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The Many Adaptations of Little Red Riding Hood
The fairy tale “Little Red Riding Hood” is one that everyone, even if they haven’t read the original version(s), can recognize. It is the tale of a young girl who is sent by her mother to give some type of food to her sick grandmother. To get to the grandmother’s house, the girl has to walk through the woods where she meets a wolf who tricks her into taking the long route to her grandmother’s house. The wolf eats the grandmother when he arrives at her house before the girl and the girl is gullible enough to believe that her grandmother suddenly grew large teeth and hair all over her body and she inevitably gets eaten as well.
This basic tale has had variations in several European countries such as France, Germany, Italy, Austria, and England. Each of these versions is slightly different than the other, but the basic story structure remains the same in all of them. The changes to the tale are culturally significant, such as what food the girl brings her grandmother, how the girl is eaten and if she is saved or not. As our society has moved into other media rather than just oral tales and books written for children, the story of Little Red Riding Hood has adapted as well. It has been made into musicals, movies, and television shows all through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Perrault, 1697
Charles Perrault’s tale La Petite Chaperon Rouge, published in his book of fairy tales, Contes de ma mère l’Oye, was the first published version of Little Red Riding Hood that stemmed from the oral traditions of French peasants (Berlioz 63). Perrault starts off describing the girl as “the prettiest creature who was ever seen” who was doted on by everyone, especially her grandmother who made her signature red hood. When the grandmother falls ill, the mother sends the girl with a cake and pot of butter to give her. Cake would have been a luxury item for seventeenth century French peasants that was not made on a whim and butter was less rare, but still difficult to make (Goubert 84). Therefore, the mother must have known before that morning when she sent the girl out into the woods to deliver the cake and butter.
In this version, the girl is not saved at the end of the story. She gets eaten by the wolf and the story ends. However, on her way to the grandmother’s, the girl is spared her life because the wolf does not want to be seen by “some woodcutters working nearby in the forest”. Experts speculate that this is where the Grimm brothers got the idea for the woodcutter who comes to save the girl in their tale (Farrow, 27).
When the girl gets to her grandmother’s house she notices that something is off with her grandmother’s voice, but she attributes it to her cold. She walks in and the wolf is sitting in her grandmother’s bed wearing her clothes and he tells her to “put the cake and the little pot of butter upon the stool, and come get into bed with me.” It is only then the girl notices the wolf’s big arms, legs, ears, eyes, and teeth. After noticing these things, the wolf eats her.
Perrault is the only one of original fairy tale authors to include a moral spelled out at the end of his stories. France at the time these were published was going through a period of religious reformation. So Perrault thought he needed to be crystal clear with his message to readers to insure that the young people of France stayed morally clear (Farrow 31). His moral is this:
“Children, especially attractive, well bred young ladies, should never talk to strangers, for if they should do so, they may well provide dinner for a wolf. I say "wolf," but there are various kinds of wolves. There are also those who are charming, quiet, polite, unassuming, complacent, and sweet, who pursue young women at home and in the streets. And unfortunately, it is these gentle wolves who are the most dangerous ones of all.”
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, 1812/1857
Contrary to Perrault’s message about young girls being careful about who they talk to and who they trust, the Grimm brothers have the mother tell Little Red Cap at the very beginning to “mind your manners….behave yourself on the way, and do not leave the path, or you might fall down and break the glass, and then there will be nothing for your sick grandmother.” This puts the emphasis not on the girl’s safety, but the safety of the grandmother’s package and the hope that the girl will behave and be polite to anyone she met on the way.
The Grimm’s version has the girl bring cake and wine to her grandmother. The same issue lays with cake as did in Perrault. However, the wine makes much more sense here as Germans at this time drank almost solely wine because water was not sanitary to drink and wine could be stored almost anywhere for a long time.
When the girl finally meets the wolf in the woods, he tells her to appreciate the beauty in the woods and not walk so fast through them. She takes this to heart and spends hours picking flowers for her grandmother, leaving the wolf time to get to the grandmother’s house, eat her, and dress in her clothes. The Grimms take a paragraph to describe exactly how the wolf puts on the clothes and climbs into bed, which gives readers a glimpse into what normal citizens in Germany were wearing and what they used in their bedchambers. So not only could this be used as a tale to entertain and instruct children, but it could be used by historians to acquire a glimpse into this era.
