06 8:54 pm)
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Re: Red Riding Hood - songle mother?
I agree. Since fairytales were told commonly in a time when the men were out providing for the family, the women made these stories about themselves. It showed an independant side of women, since, girls and women were almost always the main character, and in most fairytales, the protagonist triumphed. These stories were a way for the women to show that they didn't always need the men around. Well, this is just one persons opinion.
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(1/13/06 9:06 pm)
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men away?
I don't really think that these tales were being told at a time when men were away at work. In peasant-agrarian societies, there isn't that big a difference between home and work--you're working at home, you're working in the fields, you're working at the market--and women had important jobs in all those fields. The separate spheres phenomenon didn't really hit society until the 19th century and the rise of industrial capitalism.
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Writerpatrick
Registered User
(1/14/06 10:12 am)
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Re: men away?
Though most farmers and craftsmen stayed at or near home, there were some jobs that required the man to be away during work hours such as hunting, woodcutting and fishing. And if the husband was a solder he could be away for years.
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thepapercutout
Unregistered User
(1/21/06 12:27 pm)
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Red Riding Hood - single mother?
You might want to consider all the characters as different aspects of Red Riding Hood's self as she progresses through transformation in which case there is no need to take the characters or their roles literally but rather symbolically as imagery she manifests from her different states of being. IMHO.
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sara lindsey
Registered User
(1/25/06 10:46 am)
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Orenstein article
Catherine Orenstein article
Here's a brief overview of LRRH's history. Orenstein makes the point, as do many scholars, that the woodcutter was added to bring a patriarchal father figure into the mix.
Hope this helps!
Sara
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kristiw
Unregistered User
(1/25/06 10:03 pm)
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hey sara
(Hey Sara :) Not related to this thread, apologies, but I remember some illustrations of Hansel and Gretel you showed me that slyly alluded to the witch and step/mother being the same figure... do you have any sources for that parallel, other than the illustration? If you talk about it in your thesis, that would suffice :)
Thanks, and sorry all for the non sequitor)
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(1/25/06 10:18 pm)
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Re: hey sara
There're a few parallels between the witch and the stepmother--I think Bettelheim talks about this in Uses of Enchantment, which is not a book I generally endorse, but I do think he makes some interesting observations. The main one that I remember is the witch is also a "bad" mother, insofar as mothers are identified with nourishment, and both the stepmom and the witch withhold nourishment (from Gretel) and/or misuse it. They both want the kids dead, and I think most importantly, when Gretel kills the witch, the kids get home and fortuitously find that the stepmom is dead too.
Hope you don't mind me answering!
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kristiw
Unregistered User
(1/25/06 10:27 pm)
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Bettelheim
Not at all, that bit about withholding nourishment is actually right on the nose, I'll see if I can find a good quote :)
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Rosemary Lake
Registered User
(1/26/06 12:26 am)
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von Franz?
As for witch=stepmother, or in general 'magic peril met in woods mirrors family problem that caused her to leave home' ... didn't von Franz talk about that too?
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sara lindsey
Registered User
(1/27/06 10:22 am)
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Stepmother/Witch
Hey Kristiana-
My thesis actually ended up being exclusively on LRRH but I found a couple of references among the many books I acquired while writing thesis. The illustrations you're referring to are, by the way, from Anthony Browne's Hansel and Gretel. Jane Doolen talks about the illustrations in an article from The Lion and the Unicorn periodical. You can access this through the library website. You might also want to check back-issues of Marvels and Tales - I think it was through Project Muse - for H&G related articles.
In Sheldon Cashdan's The Witch Must Die, he writes:
From a psychological standpoint, the stepmother's death is perfectly understandable. She and the witch in the forest are two sides of the same evil coin. In Engelbert Humperdinck's 1893 children's opera Hansel and Gretel, the same actress typically plays the part of both the stepmother and the witch. Though Gretel did not know it at the time, she conveniently managed to kill two witches with one stone when she shoved the evil hag into the oven. (77-78)
Maria Tatar and Jack Zipes also talk about this in various books. I think Tatar writes about H&G in The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales, but I'm not positive. I know von Franz has a couple of essays about Vassilissa and Baba Yaga in The Feminine in Fairytales, but I'm not sure where she talks about H&G. Another book in Honnold that you might find interesting is From feasting to fasting, the evolution of a sin: attitudes to food in late antiquity by Veronika E. Grimm.
I hope all is well in dear old Claremont!
Sara
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