Transformation of Little Red Riding Hood Throughout the Years

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Recommended: Comparing versions of little red riding hood

The world has always had a fascination with short fairy tales but specifically, Little Red Riding Hood. The little girl in the red hood has meant a variety of things to many different people. Earlier versions of the story were told for more mature, adult audiences because they contained hidden messages of dark and sexually oriented plots. As more stories were written and published, the versions drastically changed throughout the years. The story then became so popular that Walt Disney decided to animate it in 1922 for younger audiences to view. (Orenstein, 2002). Right now, “Barnes and Noble sells more than one hundred different editions, including one diagrammed in American Sign Language.” (Orenstein, 2002, p.3) Throughout the 20th century, a new kind of Little Red Riding Hood character has developed.
Before any type of written version of Little Red Riding Hood had ever been released, some psychoanalytical folklorists have mentioned that there was an oral version, with more of a French background, in which the little girl featured in the story did not even wear a red hood, The Grandmother. There are also many critics that insist that there was no such thing as an oral version and the story written by Charles Parrault in 1697 was the first and original version of Little Red Riding Hood.
In this controversial oral version of The Grandmother, a young girl who is carrying a loaf of bread and some milk comes in contact with a wolf while on her way to her grandmother’s house. The wolf distracts the young girl while he ventures off to the grandmother’s house, making sure to get there before the little girl. After eating the grandmother, the wolf “puts some of the grandmother’s flesh in a cupboard and a cup of her blood on...

... middle of paper ...

...heir own.
As one might be able to see, the short story of Little Red Riding Hood has changed with the times. The moral of this short story seems to have faded away over the years and now it seems to be more of a story just for entertainment. It may be that people wanted to add a new twist to this long told story and it just happened to be that people changed the whole idea of the original story to something more entertaining for the people in that generation and while doing that, the original moral was completely demolished.

Works Cited

http://reconstruction.eserver.org/022/cannibal/cannibalbib.html

Dundes, Alan. "Interpreting Little Red Ridinghood Psychoanalytically." The Brothers Grimm and Folktale. James M. McGlathery, ed. Chicago: University of Illinois, 1991.

Zipes, Jack. The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Ridinghood. New York: Routledge, 1993.

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