little red riding hood uncloaked by catherine orenstein

The werewolf would become the hairy-chested Lothario of Lon Chaney, Jr.'s, movies-horror, passion, a swooning date-while Red Riding Hood's dangerous foe would become a harmless, whistling dog (Orenstein 105-106). By the twentieth century, its carnal desires would increasingly become a symbol of manly prowess and even a source of humor. Not for centuries-long after Perrault and the brothers Grimm were dead-would the werewolf, arch symbol of Evil, of the Devil himself, get a chance at rehabilitation. For who else would she expect to find in Grandma's bed? Why does Red Riding Hood speak to the beast in the woods? And how, later on, could she mistake his furry snout for Granny? What if, in the context of the werewolf's well-known proclivities, the villain of the tale were understood to be Red Riding Hood's grandfather? This would account for the girl's total lack of suspicion and fear in virtually all versions of the tale. This concept may help to clarify a puzzling aspect of the story's plot.

In this case they may be vestigial references to incest-also a common charge in the werewolf trials. From the same roots comes the modern 'sibling.' Gaffer is thought to be a contraction of grandfather or godfather.) These terms might be used simply to mean an older person, but in folklore words inevitably take on multiple meanings. (The Anglo-Saxon term for a godparent, godsibb, being a compound of god and sib, 'relative,' originally denoted a sponsor of a child at a baptism. The etymology of both terms indicate a close family relation. Some old English variants of 'Little Red Riding Hood' refer to the villain as a 'gaffer' wolf, or 'gossip' wolf, a term also used in the Stubbe Peeter pamphlet to describe the werewolf's mistress. Odd words also remind us of the wolf's past. Murder, mutilation, the anthropomorphism of the villain-'The Wolf King' seems like a lyrical version of Master Tyse Artyne's testimony about the little girl whom Stubbe Peeter had mauled and killed (Orenstein 103-105).

When Red Riding Hood arrives slightly after, she meets an equally maudlin fate. First, Grandma:Īn illustration that accompanied the story in an 1808 edition showed the beast disemboweling the grandmother in a bloody tug-of-war. A curious volume of stories released in the year 1801 under the title Tales of Terror offers a surprisingly gory version of 'Little Red Riding Hood.' Rather than swallowing the girl and her grandmother whole and alive, in a form that can later be rescued, the villain of 'The Wolf King' mangles and mutilates them with obvious gusto. Today Little Red Riding Hood's villain has lost his occult past, though details occasionally resurface, and when we read them perhaps we feel a shock of the familiar.

Little red riding hood uncloaked by catherine orenstein