I don't think little good girls should...

[innerbrat]

Mother said, "Straight ahead;"
Not to delay or be misled.
I should have heeded her advice,
But he seemed so nice.
I Know Things Now from Into the Woods
by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine
The analogy in Little Red Riding Hood is so universally well known that it's impossible to find a take on it that isn't loaded with the implications: Girl talks to

Comments

[pippaalice]

This is a really fantastic post!

[innerbrat]

Thanks!

There was actually lots more I wanted to ramble about, but I decided to stay focused - by my standards.

[sumerianhaze]

>Takes on the Red Riding Hood story seem to be eternally tied up in the virgin/whore dichotomy: the little girl bringing bread to Grandmother's house is a virgin, and the choices she makes, the amount of agency she's given, the way she's dressed/described by the author in question, push her over to the 'whore' end of the scale.

Part of the problem, as I see it, is that women are placed on this scale in the first place. As soon as people stop treating other people as people, then the world is up to its ears in the dark brown stuff.

I suspect there is also an element of people only taking on what they feel they can handle in trying to right a situation - and the victim is so much easier, as she's a) not a nasty, scary criminal, and b) there.

[innerbrat]

Part of the problem, as I see it, is that women are placed on this scale in the first place
I think that is the problem. It's a scale that's everywhere in all media, and it seems to be how fictional women are created.

[jezrana]

Something I read about a while ago, that I hadn't heard about before and found really interesting:

"In some versions, the wolf eats the girl after she gets into bed with him, and the story ends there. In others, she sees through his disguise and tries to escape, complaining to her "grandmother" that she needs to defecate and would not wish to do so in the bed. The wolf reluctantly lets her go, tied to a piece of string so she does not get away. However, the girl slips the string over something else and runs off." (from Wikipedia, as I don't have any better sources on hand this early)

So there's a version in which Red saves herself without any heroic woodsman, and without becoming a bitch, but it's one of the more obscure versions that doesn't get told as often, and our culture seems much more fond of the heroic man coming to save the girl.

[pmoodie]

Excellent post. Once again, you make me consider somehting that I hadn't previously given much thought to.

I'd always thought of the Little Red Riding Hood story as more of a warning tale about the dangers of non-conformity. If you stray from "the path", you're doomed. Of course you're right though, it's more explicitly aimed at women, and the message is clear - there are predators out here and if you stray, you can expect to be victimised.

I like Neil Jordan's take on it in The Company of Wolves. There, the wolf (or werewolf) represents a kind of sexual awakening rather than predation, and "straying from the path" really just means choosing freedom from sexual repression. At the end of that, Rosalie (the films Little Red) ends up being in control and the wolf turns out to be rather a pathetic figure. But then, the whole thing is part of her dream, so I'm not sure what spin that puts on things.

[wieselkind]

Not Neil Jordan's take, but Angela Carter's. The film is based on her short stories around the theme of Red Riding hood.

In fact she has a whole volume of fairy tales. 'The Bloody Chamber'

[pmoodie]

Yes, excellent point! I'm betraying myself as an illiterate film-geek! LOL

[tyrell]

Love that film lots. And yes, Angela Carter, but different direction and cinematography would have given a very different end result.

Damn, must go and watch it again.

I may be adding nothing of value to the conversation here.

[almightyhat]

Red's one of the characters I like most in Into the Woods, and that's saying a lot because my god, I love Into the Woods. She questions things, from her mother's instructions ("Still, I suppose one small delay-- Granny might like a fresh bouquet") to... well, the entire concept of Cinderella (with that beautifully deadpan, "... You can talk to birds?") to the morality of killing the giant who's been rampaging about. She is presented as trusting the wrong people, that's true-- the Baker's intentions are relatively pure (he only wants her cloak so he can have a child, and means the girl herself no harm) although he comes off as the biggest goddamn weirdo ever, while the wolf, who comes off as quite charming (and at least in the origninal version, is doublecast using the actor who plays Prince Charming himself), gets a complete itenerary of where Red is going and how to get there.But she learns. Bad things happen, and she learns. The mouth of a wolf's not the end of the world. The prettier the flower, the farther from the path.

Re: I may be adding nothing of value to the conversation here.

[innerbrat]

Thank you very much for that analysis of Into the Woods. I've only seen it once, and I needed someone who knew it better to provide the information.

Re: I may be adding nothing of value to the conversation here.

[mercuriazs]

Thank you for making such a thought-out and generally awesome comment! The Red Riding Hood in Into the Woods is by far my favorite, for all the reasons you described-- and I like your reading of the lesson, too. If I ever have children, I'm rewriting that version for them to emphasize that while you can talk to strangers, you absolutely don't have to be nice to them if they give you the creeps. >.>

But anyway, Red's one of my favorites in ItW as well. I love her feistiness! And, and the way that she learns, as you said, and eeeven the way she becomes ever so slightly jaded about this whole fairy tale world she's living in.