The French aristocratic scholar and writer, Charles Perault, and the German Grimm Brothers are given the most credit for immortalizing the tale of a young woman who becomes involved with a ravenous wolf. However, it is most likely that their tales evolved from the European folklore, legends and mythology of the Middle Ages.
Legendary and Mythological Versions of Little Red Riding Hood
George William Cox in his Comparative Mythology (1883) believed that Little Red Riding Hood was symbolic. He saw Red as being "the evening with her scarlet robe of twilight," who is swallowed up by the wolf of darkness and is saved by the rising sun.
A. H. Wratslaw, another 19th Century folklorist, interpreted the story slightly differently. In his Sixty Folk-Tales from Exclusively Slavonic Sources (1889), he saw the story as a lunar legend whereby the moon (Red) is swallowed up by an autumnal eclipse (the wolf.) She is saved by the actions of an archer (the sun.) Wratslaw also noted similarities with a tale from Nordic mythology -- the story of Loki. In this tale Loki conceives a son, Fenris, a wolf-monster who destroys the god Odin and is, then himself, slain by Odin’s son.
European Folklore Versions of Little Red Riding Hood
Fantasy writer and artist Terri Windling in her magazine article, “The Path of Needles or Pins” (Realms of Fantasy, August 2004), argues that Red Riding Hood was originally an old wives’ tale (as used in its original meaning) that has its roots in ancient Asia, but was largely shaped by the rural traditions of France from the Middle Ages onward.
As an example Windling points to a bawdry oral tale from France called “The Grandmother’s Story.” In the story a young woman, sans red cape, is lured naked into her grandmother’s bed by a bzou, or werewolf. The girl is saved due to her own ingenuity and the assistance of a few nearby peasant women. Wilding sees this “older story [as] a complex one of female initiative and maturation.”
Perrault and the Grimm Brothers’ Versions of Little Red Riding Hood
In 1697 Charles Perrault created the first written story of Red Riding Hood in his Histoires ou Contes du Temps Passé (Stories of Times Past). “Le Petit Chapeau Rouge” varied from the oral tale in that Perrault added the famous red cape and had both the girl and her grandmother actually die.
Although now regarded as a part of children’s folklore, Perrault intended his story to be a morality tale for young women, and even added a warning at the end for younger, single, ladies to be wary of lecherous men. As Catherine Orenstein notes in her article, “Dances with Wolves” (Ms magazine, Summer 2004), in 17th Century French slang when a girl lost her virginity it was said that elle avoit vû le loup — she’d seen the wolf.
More than a century later, Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm revised the tale to make it suitable for children. In their version called "Little Red Cap," the young girl does not get into bed with the wolf and both she and her grandmother are saved by a nearby hunter who gives the wolf his comeuppance. It is adaptations of this Grimm story that are most common today.
Despite these differences with Perrault‘s version, "Little Red Cap" was still basically a morality tale. As the young girl initially leaves her house, her mother admonishes her to not leave the path (stay on the straight and narrow). To re-emphasize this point, the two German scholars added a sequel. Red Cap later meets a second wolf, but, unlike her first encounter, she refuses to be fooled by his clever talk. Instead, she and her grandmother lure the wolf into a water-filled trough where he drowns.
Additional Readings: Both Terri Windling and Catherine Orenstein’s magazine articles contain interesting insights on the subject. They can be read here and here.
Related Article: Modern Versions of Little Red Riding Hood, Little Red Riding Hood in the Movies.
