CLASSIC’ FAIRY TALES: THE COMING OF AGE OF LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD LINDY STIEBEL Related to this view, one can look at what Gramsci has to say on folklore: Folklore must not be thought of as an oddity, something strange or picturesque, but as something very serious and to be taken seriously. Only thus will teaching be moreefficient and really bring about the birth of a new culture in the popular masses, that is to say, the gap between modern culture and popular culture or folklore will disappear. The pointis that we have not formedthat ancient world — it has formedus. We ingestedit as children whole, hadits values and consciousness imprinted on our minds as cultural absolutes long before we werein fact men and women. Wehavetaken the fairy tales of childhood with us into maturity, chewedbutstill lying in the stomach,as real identity. Between Snow-White and her heroic prince, our two greatfictions, we never did have much ofa chance. At some point, the Great Divide took place : they (the boys) dreamed of mounting the Greta Steed and buying Snow-White from the dwarfs; we(the girls) aspired to becomethat object of every necrophiliac’s lust — the innocent, victimised Sleeping Beauty, beauteous lump ofultimate, sleeping good. Despite ourselves, sometimes knowing, eterg, unable to do otherwise, we act out the roles we were taught, ‘Andrea Dworkin Woman Hating (1974) This article deals with an aspect ofpopular culture which hasa part to playin the socialization processes of many children both now andin times past. By socialization I broadly meanthe integration of young membersinto society and the reinforcement of norms and values which legitimize the socio- political systems of that society and which guarantee their continuity. The influenceoffairy tales is often presumed by its consumers and producersto be harmless or at least ‘innocent’. However, when one starts to examine the ideas/attitudes contained in somefairy tales and how these are modified subtly and continually to reflect dominant ideology,* then one can no longer hold such a view. Rather than being seen as mere escapism orfun, certain fairytales and the concepts that inform them start to take on a far more oe if not at times sinister, light, and correspondingly require serious study. gE 60 Critical Arts Vol 4 No 3 1987 Rather than see folklore as being merely “picturesque”, Gramsci suggests “One ought to studyit instead asa ‘concept of the world andoflife’ to a large extent animplicit one, ofa givenstrata of society (defined in termsof time and space) in opposition (this too, is mostly implicit, mechanical, objective) to the ‘official’ concepts of the world (or in a wider sense, those of the cultured sectors ofa historically determined society), which have followed each other in the courseofhistorical development’’.* Following from this, a link may be perceived between folklore and Gramsci’s ‘commonsense’ which he calls the folklore of philosophy — ‘commonsense’ being half way between folklore proper and philosophy. Gramsci’s observations on folklore are very useful in connection with those fairytales which havetheir rootsin oral folktales. Perhaps one can infer from Gramsci’s observations that these fairytales in the original form contained potentially subversive elements ‘in opposition to official concepts of the world’; elements which were however tamed or else transformed by those writers who rewrote the tales. Supporting this view Zipes maintains that in pre-capitalist folktales “the main characters and concerns of a monarchistic, patriarchal, and feudal society are presented, and the focusis on class struggle and competition for power amongthe aristocrats themselves and between the peasantry and aristocracy’’.° Power and oppression are the main themes of the tales, and peasants becamethe majorcarriers of such tales, in whichtheir aspirations are symbolically enacted. What we have thereforeis an imaginative portrayal of class conflict. Alternatively one might infer that some oral ' folktales contained reactionary, conservative elements which were furthér entrenched by writers such as the Brothers Grimm, and Hans Christian Andersen. . Critical Arts Vol 4 no 3 1987 61 A question some might ask is: so what? What relevance do fairy tales have in South Africa in 1985? Probably not much but where they are still read — and it appears amongcertain strata of South African society (white middle class and petit bourgeoisie) that the practice of reading fairytales still flourishes —their influence maystill be felt or at least work to some extent towards maintainingthe status