Difference Between Fairy Hood And Little Red Riding Hood

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In response to social change, fairy tales have been reinterpreted, altered, and edited; in the process, phrasing and plot arcs have shifted to fit the ideological agendas of each period. This can be seen through a comparison of Charles Perrault and the Brother’s Grimm’s distinctly different versions of “Little Red Riding Hood”. Perrault’s interpretation contains an underlying sexual message, discernable through the language used in the conversation between the girl and the wolf, which later becomes explicit in the closing “moral” of the tale. By comparison, the Grimm’s watered their version down for the consumption of children now regarded as “innocent”. This variation between the overall messages of the two versions demonstrates the emergence …show more content…

Perrault wrote his collection of fairy tales during the 17th century in which there came a revolution in the way people treated their offspring. Previously, children were considered miniature adults and therefore did not have any kind of media geared towards them. As Zohar Shavit wrote in his book Poetics of Children’s Literature, “although children were acquainted with fairy tales, fairy tales were not initially considered as especially intended for them” . In the early 1700’s the idea of childhood erupted as members of higher society began to view their children as sources of amusement and not only sought after the written tales for pleasure the of those children but also for themselves. The “ambiguous nature of [his] text […] enabled Perrault to use the status of fairy tales as text for children, addressing them officially to children as the main consumers, while at the same time using the notion of the child as a source of amusement to allow adults (mainly highbrows) to enjoy the text too.” In this way Perrault’s Little Red Riding Hood is multilayered, the general plot easily grasped by children and the underlying storyline filled with more mature

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