The true story of Little Red Riding Hood

Most of the stories that both the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault left us were collected from those local legends and traditions that, throughout the Middle Ages, traveled through towns throughout Europe. Among them is Little Red Riding Hood. Many of them They reflect the psychology of the time, its beliefs, its myths…

All of them sometimes rooted in testimonies that, inevitably, were coated with a certain “magical realism.” One of the oldest and perhaps the most striking is found in the story of Little Red Riding Hood. This story is, according to experts, one that has undergone the most transformations since its origins.

The origin of these continued changes lay in the purpose of “sweetening” some images so that children could accept them with tranquility and confusion. However, with each change, we lost the original intentionality. Because every story contained a doctrine, a teaching that we all had to follow. And the one that Little Red Riding Hood taught us is worth taking into account…

With her clothing, Little Red Riding Hood symbolizes the color of lust, desire and menstrual blood.

Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm

Charles Perrault was the first to collect the story of Little Red Riding Hood in 1697. He had to include it in his collection of popular stories, aware that this story was one of the most unknown to the European population.

It had its origins in the north of the Alps and also presented some very crude images that were changed due to the need to make it reach, in a harmless way, the children’s audience. That was the first time that the story of this young woman with a red hood reached Europe.

In 1812 the Brothers Grimm also decided to include it in their collections.. To do this, they were based on the work of the German Ludwig Tieck entitled Life and death of little red riding hood (Leben und Tod des kleinen Rotkäppchen), which included, unlike Perraul’s story, the character of the hunter.

They removed all traces of erotic and bloody elements, and gave the story a happy ending. Because what would a children’s story be without its usual ending in which everything is resolved and happiness is complete? As we can already guess, the original story is very different from the one that children read in their books, so let’s get to know it now.

The story of the real Little Red Riding Hood

As we have already pointed out before, This story has its origins in an isolated region of the Alps. The purpose of the story is to warn us, to point out to us that there are things prohibited for our social community, elements that are prohibited.

The red cape and menstruation

In the legend, we have as the protagonist a teenager, a young woman who has just entered the world of adults, hence her red cape, symbol of menstruation.

This young woman receives an order from her family: she must cross a forest to bring bread and milk to her grandmother. As you can see, up to this point the variations with the original story are not too many, but we must interpret each gesture and each image. The protagonist girl is nothing more than the classic image of the angel of the home, the innocence that awakens to maturity and desire.

Her innocence, virginity and desire for a sexual encounter is symbolized by that striking red cape…

The forest and sexual awakening

In the book Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: Sex, Morality, And The Evolution Of A Fairy Taleby Catherine Orenstein, break down each symbol that links the story of Little Red Riding Hood. The forest is the danger, a risk zone for young people and that stands as a testas the rite of passage for a community, with which to demonstrate that its children have already passed into the world of adults.

Sigmund Freud indicated that Little Red Riding Hood intentionally deviated from the safe path to enter the darkest area of ​​the forest. That desire to seek danger symbolized female sexual awakening.

The wolf, the figure of the irrational

This forest has as its main risk the figure of the wolf. This animal symbolizes the masculine, the danger and also the irrational.. Something that our Little Red Riding Hood already knows and that she must face. The girl manages to cross the forest and happily enters her grandmother’s house, who receives her in her bed because she is sick. All very similar to our classic story, without a doubt. But here come the changes…

The grandmother tells the young woman to put away the milk and bread, and to eat the meat that is in the kitchen prepared for her. Little Red Riding Hood accesses it and devours it hungrily, leaving herself satisfied, and then obeys the following order from the old woman: she must take off her clothes piece by piece and burn them in the fire, and then lie down next to her on the bed.

The young woman, solicitous, agrees without a moment’s hesitation, without thinking about the strangeness of the situation. Because just when she is going to get into her bed, she discovers that it is her wolf who greets her with laughter, pointing out that the meat he has eaten is his grandmother’s. He has committed a great sin, cannibalism. Later, the wolf devours the young Little Red Riding Hood.

The transformation

The symbolism is implicit in each character, the wolf is that sexual and violent world. The old woman who is devoured by a young woman, thus renewing what is obsolete with what is new, at the same time as what is new, is presented as unwary and naive when committing one of the greatest sacrileges of humanity: cannibalism. As you can see, one of the most classic and beloved stories of our childhood actually contains a very dark side.

The story of Little Red Riding Hood is extremely rich in symbolism.

Classic stories according to psychoanalysis

The universe of fairy tales and folklore stories is inhabited, according to psychoanalysis, by moralizing metaphors and also by multiple archetypes.. In the case of Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, we have a confrontation between innocence and wildness, between the feminine and the masculine. However, there is something that transcends each element and that is sexual desire.

For Sigmund Freud, this story exemplified very well this confrontation between the forces of the unconscious:

The It was represented by the Wolf, by its desires and drives.Little Red Riding Hood’s mother represents the Superego, that moral entity endowed with judgment that tries to guide the Ego and repress the It. FinallyLittle Red Riding Hood would symbolize a self that is still immature and in the process of construction.who must still learn to identify dangers well.

Perrault’s Moral in Little Red Riding Hood

As we already said, Charles Perrault’s version of Little Red Riding Hood is not the first. The origins are older. There is even a Belgian poem that tells the story of a girl in a red cloak who encounters a wolf.

Now, this author decided to remove the cruelest elements from the original versions, such as cannibalism, with the aim of give a moral lesson to young girls. In this case, Perrault wanted to punish Little Red Riding Hood for talking to strangers, with the Wolf of the Forest being the representation of all the threats that a young woman can encounter.

In almost all of his stories he leaves very explicit morals and, for Little Red Riding Hood, he wrote the following:

With this passage, the moral lesson that he wanted to leave to young women who establish relationships with strangers becomes evident, emphasizing the sexual nature of these encounters. It is pertinent to mention that Perrault is also the author of other famous stories such as Thumbelina, Cinderella or the glass slipper either The sleeping beauty of the forest.

Stories from which interesting symbolism and moralizing messages can also be revealed.

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