quo: eg. the classicalfairytale usually supports upward mobility and the possibility of autonomy; individual effort is rewarded. The plots usually imply that by exercising thrift, obedience and patience one may aspire to a higher position in the hierarchy based on private property, wealth and power. Though bad kings may be dethroned, the basic social structure rarely is altered — benevolent, just rulers take their place and all continues as before. Now if one is correct in assuming that some of these values are internalised through the reading of such fairytales, then there is some significanceto be attachedto the fact that today in South Africa suchtales are being read. . To turn moreparticularly to classic fairy tales and their development : it is now generally agreed by most critics (notably August Nitschke) who have studied the emergence of the literary fairy tale in Europe that writers purposely took overthe oral folk tale and changedit into a story aboutvalues and manners so that children would becomecivilized according to the social code of that time. Fairy tales came to reproduce and promote the dominant ideology of the period in which they were written, while those with their originsin oral folk tales were adapted tofulfil that purpose. Zipes maintains ‘The writers of fairy tales for children acted ideologically by presenting their notions regarding social conditions and conflicts, and they interacted with each other and with past writers and storytellers of folklore in a public sphere.”® Thoughthe oral folk tale of the seventeenth century would have been heard by children of all classes, the literary fairy tale as it emerged in that same century recast the oral tales’ content to make it suitable for French court society and bourgeois salons. At this stage, French culture was promoting civilité for the rest of Europe; civilité was likewise proposed as a model of behaviour in fairy tales — the aim being to socialize children to meetdefinite behavioural standards at home and publicly. As has been pointed out by Denise Escarpit, the purpose of the tale from the beginning wasto instructin an amusing fashion, in order to make the lesson more appealing: ‘It was a utilitarian moralism which taught how to “act in a proper way”, thatis, to insert oneself into society docilely, but astutely without disrupting society and also without creating trouble for oneself.’’ Bettelheim, viewing fairy stories from a reductive psychoanalytical perspective, agrees on thesetales’ primarily pedagogical function: a ... more can be learned from [fairy tales] about the inner problems of human beings, and of the right (my italics) solutions to their predicamentsin a society than from any other type of story within a child’s comprehension. Since the child at every momentofhis life is exposed to the society in which he lives, he will certainly learn to cope with its conditions, provided his inner resources permit him to do so.® The term ‘right solutions’is significant: as long as the child behaves‘correctly’ ie. according to the dominantsocial codes within home andschool, then all is well. The social code, when applied to the female hero of a classical fairy story, tends to be particularly repressive — a trend which continued from the seventeenth century throughto the nineteenth century, and, where these tales are still read to children, up to this day. Tracing the developmentof Little Red Riding Hood as a fairy tale provides an interestingillustration of this though, of necessity in an article this length, the analysis will be suggestive rather than exhaustive. The first literary rendition of Little Red Riding Hood appeared in Charles Perrault’s Histoires ou contes du temps passé (published in 1697), Until recently it was thought that Perrault had not based Little Red Riding Hood on an oral folk tale but research has shownthatin fact he was familiar with sucha folk tale widely knownin France. It concerns little peasant girl who goes to visit her grandmother, carrying fresh baked bread and butter. She meets a werewolf who learns wheresheis going; the werewolf arrives at grandmother's house beforethe girl, kills the older woman anddisguises himself as her. The girl gets into bed with the disguised wolf, remarks on his hairy body and eventually discovers he means to eat her. Resourcefully she insists on first going outside to relieve herself. The werewolfis tricked into letting her do this and the girl runs awayafter tying her ‘leash’ round a tree. Perrault, a royal civil servant and significant figure in literary salons, radically altered this cautionary tale to makeit