Little Red Riding Hood

"**Little Red Riding Hood**" (or "**Little Red Cap**") is a French fairy tale for young children about a young girl and a wolf. The story comes from a folktale which means that it was a *spoken* story for a long time before it was a written story. It was first written down in the late 1600s, by Charles Perrault. The best-known version (the way the story is told) is '''' by the Brothers Grimm and dates from the 19th century (1800s).

## Story 
The most famous version of the story is the one written by the Brothers Grimm in the 19th century. The Brothers Grimm listened to many traditional stories from old people and wrote them into a book. They did not originally mean for their book to be read as children's stories; they were writing down German folklore for scholars to read. But their book became famous as a book of children's stories anyway.

A girl has been given a red cap (or cloak and hood) to wear. Her mother sends her to take food to her sick grandmother. The mother tells her she must not stop on the way. A wolf sees the girl walking through the woods and makes a plan to eat her. The wolf politely asks the girl where she is going. The girl answers him, because he seems friendly. The wolf tells the girl to pick some flowers for her grandmother. While she is picking flowers, the wolf goes to grandmother's house and eats her. He puts on the grandmother's night-cap and gets into her bed. When the girl arrives at her grandmother's house, she gets into bed with the wolf.

In the Perrault version, the girl is surprised to see what her "grandmother" looks like without her clothes. "What big eyes you have!" she cries. "The better to see you with!" the wolf responds. The dialogue continues, with the child remarking upon other body parts until she notes the wolf's big teeth. "What big teeth you have!" she cries. "The better to eat you with!" the wolf responds.

The wolf leaps upon the child and eats the girl. In the Grimms' version, a woodcutter (lumberjack) comes and cuts open the wolf's body. He saves the grandmother and the girl who are still alive in the wolf's stomach. Then, stones are put in the wolf's body to kill the wolf.

## History of the story 
The story of *Little Red Riding Hood* seems to have been told for centuries in different countries, under different names.
Anthropologist Dr. Jamie Tehrani said some versions of *Little Red Riding Hood* are 3000 years old. One of Aesop's Fables is a version of *Little Red Riding Hood*, according to Tehrani. There is also a story from China which is like this, called *The Grandmother Tiger*. There are also versions of the story from the Middle East and Africa. Perrault's version of the tale is the original printed version, but it is likely based on an older oral tradition. It is uncertain if Perrault knew a folk tale from the south of France about a girl who cleverly escapes a werewolf occupying her grandmother's bed.

Perrault wanted to make a strong point about wise and foolish behaviour. He wanted to show that a beautiful young woman was in danger of having men with bad morals try to trick her into wrong behaviour.

### Other versions
The story has been changed many times in the centuries following its publication. It is a little different from the way that the Brothers Grimm tell it. In their version, a huntsman slays the child-devouring wolf. He then frees the heroine from the animal's stomach.

In some modern versions of the story, especially versions for very young children, the grandmother does not die. She hides in the closet or cupboard instead.

### Telling the story for young children 
**Little Red Riding Hood** often appears as a picture book or in collections of stories for very young children.

An important part of the story is the questions and answers. In the story, the wolf knocks at the grandmother's door.
The story goes:
:"Knock, knock!"
:"Who's there?"
:"Little Red Riding Hood!"
:"Lift up the latch and walk in!"

The second section of repeating parts of the story happens when Red Riding Hood sees the wolf in her grandmother's bed.
:Red Riding Hood says "What big eyes you have!" and the wolf replies "The better to see you with!"
:Red Riding Hood says "What big ears you have!" and the wolf replies "The better to hear you with!"
:Red Riding Hood says "What big teeth you have!" and the wolf replies "The better to eat you with!"

These questions and answers also appear in older versions, for example Perrault's. In most of these stories, the young one escapes by cunning (cleverness). One story is the Russian folktale *Peter and the Wolf*. The Brothers Grimm told the story of the *Little Kids and the Wolf*. Another story like this is *The Three Little Pigs*, first published by James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps.

## Meanings 
As with many fairy tales, hidden messages can be found in *Little Red Riding Hood*. People have very different *interpretations* (ways of understanding the hidden meanings). There are two well-known ways that the story of *Little Red Riding Hood* can be interpreted.

The first type of interpretation is about morality. It is about what is right and what is wrong.

* The easiest message for children to understand is that it can be  to trust strangers.
* A more adult interpretation is about sexuality. Some people think that the story of the girl being "eaten" is really a symbol for rape. Susan Brownmiller wrote a book about it, called *Against Our Will*. Some of the other versions of the story seem to be more about rape than the way that the Brothers Grimm wrote it, which was for children.
* Charles Perrault makes his meaning quite clear. At the end of the story he writes:

:*"From this story one learns that children, especially young lasses, pretty, courteous and well-bred, do very wrong to listen to strangers.... all wolves are not of the same sort.... there is one kind [that is not] noisy, nor hateful, nor angry, but tame, obliging and gentle, following the young maids in the streets, even into their homes. Alas! .... these gentle wolves are ... the most dangerous!"*
:Some scholars say Perrault was not talking about rape but about sexual morality. At the time, there was an expression in French that is "seen the wolf" in English. If a girl had sex and was no longer a virgin, people would say she had "seen the wolf." This bears a resemblance to the Norse Legend of the wolf *Skoll* (or Fenrir) who swallows the sun at Ragnarök.
* Another interpretation is that the tale is about the season of spring, or the month of May, escaping the winter. The story could be seen as a description of the May Queen ritual that represents the coming of Spring, with the crown of flowers replaced by the red hood.

## Adaptations 
### Other re-tellings 
François Adrien Boieldieu (1775 - 1834) made an opera from the story. The opera is called *Le petit chaperon rouge*. Its first performance was in Paris, in the year 1818.

In 1927, Sir Compton MacKenzie used Little Red Riding Hood as the central character of a novel for children "Santa Claus in Summer". Red Riding Hood, in this re-telling, is the daughter of a highway man called Riding Hood.

The story has been adapted to various media. Tex Avery made a cartoon out of it, Red Hot Riding Hood. He adapted the story to be more appealing to adults. Little Red Riding Hood works at a striptease club. The wolf, dressed in a suit, goes after the stripper (a stripper is a person who is paid to take off his or her clothes in public).

Roald Dahl re-told the story in a funny poem about Little Red Riding Hood. It is in his collection *Revolting Rhymes*.

*Lon Po Po* is an ancient Chinese version of *Little Red Riding Hood* which won the 1990 Randolph Caldecott Medal for its watercolour and pastel illustrations by Young.

### Art 
Many paintings have been done of *Little Red Riding Hood*. Artists who have painted pictures of this story are George Frederick Watts, Samuel Albrecht Anker, and François Richard Fleury.

## Other articles
* Big Bad Wolf

## References 
* Jack Zipes, ed. (2000) *The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales*. Oxford University Press, pp.&nbsp;302–3.

## Other websites 
* Fairyland Little Red Riding Hood. 
* SurLaLune Fairy Tale Pages: The Little Red Riding Hood story. 
** meanings 
* Grimm's version of Little Red Riding Hood. 
* Different versions of Little Red Riding Hood. 
* Another collection of different versions of Little Red Riding Hood.
* Abridged Version of Little Red Riding Hood. 
*  Little Red Riding Hood, audio version