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Essay / Transformation of Little Red Riding Hood Throughout...
The world has always been fascinated by short fairy tales, but especially Little Red Riding Hood. The Little Girl in the Red Hood has meant many things to many different people. Earlier versions of the story were aimed at more mature adult audiences, as they contained hidden messages of dark and sexual storylines. As more and more stories were written and published, the versions changed dramatically over the years. The story then became so popular that Walt Disney decided to animate it in 1922 to make it accessible to younger audiences. (Orenstein, 2002). Currently, “Barnes and Noble sells more than a hundred different editions, including one schematized in American Sign Language.” (Orenstein, 2002, p.3) Throughout the 20th century, a new type of Little Red Riding Hood character developed. Before any written version of Little Red Riding Hood was published, some psychoanalytic folklorists mentioned that there was an oral version, of rather French origin, in which the little girl in the story did not even wear a red hood, The Grandmother. Many critics also insist that there was no oral version and that the story written by Charles Parrault in 1697 was the first and original version of Little Red Riding Hood. In this controversial oral version of The Grandmother, a young girl carrying a loaf of bread and milk comes into contact with a wolf while going to her grandmother's house. The wolf distracts the girl as he ventures towards the grandmother's house, making sure to get there before the little girl. After eating the grandmother, the wolf “puts a little of the grandmother's flesh in a cupboard and a cup of her blood in the middle of a paper…on the heir. As we can see, the story of Little Red Riding Hood has changed over time. The moral of this short story seems to have faded over the years and it now seems to be more of a story meant purely for entertainment. It could be that people wanted to add a new twist to this long story and it turns out that people changed the whole idea of the original story into something more entertaining for people of that generation and in doing so , the original morality has been completely demolished. Works Cited http://reconstruction.eserver.org/022/cannibal/cannibalbib.html Dundes, Alan. “Psychoanalytically interpreting Little Red Riding Hood.” Brothers Grimm and Folktale. James M. McGlathery, ed. Chicago: University of Illinois, 1991.Zipes, Jack. The trials and tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood. New York: Routledge, 1993.