Historians seek out the lessons of our past to understand how we came to be as a species. Technically speaking, we haven’t evolved much; we have the sort of body with the same sort of brain, yet we’ve somehow managed to participate in some pretty horrific or astounding activities.
I was recently researching folk tales/fairy tales for my studies when I came across Little Red Riding Hood. If you remember the story, you’ll probably remember a little girl; a basket full of cake/butter/bread/wine; a predatory wolf; a sickly grandma; a heroic woodcutter. The story that you remember is merely a trace of the original story. As I investigated deeper and deeper into the history of fairy tales, I noticed that female promiscuity was regarded as expected behaviour back then. In their stories (and stories are the most accessible forms of education) they taught girls that their natural sexual inclinations, which might accidentally carry them into problematic situations, needed to be equipped with wit and foresight. This is an opposing viewpoint to our contemporary society. Nowadays, we discourage females from any inclination to dress up provocative, act slutty or even be slutty as this will inevitably attract the attention of ill-mannered men, and they are therefore better off not pursue their curiosities. Or, contradictory to this, they are taught that their greatest asset and value is how they look, so they are to cultivate and maintain this while avoiding any undesirable attention. Females are taught to take responsibility for male attraction and haven’t been given much tools on where to go when they do attract attention, wanted or unwanted. And so as a society we tend to blame females for any fate they succumb to in the hands of a male because, well, they were warned about it, right? What else were they expecting?
That’s not how the peasants of the pre-1700’s thought of it. They weren’t alluded to the fact that there was an attraction of the genders that goes both ways. They had to teach their kids, boys and girls, how to be self-reliant, self resilient and cautious from a young age because they were exposed to dangers, sexual and otherwise, early on. This was necessary; children worked as soon as they could unsupervised. Fairy tales and folk stories were orally communicated among the lower class long before any of the stories were transcribed because people couldn’t read. It was only on the late 1600’s that folk tales were transferred to literature and circulated among the literary (and richer) class. It was during this publication stage that the original stories were altered to teach more appropriate lessons among the bourgeoisie. Little Red Riding Hood was one such tale that was twisted to serve the interest of an emerging patriarchal society.
If you try to remember the morale of the story you’ll probably remember it has to do with ‘staying on the path’ and if you don’t there will be a ‘big bad wolf’ waiting to hurt you. You’ll also remember that it teaches you that a hero will come even if you were foolish as to not do the right thing in the first place. The contemporary story teaches girls two things; do what you’re told or you’ll be hurt and; although there will be a man waiting to hurt you, there will also be a man waiting to save you. It simultaneously paints men as heroes and villains; the strangers as villains and the ones you are familiar with as heroes. This is one of the greatest achievement of patriarchy, it makes the female feel they are dependent on the males they know (heroes) and fearful and at a distance from unknown men (villains). It makes the female complicit and eliminates any potential interference from some of the only things that can overpower the ‘owner’ of the female. Statistically speaking, the most likely candidate to hurt, abuse or harass women is from men they know, not strangers. That’s the reality for woman and girls, it’s their fathers, brothers, boyfriends and husband who hurt them the most.
The original story understood that anyone vulnerable in any way, was at danger or risk of attack from anyone privileged in any way. The original accepts that girls were naturally curios and predicted that they would stray away from the path imposed by their guardians. There was no denial that females wanted to explore their sexuality. In addition, however, it teaches girls how to do this without hurting impressionable boys their age or inciting the forcefulness of an unrestrained man. It’s an important lesson that was deliberately omitted in its reproduction because the bourgeoisie women at the time had very clear-cut duties expected of them. They were supposed to be married off and procreate as soon as possible. There wasn’t any room to negotiate about the pursuit of girlish curiosities, attractions or love. The men who republished this story made sure to eliminate any moral ambiguity as to what a proper woman were to behave like.
Peasants and farmers, on the other hand, were not like this. There was an understanding that the girls would be doing what they wanted with or without their families blessing. Furthermore, as young girls were expected to work hard from a young age to support their families they needed to be trained to be tough. The original story did not condone what behaviour was wrong or right necessarily – it came in on an angle that suggested one should be wary of strangers and learn how to stand up for oneself. There was none of this ‘save your virginity’ business as there is now; there was no shame or victim-blaming as there is now; the focus of the lessons back then was not to protect the female from impending doom and spoilage but to be cautious when investigating their curious nature – sexual or otherwise.
Here is a video of the closest replica of the original oral story (it runs for about 11.27)
If you watch this you’ll start to see the messages. Little Red Riding Hood is depicted as a young female rather than as a little girl. At the start, she is admiring her own reflection in the water. This is normal for girls; they hit an age where they begin to realise they have some sexual appeal. They are struck by it – they are seduced and attracted by their own transformation into womanhood.
Notice the mention of bread and milk. This suggests that it is one of the earlier versions of the story. The later versions have more luxurious contents in the basket, such as cake, biscuits, butter and wine. Bread and milk is the staple food of lower class people.
