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."