Little Red Riding Hood Flashcards
What are universal concepts in the retellings of Little Red Riding Hood?
- for adults and kids
- talking about encounters between predator and prey, human interactions that foreground innocence and seduction
- a story about appetite
- primal hunger and sexual desire
- all retellings feature a child as either a trickster or victim
What is a summary of “The Story of Grandmother”?
- the girl eats granny’s flesh and blood thinking it’s meat and wine
- she asks to leave the bed and go out to pee/go outside
- the wolf said yes but tied a rope to her leg
- she tied it to a tree once she got outside and escaped
What is a summary of “The False Grandmother” by Calvino?
- she had to ask things to let her pass, they did in exchange for goods she had with her
- a river
- a gate
- grandma lowered a rope for the girl to use to get into the house
- grandma was actually an ogress who ate grandma except for her teeth and ears
- the girl doesn’t notice she’s not her grandma
- she eventually notices when in bed and asks to go out
- she’s tied by rope and lowered into the barn, she ties the rope around a goat instead and runs away
- the ogress is washed away by the river
What is a summary of “Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf” by Roald Dahl?
- wolf was hungry and ate grandma
- she wasn’t enough so he disguised himself and waited for the girl
- she kills him with a gun
- instead of the red hood she wears a wolf fur coat from then on
What story did Dahl write an interpretation of to follow up his version of Little Red Riding Hood?
the three little pigs, Red Riding Hood was called to shoot this wolf too
What is a summary of “The Tale of the Tiger Woman” from Taipei/Taiwan?
- a tiger woman claimed to be two kids’ grandma and invited them into her cave
- she made them dinner, and ate the brother that night
- the girl woke up to eating noises and was handed a finger when she asked for some of the fruit
- she went outside to the bathroom but suggested a rope be tied to her leg first, one was but it was an intestine
- the girl untied it and climbed a tree
- she was saved by a man transporting goods
What is a summary of “Tselane and the Mariomo” from South Africa?
- Tselane is the daughter, the family left to find fresh pastures but the daughter wanted to stay
- the mom left but came back with food, and continued to do so
- one day a gruff voice called out to her claiming it had food, but she said no
- he left, but came back with a clearer voice, it still wasn’t soft enough though
- on the third day it worked, the girl opened the door
- he put her into a sack and walked off, but put it down when he wanted water
- the girls in charge of it saw a girl was in it and called for help, her mom came and took her out
- the bag was then filled with scary animals who bit the mariomo
- he leapt into a mud pile and became a tree that ended up producing honey
What is a summary of “Red Riding Hood” by Anne Sexton?
- classic where the random woodsman performs a C-section and red riding hood and her grandma pop out okay, he’s sewn back up with stones and dies from his own weight
- a poem where the red riding hood story is prefaced with the poet’s own experiences and thoughts
What is a summary of “The Company of Wolves” by Angela Carter?
- horror stories about (were)wolves
- too much talk about little red riding hood’s virginity
- TOO SEXUAL
MORE?
What is the backstory behind Perrault’s version of Red Riding Hood?
- Collected as a folktale and published in a book
- Perrault’s is the “original” little red riding hood, even though we think about the Grimm’s Little Red Cap usually as the recognizable story (the real one)
SUMMARY OF PERRAULT’S RED RIDING HOOD
What is the moral included at the end of Perrault’s Little Red Riding Hood?
- Perrault was writing to what he imagined as bourgeois kids
- so he included a lot of morals
- there’s an explicit moral poem at the end of the story
- “[children, especially young girls, are wrong to listen to just anyone → and it’s not at all strange for a wolf to eat her]”
- warning against pedophilia → specifically adults that feel close to children, not really strangers
- “people with other intentions are no good”
- “[children, especially young girls, are wrong to listen to just anyone → and it’s not at all strange for a wolf to eat her]”
SUMMARY OF GRIMM’S LITTLE RED CAP
- this is the story where the woodsman saves everyone and the wolf is filled with stones and sewn back together
- two stories in one, they deal with the first wolf and then deal with the second by drowning it in trough water
What is the historical importance of the Grimm’s retelling of folktales?
they were imagined as the foundation of German cultural heritage…. important to the Nazis → central to their nationalist/fascist project
What are characteristics of the wolf in the Grimm’s Little Red Cap?
- the wolf in this story is evangelical in the name of beauty → pointing out things that are interesting to look at (flowers and sun beams)
- makes him a good storyteller
- why did the wolf not just eat little Red Cap in the woods?
- trapping her is its own pleasure, more fulfilling than just eating her → he feels superior to her, being pedagogical/sadistic
What are some technical elements about Anne Sexton’s Red Riding Hood?
- free verse poem (the stanzas and lines are made in effect for the voice)
- the story is in the voice of the poet → not specifically a first or third person narrative
- called confessional poetry
- a genre often grounded in psychotherapy → talking and talking and then speaking to work through issues
- the poet has anxiety
- an issue is often birth, as mentioned in this poem
What is a constant in the beginning characters’ lives in Anne Sexton’s Red Riding Hood?
- beginning characters → their ‘inner lives’ are different from their “outer lives”
- suburban matron who’s having an affair walking through the grocery store → she feels guilty
- two respectable women who are con artists
- comic who looks happy but ends up killing himself
- “I too” → the poet, Sexton
What themes does Sexton include in her Red Riding Hood?
- she considers Little Red Riding Hood to be a story about deception
- uses the preface to show deception in every day life
- revisioning the wolf as the source (mother) of all of our issues
- it represents deception because it dressed up as the grandmother
- Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother are children of the wolf
- they are birthed from it