palatable to his bourgeois-aristocratic audience and to provide a model of behaviour for well brought up girls. The bravelittle peasantgirl of the oral tale who savesherself through her own resourcefulness and whoprovesherself capable of replacing her grandmotherie. of maturing, is transformedinto a helpless,gullible, if not silly, child. Guiltisn’t anissuein the originaltale : the peasant girl has a relaxed attitude toward her body and sexuality and more than meets the challenge of a would-be seducer. In Perrault’s tale, the little girl is punished because she is guilty of not suppressinghernatural sexuality. A specific moral lesson is taught, the wolf is victorious. Red Riding Hoodis devoured and no consolationis forthcoming. Critical Arts Vol 4 No 1 1987 ¥ 62 Critical Arts Vol 4.No 3 1987 63 Perrault’s depiction of a developing adolescent girl overwhelmed by her sexuality perhapshasits roots in a widespreadbeliefofthe time that womenin particular were linked to potentially uncontrollable natural instincts — a belief which found expression in witch hunts in the centuries prior to Perrault’s tale. The necessity to shelter innocent younggirls from such forces was obvious to Perrault — he soughtto civilize children by inhibiting them, hoping thereby to improve their minds and manners, Zipes suggests * childhood becameidentified as a state of natural innocence and potentially corruptible by the end of the seventeenth century, and the civilizing of children — social indoctrination through anxiety provoking effects and positive reinforcement — operated on alllevels in manners, speech, sex, literature, and play. Instincts were to be trained and controlled for their socio-political use value. The supervised rearingofchildren wasto lead to the hommecivilisé” —or,in Little Red Riding Hood'scase, thefemmecivilisée of upper class society characterised by her beauty, politeness, gracefulness, industry and, above all, her control. Her instinctual drives were to be thoroughlycloaked. Thatis the moral — conveyed bynegative example — in Little Red Riding Hood : younggirls whoare pretty, well bred and courteous must keep themselves in control or else they will be swallowed up bytheir desires, A properly groomedgirl was to learn to fear sex andfindit repulsive, as frightening and repugnant as a wolf. i This is not to suggest that Perrault and his associates had overtly dark and deviousplans to pervert the natural growth of children: Perrault’s stated aim wasto instruct in an amusing and moral manner. He maintained that the tales ‘contained a useful moral, and that the playful narrative surrounding them had been chosen only to allow the stories to penetrate the mind more pleasantly and in such a manner to instruct and amuse at the sametime’.!° Ina tale such as Little Red Riding Hood, Perrault was reproducing, and thereby promoting, the repressive moral and social codes ofhis time, codes which he apparently believed worthy of approval, and in his tales in general he provided a social manual by which youngchildren were expected to abide. According to Zipes, the Grimm brothers addedto theliterary ‘bourgeois- ification’, as he terms it, of oral tales as had Charles Perrault. They sought to incorporate the rich cultural tradition of the common people into the literature of the rising middle classes andto this end they spent their lives researching mythsand cistomsof the Germanpeople. They modified the oral tales they researched, however, to suit their conservative, bourgeois audience of adults readingto their correspondingly socialized children. Their collection of Children and Household Tales was originally published in 1812 and underwent numerouseditions during their own lifetimes — each time with numerousrevisions. Their 1819 edition they specifically termed an Erziehungs- buch (educational book) calculated to give pleasure and to instructthe child in a ‘pure’ and ‘truthful’ way: an aim aided by careful elimination of those passages deemed harmful to children. The result was a collection of tales whichplaced great emphasis onpassivity, industry and self-sacrifice for girls and on action, dominance and accumulation of property for boys: a socializing programme admirably supporting the nineteenth century German bourgeoisie. Whenit cameto revising Little Red Riding Hood, the Grimmshadto review even the earlier French haute bourgeois values for their strictly decent, upright audience.In Perrault’s 1697taleit isa ‘little country girl’!! who proves to be silly and gullible but by the 1812 version of the Grimmssheis a ‘small sweet maid’, delicate and the epitome of innocence. The