How Does One Combat a Big Bad Wolf?

Little Red Riding Hood, or LRRH for short, is an extremely well-known and overdone story ranging from folktales filled with moral lessons and advice to Blue Yonder Films' Hoodwinked! These stories all share common elements, and generally, common characters. The protagonist, a young girl, must deliver some sort of edible goods to her grandmother; on the way she must deal with, in some fashion, an intelligent wolf. Sometimes the young girl, or Red, finds herself eaten, and other times she bests the wolf. These innumerable versions vary depending on whether there is an intended lesson or moral to be taught, and the respective audience the story is directed towards. The Grimm Brothers, for instance, retell LRRH as a folktale wherein Red, who overcomes the Wolf, is able to live happily following her salvation from imminent digestion. Red and her grandmother are saved, and the villainous protagonist, the Wolf, is destroyed. The Grimm Brothers successfully retell LRRH as a children's tale through use of two main elements: the tone of the story and the way in which the story ends.

When analyzing more contemporary retellings of LRRH, one can easily misjudge the intended audience of the text. The story is, after all, intended solely for children, correct? Does each retelling of LRRH teach some sort of moral lesson wherein the intended, youthful audiences can grow morally? The earliest written telling of LRRH, recorded by Perrault, did not follow the aforementioned premise, and neither do all the other retellings. One such example of a LRRH story intended for adults, and lacking an intended moral lesson, is Angela Carter's The Werewolf. Following Zohar Shavit's comparative analyses of the intended audiences of Perrault and the Grimm Brothers, Carter's interpretation lacks the necessary elements of a children story. What do Carter's tone and ending say about the audience to whom she directs her work?

The Werewolf is tonally dark. The sentences are short and concise with dark overtones. When highlighting the setting, Carter notes that "it is a northern country; they have cold weather, they have cold hearts" (1). The weather in this story is "winter and cold" (1). When reading this work one almost feels as if they are reading some Noir text. The narration is dark, cold, and concise. These tonal characteristics distinguish Carter's work from the naivete of the Grimm Brother's dual audience, and the ironic nature of Perrault's dual audience. Whereas the Grimm Brothers and Perrault sought to create works for children and literary elites, Carter seems to present literature that wholly overlooks the innocent, naive nature of children.

Carter, while distancing her work from both Grimm and Perrault in terms of tone, she does share a commonality of audience with Perrault. Shavit acknowledges that in Perrault's time there was no set distinction between child and adult; Shavit reminds the reader that "the notion that adults are duty-bound to guide their children and that they are responsible for the latter did not yet exist in Perrault's time" (332). Carter directs her work at adults, which, in Perrault's time, all peoples, children and adults alike, would be considered.

Concerning the ending, Carter finds more similarity with the Grimm Brother's morally upright telling of LRRH than Perrault's. Although Carter does not have a lesson-enriched happy ending, she does allow for Red to survive and to, after killing her witch-grandmother, "liv[e] in her grandmother's house ... [where] she prospered" (2). Carter, by combining the characters of the Wolf and the Grandmother, creates a story wherein Red must confront her own grandmother; if she falters in doing this, she will certainly die. Red, after overcoming and, indirectly, killing her grandmother, she prospers, but she is never described as happy. Perrault, in a similar fashion, ends his tale with the death of both Red and the Grandmother. Perhaps it is safe to say that when the Grandmother is killed in Carter's story, a piece of Red dies with her? Would any adult in Perrault's time consider reading a story to their children about a young girl killing her own grandmother? That is hard to say. One major difference between these two stories' endings, however, is the role of innocence. In Perrault's tale, Red dies because she is an innocent child; Carter's Red, whose mother, after giving her a knife, reminds her that she "knows how to use it" (1), is able to fight off the Wolf because she is not innocent.

Both of these stories serve as a drastic contrast to the Grimm Brothers', wherein Red and the grandmother both escape the Wolf's stomach after being consumed. Unlike the previously mentioned stories, the Grimm Brothers' allow for Red to survive; her survival guarantees a moral lesson for the children hearing the story.

Through Shovit's observations concerning tone and story endings, one can easily assert, through comparison with Perrault's and the Grimm Brothers' LRRH tales, that Angela Carter's The Werewolf is intended for an audience of Shovit's "literary elite."