After the girl comes and comments on the grandmother’s large ears, eyes, hands, and mouth, she is eaten by the wolf. However, unlike Perrault, the story does not end here. A huntsman comes in and cuts open the wolf with a pair of scissors. The huntsman could have just shot the wolf with his gun, but he didn’t want to kill the grandmother too because she might still be able to be saved. This puts a very humanizing twist on the story. He is morally strong enough to want to save the humans inside the wolf, but after they are out he has no trouble killing the wolf.
In the original version, the huntsman, girl, and grandmother fill the wolf’s stomach with heavy stones so that when he tries to get up and run away “the stones were so heavy that he fell down dead”.
In another version, which was probably taken from an earlier Grimm story The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids, the girl is not tricked by the wolf. Instead, she goes straight to her grandmother’s house and tells her all about the mean wolf. The wolf does not know this however, so he knocks on the door pretending to be the girl and when no one answers, he jumps on the roof to wait for the girl to come out. The grandmother saved them though because she cooked sausage the day before and still had some water left over (which had the tempting aroma of sausage still in it). So they pour it outside and the wolf leans over the roof to smell it when he falls down into the trough of sausage water and drowns. Germany is known for their sausage so the food makes sense here. Also, it shows that with cunning and resourcefulness, women can defeat the wolf-unlike what Perrault preached.
Italy/Austria, 1867
This version is perhaps the most different between the three of these. First, the grandmother isn’t sick, she just wants Little Red Hat to bring her some soup after they spent the day in the field. Soup was very common at this time in Austria because it was fairly easy to make and also inexpensive. These authors don’t bother with the girl bringing her grandmother expensive cakes or anything, they stick to practical foods.
Second, the girl meets an ogre in the woods instead of a wolf. He gives her the option of crossing either the stones or thorns to get to her grandmother’s house, which is much more symbolic than either of the other versions.
The ogre is much more violent to the grandmother and girl than the wolves were. He kills the grandmother, ties her intestine to the door, and puts her blood, teeth, and jaws in the kitchen. It is not for a religious reason that he removes these items, he must just be really good at assuming what the girl is going to want when she gets there. When Little Red Hat discovers each of these things, she says that they are hard or soft or too red, to which the ogre replies with what they are. However, even though the ogre says what they are, Little Red Hat still calls back “what did you say?” and the ogre tells her to “eat and keep quiet”.
Finally, the Ogre says different things to the girl after she gets into bed with him because she’s sleepy. The girl tells the ogre (whom she thinks is her grandmother) that he is hairy, have long legs, long hands, long ears, and a big mouth. These descriptions are similar to the other two versions, but just different enough to rouse suspicion. Possibly it is because in folklore the ogre is not as smart and cunning as the wolf, so he must resort to violence to get what he really wants: Little Red Cap.
Angela Carter, 1979
Angela Carter is a modern author who, in her book The Bloody Chamber, reimagines fairy tales in a detailed and sometimes gory way. Her interpretation of Little Red Riding Hood is called The Company of Wolves and it delves into some issues that other folklorists have brought up with the original story.
Many of these folklorists, especially after Freud’s theories of development arose, thought that the girl’s red hood was symbolic of a girl’s transition into womanhood, when she got her first period. This is largely due to her red cape and the fact that she is eaten by a wolf, or raped as some see it (Farrow 20). Carter ran with these ideas in her story. The girl is described as the prettiest in the family with “breasts [that] have just begun to swell” and having “just started her woman’s bleeding”. The wolf in this story is literally a young man who woos her in with the lure of a kiss if he beats her to her grandmother’s cabin. When she arrives at the cabin however, she is raped and the young man turns into a wolf and eats her.
The Company of Wolves takes Perrault’s moral literally, warning girls to beware of sweet talking men, as well as elaborating on the analyses of folklorists who ran too hard with Freud’s theories of sexual development.
Modern Adaptations
Little Red Riding Hood is one of those fairy tales that has not changed too much since it was first written down. Of course in almost all modern children’s books where this tale is found, the girl gets rescued and the wolf is killed, or otherwise banished, and everyone lives happily ever after. The moral of the story is still present, but not stated as explicitly as in Perrault.
One modern film adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood however takes a totally different spin on the story. Hoodwinked is an animated feature film created by Weinstein in 2005. The first few minutes are the story we know and love, but then it stops right before Red, the little girl, is about to get eaten. The police are called in for a domestic disturbance and viewers hear the story from every character’s point of view. It is a brilliantly comedic twist on this tale.
Little Red Riding Hood is also a feature character in the musical Into the Woods, created in 1986 by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine. This musical is a conglomeration of several different fairy tales including Cinderella, Rapunzel, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Little Red Riding Hood. The wolf and Little Red Riding Hood sing a song together (“Hello, Little Girl”) that basically outlines the first half of the fairy tale.
