Of all the folk tales that the Middle Ages has bequeathed to us, and even further back, that of Little Red Riding Hood is that it has suffered the most severe mutilations from commentators, compilers and, of course, the icy and abstruse Walt Disney.
The story, until the scene where the wolf is dressed in the clothes of the grandmother, is more or less the same as the medieval children knew. The differences are given from this point. But first let's review a bit of history.
The first compiler to rescue the story of Little Red Riding Hood was Charles Perrault, who included it in his anthology of popular stories in 1697. Contrary to what happens with other traditional stories, such as Sleeping Beauty or Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood was not a story very widespread in Europe. Moreover, it was known in a fairly closed area, ranging from the north of the Alps to the Loire region. In 1812 the Brothers Grimm rewrote history, especially the end, and that is the version that is known today; a version, incidentally, very different from the real Red Riding Hood.
It is not surprising that the Brothers Grimm have modified the original story, the strange thing is that they have been based on a dark work by Ludwig Tieck called Life and Death of the Little Red Riding Hood (Leben und Tod des kleinen Rotkäppchen); tragedy that includes the presence of the woodcutter, absent in the popular story.
Perhaps not to scare away the fearful parents of the early nineteenth century, the Brothers Grimm eliminated all the erotic elements of the story and planted a happy ending, in addition to sweeping everything that does not support the purity and innocence of Little Red Riding Hood. The summary: the end of the story in the version of Jabob and Wilhelm Grimm are saved absolutely all, except the wolf, of course; whose guts are opened by the skillful woodcutter, returning the grandmother to her daily routine.
Let's go to an analysis of the story.
According to Aarne-Thompson's classification of folktales, Little Red Riding Hood enters the category 333, that is, stories that present a supernatural opponent. It is important that we erase from our minds the idea that folktales served as a warning to children about the dangers of the forest, for that a good reprimand was enough. Folk tales have another function, much more important for the people than the peoples have understood. As we see it today, the protagonist of Little Red Riding Hood is, clearly, Little Red Riding Hood, but this is not the case. The mistake, if you can call it that, is Disney's insistence on achieving children's empathy with history. Essentially, Little Red Riding Hood is an important character, a trigger through which the real tragedy happens, but by no means is it the only one. There are even very old versions in which it is mentioned in passing, like that traditional Italian tale called La finta nona, that is, La Falsa Abuela, in which case the young Little Red Riding Hood is an almost decorative element.
The true story of Little Red Riding Hood holds two central elements:
1) The taboo of cannibalism.
2) The embers of the old Nordic religion.
Little Red Riding Hood, Rotkäppchen, Little Red Cap, Le Petit Chaperon Rouge, Little Red Riding Hood, are variables of this trigger. If we had access to some extravagant time machine, and we could witness the storyline of Little Red Riding Hood first-hand, we would hear a completely different story from the one we know. There, the wolf would swallow the old woman, as she does today, but leave on the table a juicy banquet made with the flesh and blood of the grandmother, which the innocent Little Red Riding Hood devours voraciously, perhaps intuiting its illicit origin. Then, dressed in the clothes of the occide, and after a dialogue with many variants, the wolf would pass to taste the trembling flesh of Little Red Riding Hood; moment in which a hunter, who hears the heartrending cries of the young woman, enters the room, kills the wolf and opens the stomach with a knife, returning the young woman to the world of the living.
Now, this death and rebirth of Little Red Riding Hood speaks to us about something very old in the human race: the rite of initiation.
Little Red Riding Hood in the forest, in the house and in the stomach of the wolf, are symbols of the three phases of initiation into adulthood; by which a girl leaves her home-mother, community, civilization-runs through a wilderness-the forest-faces the most sinister of the human heart-cannibalism, anthropophagy-and defeats the worst of the enemies in the womb of the wolf - death.
But in addition to pointing out these archetypal topics, Little Red Riding Hood also symbolizes the awakening of sexuality. Their red clothing testifies to the beginnings of sexual maturity, and the wolf, anthropomorphized to soften the devastating effects of this transit, is perhaps a symbol of wild sex, of primitive sexuality, while the hunter, on the other hand, represents sex within civilization, that is, within a functional marriage to society; whose ultimate goal is to procreate, and not the idle release of the instincts.
These psychological and anthropological interpretations are rigorously true, but behind Little Red Riding Hood lies a perhaps more transcendental motive, and one that exceeds regional considerations on sex and adulthood. If we were to ride on that imaginary time machine, and retrocediésemos further, leaving behind the Middle Ages, we would see that the story of Little Red Riding Hood retains elements of Norse religion, hidden but clearly recognizable by the scholar-and lover of mythology Nordic.
The transition in the belly of an animal is a classic motif. We see it even in the biblical story of Jonah and the whale. The belly is, as we have said, an area of transition, but doubly symbolic, since we all come from a womb and there we will go - the grave, belly of the world. Being swallowed by an animal is a return to intrauterine life, perfect and idealized life, but with a new, allegorical sense, perhaps, for which this new belly nourishes a completely different awakening. Life in the wild womb proposes a latent state, by which the individual will emerge changed. It will no longer be the same, like Little Red Riding Hood, which emerges from the belly of the wolf turned into a woman.
In the Norse narrative of Þrymskviða we see that the giant Þrym steals the hammer of Thor, called Mjolnir, for whose rescue he asks for the hand of the goddess Freyja (whose name is preserved in the word Friday Friday, or Freyja's day). Thor, scandalized, weaves a stratagem: he dresses in Freyja's bridal costume and tricks the giant. The dialogue between Thor and Þryms is textually identical to that of Little Red Riding Hood with the wolf, which throws a diffuse light on the true genital identity of the girl.
Going further back, crossing the dark tides of time, we could say that the story of Little Red Riding Hood also preserves elements of the solar myth. The grandmother represents the sunset, the dying light of twilight devoured by the darkness of the night -the wolf-, and the young woman symbolizes the light of dawn, which emerges from the wolf's belly like the sun that tears the veils of the night. Mythologically speaking, the wolf would be nothing less than Skoll, that huge wolf of the Norse tradition, whose destiny is to devour the sun in the battle of Ragnarok, or Fenrir, that wolf with iron jaws that falls in the apocalypse under the implacable hammer of Thor.
It is curious how mythology is diluted in popular tradition, lost and reborn under a new conception. A gigantic wolf turns into a petty lycanthrope, the God of the Hammer, quick for anger and friendship, becomes a poacher in the forests of France, and the new world, regenerated, free from the harassment of demons and ice giants, it mutates in the delicate and ambiguous forms of a girl, who, like the reddish light of dawn, adorns her head with the color of the rising sky.
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