Little Red Riding Hood revisited
By reading Charles Perrault’s widely reproduced version of Little Red Riding Hood in concert with Angela Carter’s 1979 short story “The Company of Wolves,” students were able to draw comparisons and contrasts between the two authors' approaches to sexuality and draw parallels to their own experiences. Perrault’s story overtly interprets the parable as a morality tale for “attractive young girls,” and ends with a moral that blames Red for her own murder for the crime of seducing the wolf.
Carter’s version subtly writes back to Perrault and reimagines the character of Red as independent, aware of her burgeoning sexuality, in control of its effect on the wolf/huntsman. In other words, Carter repositions her from passive victim to active and complicit in the action of the story. In discussing these stores as a class and in smaller "literature circles, challenging issues of victimhood, sexual agency, and blame were brought to the surface and students struggled to articulate their developing views on these controversial but relevant subjects. Students were asked to write their own versions of Perrault's "Little Red Riding Hood" before embarking on the final essay for the unit. I hoped that this exercise would help students develop a deeper understanding of the feminist criticisms of Perrault's story by making their own narrative choices in retelling the tale in a new way. |
Still from Neil Jordan's 1984 adaptation of "The Company of Wolves"
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Their options for rewriting the tale were changing or ‘swapping’ the gender of characters, focusing on a supporting character and giving them a voice (i.e., placing “an antagonist’s evil deeds in perspective”), creating a prequel or sequel to the tale, or other creative revisions in order to reveal character’s motivations, question the “black-and-white distinction between good and evil,” and develop the character’s “psychological background” (Joosen, 2011, p. 14). By refocusing our attention on female characters, students can “learn to recognize what happens to female characters under the “male gaze” of authors… [and ask] how does the creation of female characters reinforce or resist certain social attitudes toward women?” (Appleman, 2009, 70). Students were thus required to draft a comprehensive plan for their tale before writing the narrative itself, in which they specified the changes they intended to make and their justification for these changes in light of what they identified as the main criticism a feminist might have about Perrault's representation of women.
Why would a feminist have a problem with Perrault’s version?
The women have an unconscious mind to make her own decision. -Fanta
I focused the final essay assignment on Carter's story because it portrays characters as having complex, ambiguous, and multi-dimensional identities, unlike many ‘classic’ fairy tale versions. After attempting to create such characters themselves in their retelling, this story gave students a sophisticated model for the ideas they had begun to explore in their own stories. Engaging with fairy tale retellings that question assumed societal values and structures and pose alternatives to cultural norms can help students grapple with the questions they have about their own changing society and their place within it. Teaching this kind of literature can model the subversive writing process for students and help ease them into creating their own texts of cultural criticism in both fiction and nonfiction forms. By taking ownership of the tales and using the form to explore questions and issues of identity, students may develop new understandings of their own identity in the process.