The wolf is a featured character in the film Shrek and its sequels. He is painted not as someone who just wants to eat little girls, but as a wolf who likes cross dressing in old women’s clothing. He is kicked out of the main kingdom for being a freak, but there is no mention of Little Red Riding Hood in these films.
This basic tale has had variations in several European countries such as France, Germany, Italy, Austria, and England. Each of these versions is slightly different than the other, but the basic story structure remains the same in all of them. The changes to the tale are culturally significant, such as what food the girl brings her grandmother, how the girl is eaten and if she is saved or not. As our society has moved into other media rather than just oral tales and books written for children, the story of Little Red Riding Hood has adapted as well. It has been made into musicals, movies, and television shows all through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Perrault, 1697
Charles Perrault’s tale La Petite Chaperon Rouge, published in his book of fairy tales, Contes de ma mère l’Oye, was the first published version of Little Red Riding Hood that stemmed from the oral traditions of French peasants (Berlioz 63). Perrault starts off describing the girl as “the prettiest creature who was ever seen” who was doted on by everyone, especially her grandmother who made her signature red hood. When the grandmother falls ill, the mother sends the girl with a cake and pot of butter to give her. Cake would have been a luxury item for seventeenth century French peasants that was not made on a whim and butter was less rare, but still difficult to make (Goubert 84). Therefore, the mother must have known before that morning when she sent the girl out into the woods to deliver the cake and butter.
In this version, the girl is not saved at the end of the story. She gets eaten by the wolf and the story ends. However, on her way to the grandmother’s, the girl is spared her life because the wolf does not want to be seen by “some woodcutters working nearby in the forest”. Experts speculate that this is where the Grimm brothers got the idea for the woodcutter who comes to save the girl in their tale (Farrow, 27).
When the girl gets to her grandmother’s house she notices that something is off with her grandmother’s voice, but she attributes it to her cold. She walks in and the wolf is sitting in her grandmother’s bed wearing her clothes and he tells her to “put the cake and the little pot of butter upon the stool, and come get into bed with me.” It is only then the girl notices the wolf’s big arms, legs, ears, eyes, and teeth. After noticing these things, the wolf eats her.
Perrault is the only one of original fairy tale authors to include a moral spelled out at the end of his stories. France at the time these were published was going through a period of religious reformation. So Perrault thought he needed to be crystal clear with his message to readers to insure that the young people of France stayed morally clear (Farrow 31). His moral is this:
“Children, especially attractive, well bred young ladies, should never talk to strangers, for if they should do so, they may well provide dinner for a wolf. I say "wolf," but there are various kinds of wolves. There are also those who are charming, quiet, polite, unassuming, complacent, and sweet, who pursue young women at home and in the streets. And unfortunately, it is these gentle wolves who are the most dangerous ones of all.”
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, 1812/1857
Contrary to Perrault’s message about young girls being careful about who they talk to and who they trust, the Grimm brothers have the mother tell Little Red Cap at the very beginning to “mind your manners….behave yourself on the way, and do not leave the path, or you might fall down and break the glass, and then there will be nothing for your sick grandmother.” This puts the emphasis not on the girl’s safety, but the safety of the grandmother’s package and the hope that the girl will behave and be polite to anyone she met on the way.
The Grimm’s version has the girl bring cake and wine to her grandmother. The same issue lays with cake as did in Perrault. However, the wine makes much more sense here as Germans at this time drank almost solely wine because water was not sanitary to drink and wine could be stored almost anywhere for a long time.
When the girl finally meets the wolf in the woods, he tells her to appreciate the beauty in the woods and not walk so fast through them. She takes this to heart and spends hours picking flowers for her grandmother, leaving the wolf time to get to the grandmother’s house, eat her, and dress in her clothes. The Grimms take a paragraph to describe exactly how the wolf puts on the clothes and climbs into bed, which gives readers a glimpse into what normal citizens in Germany were wearing and what they used in their bedchambers. So not only could this be used as a tale to entertain and instruct children, but it could be used by historians to acquire a glimpse into this era.
After the girl comes and comments on the grandmother’s large ears, eyes, hands, and mouth, she is eaten by the wolf. However, unlike Perrault, the story does not end here. A huntsman comes in and cuts open the wolf with a pair of scissors. The huntsman could have just shot the wolf with his gun, but he didn’t want to kill the grandmother too because she might still be able to be saved. This puts a very humanizing twist on the story. He is morally strong enough to want to save the humans inside the wolf, but after they are out he has no trouble killing the wolf.