You’ll see that she watches the wolf with fascination. This part of the story signifies that she is attracted to the wolf, as opposed to the wolf sniffing out and lingering for her. At some point in time, every girl will be attracted to someone. But she hides behind a tree so that he does not realise this. And this is the first lesson in the story. Because once a male realises a woman may be interested in him, he is naturally inclined to pursue her if he shares her attraction.
She quickly moves on, as if she never noticed him at all, and yet he follows. He learns where she is going and rushes to set up a trap, as some predators can and will do, in a subtle form or another.
Symbols carry strong abstract meanings and are often used in story-telling to explain a complicated concept. In this story there is the symbol of the spider and the web, with the girl breaking it. This could signify a number of things but I would suggest that it signifies a breaking of the veil i.e. the intentional loss of virginity.
Then it starts getting interesting. The wolf pretends he is the grandma. Really, what this means is, the wolf is pretending to be a friend, one of our heroes, and trick her. But the girl can see this. The girl likes this. The girl will have fun playing along with him. She likes to test her abilities as much as he enjoys pushing her boundaries. The cat warns her that she will be a slut if she does what the wolf says. She deliberately does what the wolf says. She doesn’t hesitate to drink the blood of her grandma. She tears into the meat of her grandma without another thought. She is not afraid of getting dirty. She’s having just as much fun. He tells her to undress and throw her clothes in the fire for she ‘won’t need them anymore’. She does as he asks because she wants to. She crawls into bed with him.
She implicates that she knows he might be something other than what he says he is. He eventually confesses his true desires. But wait, it’s all too much now. She doesn’t want to go any further than that. She doesn’t actually want the wolf to eat her; she merely wanted to test how far she could go just as he did, except now she’s recognised her limitation. She wanted to see how close she could get to the fire before she’s burnt. She just realised that during this little game, this playful courtship that he may actually hurt her to get what he wants because he has yet to reach what he desires. So she’s found herself in a tight situation, where she will need to use her wit to get out. She can’t trust on him being reasonable, the wolf has his heart set on having her and he won’t accept any sort of refusal. She awkwardly tries to get herself out of the situation. He ties a string to her leg to make sure she doesn’t leave. But she cleverly ties the string to a plum tree and he falls onto his knees in angst that he has lost her.
The plum signifies something as well. The plum symbolises a sort of promiscuity as most fruit of its liking do i.e. the apple (Adam and Eve). She could have ran back home. But she doesn’t; she is eating the plum and she is watching the wolf from a distance. She wants to see how he reacts to the loss of her. He is utterly forlorn. She enjoys watching this and measuring just how much he wanted her by his display of pain. She shows herself once more and he chases her. She is pleased that he continues to chase her until she closes her door. She learns just how much sexual appeal she has and just how much it can affect someone. It’s something nearly every girl does but doesn’t care to admit.
And that’s the story. In later versions, instead of warning girls about the dangers of predators, the story warns them that their own natural desires are dangerous and must be tamed (such as discovering and testing your sex appeal). What once was a bold peasant girl who can fend for herself is transformed into a fragile bourgeois who is helpless and culpable, if not stupid. In the original, Little Red Riding Hood meets the challenges of a swindling seducer; in later remakes, she is chastised for being innocently disposed to straying off the path and in some versions, raped and killed because she is guilty of not controlling her natural inclinations. Now that’s saying something isn’t it?
So what does this all mean? To me, this is something very important. In contemporary society, we are harbouring a male-fueled definition as to what a wholesome woman should be or look like and we perpetuate it regardless of our gender. While some feminists argue that woman in sexually gratifying places, such as media, the sex industry or the porn industry, are invented by males to satisfy their own sexual appetite; I would argue that it is not within male interest to have women sexually confident. It means they stray from their other duties, why would anyone want that when there’s so much more a woman can do than be fucked. A sexually confident woman understands just how disarming and persuasive her sexuality can be, it means she can compare the performances of each lover she’s had. And men are incredibly insecure about their sexual natural when they they compare themselves sexually with other men.
We teach the next generation it’s sometimes okay to victim-shamed, slut-shamed or value someone by the level of promiscuity but we forget why we do that. Instead of teaching the little girls how to deal with a difficult, sexually driven situation with a guy, we are just merely telling them to not even get there. And if you do, and you don’t have the wit to pull yourself out, well you probably deserved whatever you got. We can pinpoint, exactly when, through the Little Red Riding Hood story, what a woman was doing before contemporary patriarchy started dilly-dandling into the definition of womanhood.
As I write this I begin to realise that some girls are not so fortunate as to have both brains and beauty. Or so they believe. I am convinced that you can educate anyone in some sort of smart (everyone has their skill-set) and similarly, educate any woman to feel beautiful, which will radiate within and eventually convincing everyone of this fact. Even you Cathy Brennan. Call me a foolishly hopeful.
