Little Red Riding Hood --- German Fairy Tales (3)

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The story in a nutshell: a little girl who always wears a red cap is told by her mother to take a basket full of food to her sick grandmother. She lives in the woods. The girl is told not to leave the path but go straight to granny’s house. On the way she’s accosted by a wolf who suggests she pick a bunch of flowers for her grandmother. While she is doing so, the wolf runs to granny’s house, devours her and lies down in her bed. When the girls arrives, the wolf devours her, too. Later a hunter comes, slits open the wolf and the girl and the old woman are rescued. They fill the wolf’s belly with stones and it dies. Little Red Riding Hood is one of the best known fairy tales of the collection of the Brothers Grimm. Many versions exist, many interpretations and also many parodies. It belongs to the subgenre of fairy tales which are meant to frighten and thus warn the listeners and readers. The girl is described as exceptionally cute and spoilt. It is naïve and has never experienced anything negative in her young life. Her mother does warn her to leave the path in the woods but only so that she won’t break a glass. She doesn’t warn her of a possible encounter with the wolf. Because of this the girl isn’t afraid when the wolf talks to her but answers politely. The wolf can be seen as the incorporation of evil, the wood for wilderness standing in contrast to the order and innocence of Little Red Riding Hood’s present life and the civilised life in the village. But it can also be seen as the male enticer exploiting her inexperience. The following catastrophe is not a blow of fate but the result of mother’s and grandmother’s mistake not to prepare the girl for all possible events in life. The hunter is the master of the woods, the positive male protector of the weak. But at the time when the fairy tale was found by the Brothers Grimm, wolves were not abstract concepts but realistic dangers for the people. Wolf attacks were something people knew about in those days. When Little Red Riding Hood comes out of the wolf’s belly, she declares that it was dark inside and that she’ll never disobey her mother again. Fear has helped her to mature. The red cap has invited many interpretations. The colour red symbolises life and joy, but it can also be associated with menstruation, thus indicating the development from girl to woman. Other interpretations see the colour red as a symbol for the sun, the swallowing as the onset of night and the reappearance after the hunter has come to rescue as dawn, a symbolic natural cycle. Take your pick! --- P.S. If you're interested in more interpretations of German fairy tales, you can click on the green bar at the top of the site. --- Picture from pixabay