instructionsshe is given in Perrault’s tale are brief and simple : ‘Go and see how your grandmotheris, becauseI heard she was notvery well, take her a cake andthis little pot of butter’. In the Grimmversionsheis explicitly told whatnotto do: ‘Come, Red Riding Hood, take this piece ofcake and bottle of wine and bring it to grandmother. Sheis sick and weak. This will nourish her. Be nice and good and give her my regards. Be orderly on your way and don’tveer from the path, otherwise you'll fall and break the glass. Then your sick grandmother will have nothing’. A later version addsto thelist of guidelines: ‘When you come to Grannie’s room,don’t forget to say “Good morning”, and don’t go around looking into every corner before saying so’. ‘I will do everythingall right,’ Little Red Riding Hood assures her mother.!? Small wonder that the notion of staying from the path to pick flowers appealed to herin preference to her ‘duty’! Again, as in Perrault’s tale, the message is clear —a girl must learn to fear her sexuality and unless she keeps to the straight and narrow path she will be devoured or overwhelmed byherdesire symbolised by the wolf. ee Sa Critical Arts Vol 4. No 3 1987 65 64 Critical Arts Vol 4 No 3 1987 Whatis interesting though is the ending of the Grimms’tale. Instead of the bleak fate meted outto Little Red Riding Hood by Perrault,thelittle girl and her grandmotherare freed by the sexually neutral hunter, possibly a father or brotherfigure. Ata later date, Red Riding Hoodagainvisits her grandmother after having been approached by another wolf in the forest — this time she is ‘on her guard’3, Together she and her grandmothertrap the wolf, he drowns and ‘Little Red Riding Hood went merrily home and no onedid her any harm.’ This ending is more promising, suggesting that her ‘experience has taughther notto tarry there [in the dark forest] but only because, for a girlstill struggling with the onset of sexuality, the time is too soon, The last phase of the story looks forward toa future when Red Riding Hood’s mother, and the mother of the child hearing the story, will no longer forbid a sojourn in the forest.'* Optimistic as the ending may seem, the happy endingis dependent on the absolute obedience and submission of the girl to the strictures of her mother/grandmother. Experimentation or deviation on the child’s part of any nature is discouraged. Whenone considers the pervasive influence’® that the Grimms’fairy tales have had on the socialization of generationsof children in Germany and other countries, such a limiting approach to the development of children is disturbing. Somerecent writers from West Germanyare starting to suggest that the norms for children’s behaviour advocated by the Grimm brothers —though ‘well intentioned’!? — have served to hinder rather than help children come to terms with their existence in this century, These writers maintain that authoritarian attitudes are conveyed in these tales, and they have begun to provide radical alternative versionsof the fairy tales of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, especially those of the Grimms. Their aim is to question the socialization processesof the older tales by proposing different ways and different alternatives. Instead of repressing children they seek to allow them to make their own choices, or at least to perceive that alternative choices to the traditional ones exist. Standard reading and rearing processes are questioned; a redirected socialization process in opposition to the conventional oneis forwarded in the reconceptualizedtales. In a book such as Marchen fiir tapfere Mddchen (Fairy Tales for Giris with Spunk 1978) written by O.F. Gmelin andillustrated by Doris Lerche, the conventional male domination in classical fairy tales is challenged by a strongly feminist perspective. Conditioned ideas of sexual roles and socialization are called into question. In their retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, entitled Little Red Cap, the opening sentence sets the tone: “There was once fearlessgirl .. .”!