The Desired Woman

The Desired Woman

Throughout the assigned readings, including both fairy tales and proto-fairy tales, the role of the woman has been somewhat consistent. The female, regardless of her status, whether  strictly human or supernatural, has been a participant in a hunt. This usage of hunt is not specific to the questing for animals with intention to kill, but is instead more closely linked to the more sexually charged, medieval understanding of the hunt; lustful desire fuels these stories. These desires are found through a man's relentless, sexually-driven pursuit of a woman, as is seen in The Song of Wandering Aengus and Philomela's travail in Metamorphoses, or the woman's relentless pursuit of some form of companionship, as one reads in Ardour and Lanval.

Tereus's assault on Philomela

The woman as prey is best seen in Ovid's Metamorphoses through the plight and destruction of Philomela. Consider the actions that Tereus takes against her as a predator against its prey. His instinctual desires, mirroring that of a hungering beast, drives him to violate his sister-in-law and, as a means of protecting himself and silencing her, cut out her tongue. These brutal acts of sexual aggression and violent abuse allow for a clear mirroring of the bestial desires of man as predator. Some millennia later, William Butler Yeats, in his short tale The Song of Wandering Aengus, further solidifies Ovid's earlier observations; man is a thorough predator. This story, although lacking in the grotesque and vengeful, proves the narrator to be driven only by his desires: hunger and lust. The narrator in this story describes his desire for sustenance by noting that he had a fire "in [his] head" (3). As he catches his meal, which is, unbeknownst to him, a fay of some sort, he prepares his cooking-fire, only to be distracted by the beautiful young woman the fish has become. His hunger is immediately forgotten as he is overcome with passion; his new desire is only for his new prey. His questing is in vain, yet he continues in pursuit of his goal. This hunter, now old and graying, ever strong in his desires notes that "though I am old with wandering / Through hollow lands and hilly lands, / I will find out where she has gone, / And kiss her lips and take her hands" (16-20). Much like Tereus's lustful desires and subsequent quest for satisfaction in Philomela, Yeat's narrator strives towards his achievement in his desired woman.

Whereas Philomela and Yeat's fish-fay find themselves being hunted, Lanval's fairy-maiden and Ardour find themselves striving, or hunting, for their own desired companionship. In Marie de France's Lanval, the knight of the same name is considered just and worthy of honor, yet he receives none. This forced humility may be the source of the fay-maiden's favor and love, but there is not much specific evidence for or against that conjecture. What can be observed, however, is that this maiden seeks companionship; she seeks out, or hunts for, Lanval, as is read when her servants state "'Lord Lanval, the lady we owe duty--  / A lady of valor, wisdom, beauty-- / It's for you our lady has sent / Us. Now come along with us, do! (3). This fay-maiden seeks Lanval as her companion; her companionship is something he makes use of often. After Lanval breaks his promise and is near his death-sentencing, this supernatural lover, against her previous claim of absolute abandonment, seeks out and saves Lanval from King Arthur's sword of justice. Her desire is for Lanval, whom she pursues relentlessly. Ultimately, this pursuit leads Lanval to the fay-maiden's realm: Avalon.

Much like the fay's hunt for Lanval, Ardour, the protagonist of Jonathon Keat's Ardour, seeks out an unknown companionship. Ardour, as the personification and physical embodiment of Winter, seeks, year after year, only one goal: love. She is wholly unsure of what this word means and how she can find fulfillment, but understands that, 

it had begun as something she'd seen, who knew when, deep in the woods where she'd lived for all eternity: A girl like her--breasts as steep as snow peaks beneath a blizzard of hair--came hand-in-hand with a man into an open meadow, where they embraced, and, it seemed, drew into a single skin. Then there were his words, her tears. A rupture, a quiver. They cradled, as if each were the other's wound. (9)

Year after year, Ardour finds herself unable to fulfill her desires. That is, until she discovers and finds warmth in the touch and love of her prey, the local prince. Through him, her prey, she has found satisfaction and fulfillment; her hunt is over. Her desires, much like those of the fay-maiden, have been sated. 

Snegurochka: the basis for Keats's Ardour

Through the fairy and folk tales, women find themselves ensnared within the complex web of predatory struggle. Some women, earthly in origin, flee the pursuit of their predators; other, however, usually being supernatural in origin, choose, instead, to prey upon their potential companions. The prey of women, however, do not find themselves to be mutilated or destroyed. Are men truly more bestial?