Main Message in the Little Red Riding Hood

WRITING CHALLENGE

A tale told time and time again, we have all heard the story of a young girl in a crimson hat’s journey through the woods to see her grandmother, and the wolf that greets her along the way. While this much may be true for all who have heard the story, the details beyond this range from gruesome to whimsical depending on where the story comes from, or where the story is being told. As different socio-economic, racial, and religious backgrounds bring a myriad of cultures into fruition, realigned fairy tales created to best fit those cultures bloom as well. Because of the constant fluctuation of societal values, the morals each author of Little Red Riding Hood thinks are a necessity and chooses to include in their version of the tale varies – from feminine empowerment, to a stress on the value of female virginity, or to an urging of child obedience.

After the wolf loses his mind over the sex appeal of the young woman on stage, she walks out into the crowd and finds her way to his table. He attempts to schmooze her into coming home with him, but after screaming a rejection in his face, she tells him she’s headed to her grandmother’s. He follows her back and a five-star chase sequence ensues – but it isn’t the cat and mouse you would expect. The wolf isn’t chasing Red, but instead he himself is being chased by Red’s grandmother. Tex Avery’s approach to Little Red Riding Hood, known as “Red Hot Riding Hood”, was a new interpretation that served a purpose few were serving in the 1940s – feminine empowerment. This new understanding of the untapped strength of women created an even more powerful image of the mindless, predatory behavior of the wolf. As one woman gets away from him and never turns back, the other becomes the predator and chases her howling prey around her penthouse. The sense of helplessness that is so strongly inflicted upon many of the versions of this tale is flung to the side to help shine a light on what the author finds more valuable. Red is no longer a doe-eyed little girl wandering through the forest, but instead a strongminded, empowered woman that refuses to be taken advantage of.

Chastity found its way into many of the versions of Little Red Riding Hood. In the years of the court of Louis XIV, virginity was required if two families wanted their son and daughter to be wed. If a girl was no longer a virgin, “a girl’s market value decreased sharply” (Windling p. 5). A young girl’s purity was so highly valued that it was common to lock daughters away in convents until they were wed, including the wife of Charles Perrault, author of one of the most well-known versions of Little Red Riding Hood. Rape was included in the dirtying of a bride’s purity, but rape had a very different definition in the court of Louis XIV. In France at that time, rape meant any man seducing or marrying a young woman without her father’s consent. So while we see rape as the highest form of sexual assault, the men and women in the salons of Versailles saw it as a dent in their proposed family trees.

““I’ll do just as you say,” Little Red Cap promised her mother” (Grimm p. 14). The story of “Little Red Cap”, being geared towards children, found a new moral focus that hadn’t yet been touched. Instead of focusing on the vulnerability of women and the toxicity of men, the Grimm brothers highlighted the importance of children obeying their authority figures. The story starts with Red’s promise of obedience to her mother, and finds its way to “Little Red Cap thought to herself: “Never again will you stray from the path and go into the woods, when your mother has forbidden it”” (Grimm p. 16). This value of submissive children snuck its way into a children’s story, attempting to plant itself in the mind of every child who read the tale. At the end of the tale, there’s an alternate ending that provides the reader with a view of what would have happened if Red had stayed “on her guard and kept right on going” (Grimm p. 16). For their grand finale, Red and the grandmother work together to drown the wolf, and he’s never presented with the opportunity to eat the grandmother or seduce Red. This version implies that if Red had always listened to her mother and grandmother, the wolf wouldn’t have ever presented a problem for anyone involved in the tale.

The story of Little Red Riding Hood is a timeless one, used as a fable to teach children a variety of morals and lessons around the world. It has been morphed into satires, dramas, and comedic interpretations, all with strong messages to share and lengthy takeaways for the reader to stew upon. Whether the focus is on the strength of females, chastity among young women, or the importance of child obedience, the tale has been repeatedly rearranged and rewritten to emphasize what the author values most.