® Her spunkinessis illustrated when, though tricked by the wolf disguised as grandmother and swallowed by him, she cuts an escape hole in his stomach with a knife she had withher, thereby rescuing herself and her grandmother. ; The successful dissemination of these tales in West Germanyis notatall assured — given the fact that they question dominant values of society, conventional channels of distribution such as schools and libraries are unlikely to promote the stories widely. Nevertheless, the fact that their production has not lessened argues that a need for such radical tales does exist. At the very least, the socialization process suggested bythe tales of the brothers Grimm is starting to be questioned. Similarly, outside West Germanycertain writers have considered manyof the classical fairy tales to be too sexist and authoritarian, and therefore exerting an inhibiting effect on contemporary children living in the western world. The solutions posed for characters living in the semi-feudal patriarchal societies depicted in the classicalfairy tales are limited in view of immediate twentieth century issues. What manywriters of children’s tales now try to createin these tales are imaginary projections of possibilities for non-alienating living conditions, Various movements of the 1960s were instrumental in fuelling such a hope — the American civil rights movement, anti-war protests, minority groups’ struggles, the rise of feminism in America, England and Europe. The struggle towards a better future is important, that waylies liberation: ‘. . . the fairy tale cannot be liberating ultimately unless it projects ona conscious,literary, and philosophical level the objectification of home as real democracy under non-alienating conditions. This does not mean that the liberating fairy tale must have a moral, doctrinaire resolution, butthat, to be liberating, it must reflect a process ofstruggle againstall types of suppression and authoritarianism andposit various possibilities for the concrete realization of utopia,’!? There seem to be two major alternatives for writers reconceptualizing classical fairy tales. In the case where writers assumetheir readers are familiar with the old tales, they may retain the original characters and setting but rearrange the action and patterns ofsymbols in order to compel the reader to consider alternative modes of behaviour and thought. The reader is thereby liberated from the standard reading and guided to consider the negative aspects of the old form through their replacements. A second option is to insert contemporary references into the traditional plotline, a narative strategy calculated to engage the child’s interest and make the tale more obviously immediately relevant to the child’s situation. It is hoped that the reader will be jarred out ofa complacent attitudeto the tales and encouraged to see the issues treated in a more collective and democratic light.” In response to a need to countervaluescarried in traditionalfairy tales, the Merseyside Women’s Liberation Movement in Liverpool, has rewritten several old favourites, among them Little Red Riding Hood. They hold that the Critical Arts Vol 4 No 3 1987 67 66 Critical Artz Vol 4 No 3 1987 original tales encourage aggression in their heroes and a submissive nurturing of this aggression by their female protagonists, and by implication the assumption that domination and submissionare the natural bases of human relationships. Their version of Little Red Riding Hood has a timbermill town as its setting andthe protagonist, shy Nadia, learns to overcomeherfearof the woods. She doesso sufficiently well to be able to kill the wolf, thereby saving her grandmother. She uses the wolf’s fur to line her cloak and daily gainsin courage, exploring deeper and deeperinto the woods. The happy endingis not a closed one; it marks the beginning of actual developmentfor the child. A very different, though possibly equally emancipatory, versionof Little Red Riding Hoodis that written by Tomi Ungerer:his tale is anarchistic and a send-upofthe well knowntale. Now Red Riding Hoodis forthright and sassy. She has a nasty grandmother whosereputationis worse than the classy wolf’s. The upshotofit all is that the wolf overcomes Red Riding Hood’s doubts about his tongue and jowls, they marry and live happily ever after. Sexual taboos are overthrown, a mature sexual relz.tionship free of the super-ego mother and grandmotheris shown, the wolf and his wife win autonomy anda disregard for old inhibiting rumours, On the whole, the post-1945 versions of Little Red Riding Hoodcriticize the traditional view ofthegirl as being sweet, innocent and helpless, and the wolf as a frightening predator. Further examples ofsuchtales are Catherine Storr’s Little Polly Riding Hood in which the bumbling wolf uses the old tale as a manual to catch the girl but he is outwitted by the far smarter child; Iring Fetscher’s Little Redhead and the Wolf which gives a mock-psychological account of the story and Philippe Dumas and Boris Moissard’s Little Acqua Riding Hoodset in Paris and which involves the wolf’s grandnephew being freed from the Jardin des Plantes by Little Red Riding Hood’s granddaughter! These experimental fairy tales shift the perspective and meaning of socialization through reading.”