Why isn't the little girl afraid to talk to the wolf? Does she not see that this is a terrible beast? Who does she take him for and why isn't she trying to run away?
Many parents ask themselves these questions when they read Little Red Riding Hood to their children. Meeting and talking with a wolf on a forest path seems unnatural even for a fairy tale - the girl talks to him without fear, as with a neighbor. This despite the fact that wolves have always been feared. And why does the heroine take the wolf for her grandmother? Is she so stupid or blind?
Was there a wolf?
To understand these oddities, you need to return to the folk tale, on the basis of which Ch. Perrault created his Little Red Riding Hood. It is called "The Tale of a Grandmother" and begins in about the same way as Perrault's: "Once a woman made bread and said to her daughter:" Get ready and take a warm bun and a bottle of milk to grandmother. " The girl got ready and went. At the intersection of two roads she met a bzou who asked her, "Where are you going?"
Who is this bzu? It was also incomprehensible to the folklorist Achilles Milien, who wrote down the tale in 1885 in Burgundy. The storytellers explained to him that werewolves are called that in the local dialect. Agree, this explains why the girl easily speaks to the wolf: she is sure that in front of her is an ordinary man, and does not even realize that this is a werewolf in the form of a man. In this light, the famous dialogue with the grandmother lying in bed also looks different. The girl sees her grandmother in front of her, who is gradually turning into a wolf. And when she asks the old woman why she is so hairy, she sees how thick vegetation appears on her skin. When he asks about the claws, sees how they grow out of the nails, about the ears - sees how they lengthen and become triangular, about the mouth and teeth - he sees how the mouth expands and fangs appear in it.
Promotional video:
Fairy tales and politics
Why did Ch. Perrault abandon the werewolf, which in the fairy tale seems more organic and understandable, and changed him to a wolf? The reason is in the era. Louis XIV carried out a radical reform of building a unified French society. To do this, the country actively fought against popular superstitions, witchcraft, belief in werewolves and other devilry. And the werewolf simply could not stay in the fairy tale - after all, it was prescribed to see in him not representatives of the dark forces, but simply the mentally ill who, in a fit, attack people at night.
Charles Perrault, an academician, writer and a very influential official, was at the forefront of this struggle against superstition. He is the right hand of the powerful Jean-Baptiste Colbert, and Colbert himself is the right hand of the "sun king." Then there was no more influential person in France. Perrault worked with him for over 20 years, but after Colbert's death he continued to lead the academy and took an active part in ideological politics. According to a number of scholars, the collection of Perrault's tales was part of such a policy designed to mitigate morals. Instead of rude and sometimes cruel folk tales, full of all sorts of filth and obscenity, the writer prepared his own lightweight versions of fairy tales, which quickly enough went to the people. In France, even in those years, at the end of the 17th century, people read a lot, the so-called "Blue Library" was popular - pennies for the people. And Perrault's tales were the most widely read, they were reprinted many times.
The official storyteller not only threw out rudeness and superstition from folk tales and replaced the terrible witches with charming fairies (see infographics), he also introduced attractive and touching details. So, he made an ordinary village girl from a folk tale into a charming cutie and presented her with a beautiful red cap (her common heroine's head was bare). Thanks to this ingenious move, the tale has become one of the most popular in the world. But besides that, Perrault composed poetic moral teachings for each fairy tale - as in fables. And, in fact, the magical story about a girl and a werewolf turned into a fable that girls should not listen to evil people, because they are like wolves and you can "get on the third course" to them. And in fables, animals act on an equal footing with people - this is the law of the genre. For Perrault, the wolf is just a symbol of an evil man who seduces innocent girls. And so that the educational effect was stronger and more shocking, he cut off the happy ending from the fairy tale: Perrault's girl and grandmother die.
It is interesting that the laws of building a fairy tale (and they exist, like the laws of nature), later took revenge on him. When "Little Red Riding Hood" went to the people, they again thought of a good ending for her (the girl and her grandmother were rescued by the hunters who happened nearby), and moralizing was thrown away. It was in this form that the brothers Grimm wrote it down and published it from a distance, and it is this version that seems canonical to us. Almost all publications in our country give exactly the version of the Brothers Grimm with a good ending, although Charles Perrault is listed as the author.
Alexander Melnikov