In the original version, the huntsman, girl, and grandmother fill the wolf’s stomach with heavy stones so that when he tries to get up and run away “the stones were so heavy that he fell down dead”.
In another version, which was probably taken from an earlier Grimm story The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids, the girl is not tricked by the wolf. Instead, she goes straight to her grandmother’s house and tells her all about the mean wolf. The wolf does not know this however, so he knocks on the door pretending to be the girl and when no one answers, he jumps on the roof to wait for the girl to come out. The grandmother saved them though because she cooked sausage the day before and still had some water left over (which had the tempting aroma of sausage still in it). So they pour it outside and the wolf leans over the roof to smell it when he falls down into the trough of sausage water and drowns. Germany is known for their sausage so the food makes sense here. Also, it shows that with cunning and resourcefulness, women can defeat the wolf-unlike what Perrault preached.
Italy/Austria, 1867
This version is perhaps the most different between the three of these. First, the grandmother isn’t sick, she just wants Little Red Hat to bring her some soup after they spent the day in the field. Soup was very common at this time in Austria because it was fairly easy to make and also inexpensive. These authors don’t bother with the girl bringing her grandmother expensive cakes or anything, they stick to practical foods.
Second, the girl meets an ogre in the woods instead of a wolf. He gives her the option of crossing either the stones or thorns to get to her grandmother’s house, which is much more symbolic than either of the other versions.
The ogre is much more violent to the grandmother and girl than the wolves were. He kills the grandmother, ties her intestine to the door, and puts her blood, teeth, and jaws in the kitchen. It is not for a religious reason that he removes these items, he must just be really good at assuming what the girl is going to want when she gets there. When Little Red Hat discovers each of these things, she says that they are hard or soft or too red, to which the ogre replies with what they are. However, even though the ogre says what they are, Little Red Hat still calls back “what did you say?” and the ogre tells her to “eat and keep quiet”.
Finally, the Ogre says different things to the girl after she gets into bed with him because she’s sleepy. The girl tells the ogre (whom she thinks is her grandmother) that he is hairy, have long legs, long hands, long ears, and a big mouth. These descriptions are similar to the other two versions, but just different enough to rouse suspicion. Possibly it is because in folklore the ogre is not as smart and cunning as the wolf, so he must resort to violence to get what he really wants: Little Red Cap.
Angela Carter, 1979
Angela Carter is a modern author who, in her book The Bloody Chamber, reimagines fairy tales in a detailed and sometimes gory way. Her interpretation of Little Red Riding Hood is called The Company of Wolves and it delves into some issues that other folklorists have brought up with the original story.
Many of these folklorists, especially after Freud’s theories of development arose, thought that the girl’s red hood was symbolic of a girl’s transition into womanhood, when she got her first period. This is largely due to her red cape and the fact that she is eaten by a wolf, or raped as some see it (Farrow 20). Carter ran with these ideas in her story. The girl is described as the prettiest in the family with “breasts [that] have just begun to swell” and having “just started her woman’s bleeding”. The wolf in this story is literally a young man who woos her in with the lure of a kiss if he beats her to her grandmother’s cabin. When she arrives at the cabin however, she is raped and the young man turns into a wolf and eats her.
The Company of Wolves takes Perrault’s moral literally, warning girls to beware of sweet talking men, as well as elaborating on the analyses of folklorists who ran too hard with Freud’s theories of sexual development.
Modern Adaptations
Little Red Riding Hood is one of those fairy tales that has not changed too much since it was first written down. Of course in almost all modern children’s books where this tale is found, the girl gets rescued and the wolf is killed, or otherwise banished, and everyone lives happily ever after. The moral of the story is still present, but not stated as explicitly as in Perrault.
One modern film adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood however takes a totally different spin on the story. Hoodwinked is an animated feature film created by Weinstein in 2005. The first few minutes are the story we know and love, but then it stops right before Red, the little girl, is about to get eaten. The police are called in for a domestic disturbance and viewers hear the story from every character’s point of view. It is a brilliantly comedic twist on this tale.
Little Red Riding Hood is also a feature character in the musical Into the Woods, created in 1986 by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine. This musical is a conglomeration of several different fairy tales including Cinderella, Rapunzel, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Little Red Riding Hood. The wolf and Little Red Riding Hood sing a song together (“Hello, Little Girl”) that basically outlines the first half of the fairy tale.
The wolf is a featured character in the film Shrek and its sequels. He is painted not as someone who just wants to eat little girls, but as a wolf who likes cross dressing in old women’s clothing. He is kicked out of the main kingdom for being a freak, but there is no mention of Little Red Riding Hood in these films.