! Through the changeinsocial relations which they show, a matching changein social relations in the real worldis eagerly anticipated. Some might ask: when faced with radicalrevisions offairy tales, do children like new tales? Do they read them, andif so whateffect do they have on them? Thisis difficult to assess but Zipes suggests that children seem to dislike changes madeto the oldtales; they find alternatives to the familiar pattern disturbing. Yetit is this very disturbance that is desirable for with it comes questioning of undesirable social relations and restrictive values promoted in certain tales. And with this questioning comes development of ideas and a liberating exploration of options. It seems though that at the moment the experimental tales are only really circulated in the forward looking circles which generate them. What is required in order for the liberating potentialof these tales to be felt more widely is a progressiveshift in society itself. 68 Critical Arts Vol 4 No 3. 1987 Notes 1 a l 18 19 20 2 , and References The term ‘classic’ as in ‘classical’ or ‘classic’ fairy tales is one that is used by Zipes and others to denote thosefairy tales which havetheir rootsin oral folktales, andstill survive though perhapsaltered, to be read in contemporary times. Dworkin, A. 1974: Woman Hating, Dutton, New York. For the purposes ofthis article, 1 am using Terry Eagleton’s definition of dominant ideology as being “constituted by a relatively coherent set of ‘discourses’ of values, representations and beliefs which, realised in certain material apparatuses and related to the structures of material production, so reflect the experiential relations of individual subjects to their social conditionsas to guarantee these misperceptionsofthe‘real’ which contribute to the reproduction of the dominantsocial relations”’. Criticism and Ideology, Verso, London, 1982, p54. Gramsci, A. 1983; “National-Popular Literature, The Popular Novel, and Observations on Folklore” in Mattelart, A and Siegelaub, S. (eds.); Communication and Class Struggle. 2. Liberation, Socialism. IMMRC,Bagnolet, pp74-75. Zipes, J. 1983: Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion. Heinemann, London, p8. Ibid, p3. Ibid, p9 Bettleheim, B. 1976: The Uses of Enchantment: the Meaning and Importanceof Fairy Tales. Thames and Hudson, London,p5. Zipes, op cit p23. Contes de Perrault, edited by G Rougier. Quotes by Zipes, op cit p16. Perrault's Fairy Tales. Translated by A Carter, Jonathan Cape, London, 1973, p34. Grimm's Fairy tales. Translated by V Varecha, Cathay Books, London, 1982, p52. Ibid, p57. Ibid. Rabkin, E. 1976: The Fantastic in Literature. Princeton University Press, New Jersey, pp58-59. The Grimms’ collection of fairy tales has been the second most popular and widely distributed book in Germany for over a century. The ostensible intention of the Grimms in collecting folktales was the preservation of German culture: an endeavour to produce an integrated national culture and to foster a strong national bourgeoisie. Lerche and Gmelin. 1978: Marchen fiir Tapfere Madchen. Giesson, Schlot, p16. Zipes op cit. p178. Two problemsto raise about the ‘liberating’ potential of radical fairy tales: i) ii) Thesestories are more likely to be read to white Western bourgeois,petit bourgeois or upper classchiidren than to working class children — the very ones perhapsthat need to be conscientized and, if oneis to use the term at all ‘liberated’. Here, the takeover of somefairytales from their peasant origins by bourgeois writers is interesting. In their revised form, the stories put forward models of bourgeois behaviour with a possible hegemonic function in mind, directed towards both middleclass and workingclass children — presumingthe latter weretold these tales. the writers of experimental versions of the old fairytales, such as Little Red Riding Hood, by suggesting that these new tales may havea liberating effect on their young readers, should perhaps stress more strongly the fact that thereis no ideology-free zoneorsite of struggle that is ideologically uninformed into which these children may emerge. By reading for example, a radical version of Little Red Riding Hood which challenges ¢ominant moral and social valuesof a particular period, certain white middle class children may be stimulated to perceive the tale’s issues rather differently. However, that is only one small part of their larger environmentof school, home, church. Zipes, op cit. p190.