Little Red Riding Hood Compare And Contrast Essay

A Comparison of Little Red Riding Hood by Charles Perrault and Little Red Cap by the Brothers Grimm

Little red riding hood is about a girl on a trip to her sick grandmother’s house but she had met a wolf on her way there. There are many different versions of this story, the Perrault version and Grimm version. There was also a parody of Little Red Riding Hood called Hoodwinked!. In all of the stories they all start with a mother giving something to give to her daughter. For her daughter to travel into the forest to give her grandmother what her mother had made.

Fairy Tales are not just stories that parents tell to their children, but stories with hidden valuable messages which are mostly left on a side. In the article “An Introduction to Fairy Tales,” Maria Tatar clearly explains how people need fairy tales in their lives. Tatar also states how fairy tales have the ability to take the listener, especially children’s, into a journey in which they can play with their imagination so that they can discover their deepest fears and wishes. Personally I agree with the author, because of the fact that in an individual’s lives as they get older, they will try to define themselves, sometimes comparing their own life with a character from their favorite story or Fairy Tale.

Throughout history, women have been portrayed in a variety of ways; by following a popular story that has been rewritten several times over the years, we can see this progression. “Little Red Riding Hood” was first written in 1697, and since then has been in a constant state of evolution and change (Elmore). We will be looking at the 1697 version of “Little Red Riding Hood” and comparing it to newer versions; this will give us a chance to see how attitudes towards women have changed over the years. So that we don’t confuse the different characters, we will explore “Little Red Riding Hood” one story at a time.

With the intentions of kissing him she does not understand her new form and realizes she has bit him. Realizing what she has done, the young man describes the girl’s appearance as “my pink teeth, my yellow eyes; he saw my black dress fluttering” (Atwood 244). When word about the

Aesop featured wolves in his tales, and his most famous is The Boy Who Cried Wolf, which is a story about a boy who is told to watch sheep, and after many false alarms, a wolf comes along and eats the sheep. The term “to cry wolf” is derived from this tale, and it is directed at people who purposely raise false alarm. In the story Little Red Riding Hood (written by Charles Perrault), it is said to have a bigger impact on wolves appearance than The Boy Who Cried

The circumstances that created this nature of humans as wolves are influenced partly by the location in which the story takes place, the forest. Like the Original Red Riding Hood story the woods are as ominous and threatening to the young female protagonist. Unlike Red Riding Hood though, the story by Angela Carter is much more specific on the wolves and what they represent as symbols of human barbarity. In the story, it is stated that, “It is winter and cold weather. In this region of mountain and forest, there is now nothing for the wolves to eat.”(Carter,1085). The wolves or savagery is created through condition, the influence of the location makes human harder both physically and mentally,

Fairy tales like Snow White and Cinderella both contain the struggle of good vs. evil. The struggle of good vs evil in these tales teaches us that good always prevails over evil. The fairy tales often times contain common elements that represent good and evil in the story. Both of these tales show the good and evil elements in similar forms. Both tales have the same outcomes where good prevails and they live happily ever after. These tales expose important concepts like good and bad for young readers. Tales such as these two can also teach young readers about good and bad things in life and ways of handling them.

After doing this, however, the girl proceeds to remove her blouse as well. The werewolf did not wish for the girl to remove her blouse, but rather the girl voluntarily removed it. Through this action, the girl voluntarily initiates sexual interaction with the werewolf. According to the expectations set out by her society, the girl should fear the wolf and therefore remain in her clothing. As her society also believes women are inferior to men and that men should make decisions, the girl is also defying another expectation.

Fairy tales are under attack in the United States from both right- and left-oriented pressure groups. (Ravitch, 62-96) From the left, the charges include sexism, stereotyping, distortion, and anti-humanism. (Ravitch, 84) From the right, the charges include immorality and objections to the portrayal of violence, death, and the supernatural. In addition, some critics claim that the tales terrify their children. (Ravitch, 76). In The Language Police, Diane Ravitch claims that both groups understand the importance of putting pressure on state textbook adoption committees, and that, as a result of such pressure, most major publishers are simply dropping the tales from the textbooks they sell to

She says, “I wasn’t afraid of the monster anymore. I painted pictures in my mind of all the cruel things I wanted to do to it…With each new torture I imagined for it, the monster would lurch and writhe and wail in agony,” (155). Through her imagination of using violence to defeat the monster, she loses her fear and gains rationality. With the loss of her fear, she realizes that she is in power over the gender roles, essentially becoming empowered to change the tradition and progress toward modernism. By rejecting the traditional gender roles, her diction and syntax becomes much more fantastical. Prevalent by her description of the defeat of the green monster, she says, “It wept its colored tears and oozed thick globs of liquid onto the floor, emitting a gray vapor from its ears that had the fragrance of roses,” (155). The female’s use of a poetic tone and writing with seemingly complex syntax, it becomes evident how the female used the fantastical to confront her fear, as opposed to her restriction and limits. She finally establishes herself as the dominant female when she exclaims, “See, then, you little monster, you have no idea what a woman is. There’s no end to the number of things I can think of to do to you,” (156). By using the fantastical element of her imagination, she manipulates her fear into

Her objectification continues until the end of the story. She says, “The six of us, mounts and riders both-could boast amongst us not one soul, either, since all the best religions in the world state categorically that not beasts nor women were equipped with the flimsy, insubstantial things ….” (Carter, 44), contending that men see women as soulless, just as they see animals soulless. She feels that the men who claim to possess souls consider her as nothing more than an item of physical worth and that is why she calls them “flimsy” and “insubstantial”. When the heroine says that she is no longer resembles the soubrette, she begins to claim her own desires, meaning that she can no longer submit to society’s female stereotypes. She declares, “I will dress her in my own clothes, wind her up, send her back to perform the part of my father’s daughter.” (Carter, 46). Through the symbol of the soubrette, Carter shows the reader that this view of women weakens the character and prevents her from fulfilling her potential. Thus, “The Tiger’s Bride”, the heroine must accept the animal in nature in herself and in the Beast, in order to be free of the human world

Fairy tales are something that everyone has read or seen, they all seem to have important lessons at the end of each one to teach young children some of the lessons they need for life. These fairy tales when we were younger all seemed innocent and something we all hoped that would happen to us. Little did we know as we got older that the fairy tales we all knew and loved when we were younger, weren't as innocent as they seemed.

When I was a girl, I was a pretty decent kid. I had some good friends, good grades, I was healthy...But I also had some dark clouds hanging above my head. A thick, black smog clouding my vision and blurring reality into a world of wolves and beasts where I was Little Red Riding Hood in the forest.

Marie opens her lai by vividly describing what a werewolf is and gives the reader a little history in the nature of the beast. She clearly wants the reader to understand the reputation of what is to be the focus of her story. Marie states the beast’s savagery nature living in the woods and feeding on all sorts of creatures that include the eating of men. She uses this imagery to highlight and feed on what the reader already expects in a werewolf story. She clearly wants to reiterate the tales of such a beast and even goes further in stating how these stories have been passed