into the woods; or, waste not, want not

[ruethereal]

Dear K______,

Like Charles Dickens, I'm so captivated by the "Little Red Riding Hood" cycle of folk/fairy tales. It's fun reading the story's evolutions: from teaching feminine behavior, to warning about men, to valorizing men, to illustrating a change in feminine behavior. And until reading Maria Tatar's commentary, I've never thought of it as showing competition between generations when Little Red lives but Granny stays very dead and eaten. But I was most interested in the adaptations by Roald Dahl and Angela Carter.

Dahl is undeniably an author of literature for children, so his "Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf" and "The Three Little Pigs" are suitably comical. Simply reading on the surface, Little Red is cheeky, contemporary and (who didn't notice?) homicidal. She shoots the wolf preemptively in the first story, then, opportunistic girl that she is, shoots the piggy who employed her as a mercenary in the second. As strange as she is, I prefer Dahl’s Little Red to her older counterparts who couldn't put two and two together despite noticing how hairy, etc. Granny is. Reading deeper though, I think there’s metaphorical weight behind her pulling the gun out of her underwear instead of a basket like James Thurber's Little Red. Guns are typically associated with masculinity, so producing it from her "knickers" makes the gun a phallic symbol. Dahl's Little Red becoming her own hero also makes the Grimms' huntsman obsolete.
 

On the other hand, Carter's protagonist remains characteristically feminine, but assumes an entirely self-constructed, self-controlled sexual role. The story follows the rape motif found in many of the adaptations, but instead provides an outcome similar to the moral of Thurber's story: little girls are no longer easy to fool. Rather than shoot the wolf (that is, the male sexual aggressor), Carter's Little Red meets him halfway and even asserts herself sexually. Arguably, she becomes masculine like Dahl's Little Red by being sexually aggressive, but I think her sexuality is of the feminine sort. It's just one far different from the sexuality expected of or imposed upon women, in that Carter's Little Red puts herself equal to and maybe even above men. She tames the man-made-wolf-made-man as a woman.
 

Considering the story’s conclusion, Carter’s version also differs from the older didactic tellings of little girls and men in meaning. The first half seems to be the obligatory warning concerning men, but ultimately, Carter’s apparent message is not for girls to fear men but to find and maintain their own form of control in the expected interactions with men. This message is proof that folklore adapts to the times. Young women no longer have to stick to the path, but they should nevertheless be armed with social knowledge and made aware of what they are capable of (so that they don’t need to carry handguns). Although Carter was known for being a feminist author, I think it’s refreshing “The Company of Wolves” doesn’t follow the notorious and unapproachable man-hating vein of some (if not most) feminist writing. Sexual equality is meaningless if it’s rooted in fear or hate.
 

Cheers,

Lulu Fisher