Little Overly Analyzed Red Riding Hood

Okay, I admit it. I like to analyze things. I've analyzed relationships until they’re beaten and lifeless; I’ve wondered what the store cashier really meant when she sighs and shakes her head over half of my grocery purchases, and then analyze why I care. However, there are some things with which even I will not put up with in regards to analysis. And fairy tales and nursery rhymes are at the top of the list.


Suddenly, childhood stories lose some of their charm when you realize that Jack was keeping his wife “very well” in a pumpkin shell because that was the easiest way to continue oppressing her. Or that Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and the lot weren’t all glamorous princesses overcoming great odds to live their dreams, but pathetic creatures chasing after men to make themselves feel “whole” or “worthy” (sorry, but snagging a cute, rich, young prince would certainly make me feel worthy, and probably even a little bit….um, never mind).


From what I’ve recently learned, though, “Little Red Riding Hood” is the all-time analyzer’s dream (dry or not). Apparently, there have even been ACADEMIC SQUABBLES over the symbolism in all the many different versions of this particular tale. The basic story, as most of us know it, is pretty much the same. Little Red Riding Hood is taking a basket of goodies to her grandmother when she meets a wolf and tells him her destination. In any case, blabbing to the wolf is her big mistake and where the differentiation in versions of the tale begins.


After talking with Red Riding Hood, the wolf gets her to pick flowers and then rushes to grandma’s house first. He then devoured or killed the old woman and either did or did not serve pieces of the body to the girl (yes, Virginia, there are some really twisted versions of this tale). Then, in an earlier version, the wolf ordered the girl to strip and throw her clothes on the fire (Mom DEFINITELY never told me this version). The wolf then ate the girl, which is the end of the story unless it’s the version where a hunter shoots the wolf with an arrow, or cuts its belly open allowing the girl and her grandmother to escape. Amazingly, in some versions, the wolf even survives this. There is even a version where the girl gets away from the wolf by saying she has to go outside and relieve herself (my personal favorite).


Now, all I remember wondering about as a child when being told this story was simply “Would I react so calmly to a talking wolf?” However, it appears that what we’re REALLY supposed to wonder about is if the red hood was a sign of sin and the devil, menstruation, or of withcraft and evil. Or was it just a plain hat? And as for the wolf, HE has been interpreted as the Id, the pleasure principle, the predatory male, the phallus, an outlaw, a demon, the animal in all of us, and/or the inherent dangerousness of a cruel (and unusual, filled-with-talking-animals) world.


So Freduians, feminists, and literary critics have a field day. Some say the girl brings on her own “rape” by straying from the path; some say the tale tries to show that only a strong male (e.g., the hunter) can rescue foolish girls from their lustful desires; and Erich From, writing WAY back in 1951, says the red cap represents mensturation, the mother’s warning to Red not to drop a bottle refers to losing her virginity, and the view of sex as a cannibalistic act performed by ruthless males is “an expression of hate and prejudice against men.” All I can say to that is, “Uh, what?”


This is why they don’t write fairy tales anymore. Can you imagine any of the stories being told to children today becoming timeless classics? Well, maybe if McDonald’s or Nike sponsors them and pays for them to be serialized. “Mommy, mommy, can we read the story of ‘Little Red-Haired Ronald McDonald’ or ‘Deion Prime-Time Sanders and the Three Pairs of Nikes?” But back to Little Red Riding Hood.


Sex, sex, sex. In most every interpretation it’s sex. Why do we get to hear this supposedly lusftul story when we’re young and thinking only “candy, Mommy is good, candy, grandma lets me do what I want, candy” instead of when we’re teenagers and thinking, “sex, Mom is evil, sex, if I have to visit grandma again I’ll scream, sex”? I still think that unless I’d been told otherwise, I would NEVER think of Little Red Riding Hood in the ways some of these people do (let us be thankful the same attention hasn’t been paid to implications of bestiality in “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”). I always thought the moral of the story was simply, "Don’t let talking wolves know where grandma lives.”


In the end, my favorite analysis comes from a Professor Vidler from Princeton who claims that the real problem in the tale was a design flaw: the weak lock on grandmother’s door. Hmmm, this must mean grandma was subconsciously “asking for it.”