Song from "Into the Woods" sung by Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood
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Movie Trailer for Hoodwinked!
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Works Cited
"Little Red Riding Hood." Little Red Riding Hood. Ed. D. L. Ashliman. University of Pittsburg, 15 Oct. 2014. Web. 02 Dec. 2014. <http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0333.html>.
Cited in the main site:
Grimm, Jacob, and Wilhelm Grimm. "Rothcappchen." Trans. D. L. Ashliman. Kinder- Und Hausmärchen. Vol. 1. Berlin: Realschulbuchhandlung, 1812. 113-18. Little Red Riding Hood. University of Pittsburg, 15 Oct. 2014. Web. 2 Dec. 2014.
Perrault, Charles. "Le Petit Chaperon Rouge." Histoires Ou Contes Du Temps Passé, Avec Des Moralités: Contes De Ma Mère L'Oye. Paris: n.p., 1697. 51-53. Little Red Riding Hood. University of Pittsburg, 15 Oct. 2014. Web. 2 Dec. 2014.
Schneller, Christian. "Das Rothhütchen." Märchen Und Sagen Aus Wälschtirol: Ein Beitrag Zur Deutschen Sagenkunde. Vol. 6. N.p.: Innsbruck: Verlag Der Wagner'schen Universitäts-Buchhandlung, 1867. 9-10.Little Red Riding Hood. University of Pittsburg, 15 Oct. 2014. Web. 2 Dec. 2014.
Berlioz, Jacques. "Il Faut Sauver Le Petit Chaperon Rouge." L'Histoire. N.p., July 2007. Web. 12 Dec. 2014.
Farrow, James G. "Little Red Riding Hood." An Introduction to Mythology. 2nd ed. N.p.: Kendall/Hunt, 2009. 20-31. Print.
Goubert, Pierre. "Daily Bread." French Peasantry in the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989. 82-96. Print.
Hoodwinked. Dir. Cory Edwards and Todd Edwards. Perf. Anne Hathaway and Patrick Warburton. Weinstien, 2005. DVD.
"Into the Woods." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 13 Dec. 2013. Web. 12 Dec. 2014.
Shrek. Dir. Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson. Perf. Mike Meyers, Eddie Murphy, and Cameron Diaz. Dreamworks, 2001. DVD.
"Little Red Riding Hood." Little Red Riding Hood. Ed. D. L. Ashliman. University of Pittsburg, 15 Oct. 2014. Web. 02 Dec. 2014. <http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0333.html>.
Cited in the main site:
Grimm, Jacob, and Wilhelm Grimm. "Rothcappchen." Trans. D. L. Ashliman. Kinder- Und Hausmärchen. Vol. 1. Berlin: Realschulbuchhandlung, 1812. 113-18. Little Red Riding Hood. University of Pittsburg, 15 Oct. 2014. Web. 2 Dec. 2014.
Perrault, Charles. "Le Petit Chaperon Rouge." Histoires Ou Contes Du Temps Passé, Avec Des Moralités: Contes De Ma Mère L'Oye. Paris: n.p., 1697. 51-53. Little Red Riding Hood. University of Pittsburg, 15 Oct. 2014. Web. 2 Dec. 2014.
Schneller, Christian. "Das Rothhütchen." Märchen Und Sagen Aus Wälschtirol: Ein Beitrag Zur Deutschen Sagenkunde. Vol. 6. N.p.: Innsbruck: Verlag Der Wagner'schen Universitäts-Buchhandlung, 1867. 9-10.Little Red Riding Hood. University of Pittsburg, 15 Oct. 2014. Web. 2 Dec. 2014.
Berlioz, Jacques. "Il Faut Sauver Le Petit Chaperon Rouge." L'Histoire. N.p., July 2007. Web. 12 Dec. 2014.
Farrow, James G. "Little Red Riding Hood." An Introduction to Mythology. 2nd ed. N.p.: Kendall/Hunt, 2009. 20-31. Print.
Goubert, Pierre. "Daily Bread." French Peasantry in the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989. 82-96. Print.
Hoodwinked. Dir. Cory Edwards and Todd Edwards. Perf. Anne Hathaway and Patrick Warburton. Weinstien, 2005. DVD.
"Into the Woods." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 13 Dec. 2013. Web. 12 Dec. 2014.
Shrek. Dir. Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson. Perf. Mike Meyers, Eddie Murphy, and Cameron Diaz. Dreamworks, 2001. DVD.