Episode 48: Snow White: Killer Queen
This podcast retells one of the earliest tellings of the story from Italy in the 1400s called, 'Little Red Hat.' It features an ogre rather than a wolf but has some of the same features of grandma's house, being located in the edge of the forest, the ogre wanting to eat grandma, Little Red Hat bringing grandma food (in this instance, soup).
"The first diversion from the Grimm story - grandma's not coming back. The ogre tore out her intestines, which he used as a latch string, basically it was a string that ran through a hole in the door so that people could lift the latch from the outside if they needed to get in. He also tore her head apart, took her cheeks off and pulled her teeth out, storing them in the cupboards. He also had time to drain the blood from her body and then just dropped grandma out the back door."
Little Red Hat arrived at grandma's house, alarmed at the latch string but pulled it anyway. She asked for something to eat and "grandma" said there was uncooked ricin the cupboard.. which was really her grandma's teeth! "This very obvious warning went unheeded. This continued with Red Hat eating her grandmother's cheeks, thinking they were uncooked meat, and drinking a bottle of her blood thinking it was wine. She had her doubts the whole time but kept up with it because she trusted her grandma.
"The ogre suggests that Red Hat should take off her clothes and get in bed with grandma. In bed, she rubbed up against grandma, and noticed that grandma was very hairy. So came the exchange and Red Hat was eaten in one bite and she died."
"This is a story that parents might tell to their children to keep them from talking to strangers. Parents in the middle ages didn't mess around at all and needed a cautionary tale where the girl lost her grandma, ate parts of her unwillingly nd then was eaten herself by an ogre.
The next version I'm going to talk about is that of Charles Perrault, a French author who lived in the late 17th Century and he's credited with actually creating the fairytale genre. His version aligns with what we know today, with giving her address to a menacing stranger. The wolf asked her to take her clothes off and get into bed. She could see parts of the wolf in the darkness and gave the familiar refrain of, "What big arms you have." Little Red Riding Hood was eaten and she is dead this time."
"At this point, I can picture Charles Perrault pausing, really concerned that young women aren't going to get the point of the story. And so he keeps writing, spelling out his meaning in a paragraph after the story clearly labelled "moral." If you need a paragraph explaining the story, after the story, this means you've done a really good job of conveying the meaning. Charles Perrault said said that beautiful young women should watch out for wolves on the road because if you invite wolves back to your home and get in bed with them it could end badly for you. No matter how quiet, polite, unassuming, complacent, and sweet the Wolf seems - sometimes it is the seemingly gentle, "nice guy" Wolves who are the most dangerous of all. Hint hint: men can be terrible."
"I've always seen Little Red Riding hood as a cautionary tale of both not trusting strangers and the importance of teaching canine anatomy at a young age. But I've never thought of it as warning a child of a sexual predator because while he might seem as a Big Bad Wolf, he was polite, courteous and nice on the road when he met Red."
The last one I'll talk about is the Grimm story. They compiled folktales from the people, one of which was, "Little Red Cap."And though it sounds like the Italian version, it draws heavily from the Perrault version. He, again, ate Red and fell asleep snoring. A woodcutter heard him snoring and saw him through the window. There's some backstory between the Wolf and the Woodcutter and he had been hunting him for years. He knew that grandma was still alive in there. He picked up some scissors. 15 bloody minutes later, grandma and Red emerged from the Wolf's gaping wound. The wold awoke just an hour later and shrieked at the 3 stones in his stomach. The stones came crashing down on him and crushed him, killing him just steps from the door. Grandma, Red and the woodcutter opened the wine and drank together. The end."
"One more version, a French version called The Grandmother, where the Wolf is a werewolf and Red actually figured it out sometime after she ate parts of her grandma. The werewolf, again, asked her to take off all of her clothes. This time he asked her to burn them. And she did. She got into bed and remarked on all of his attributes until "What a big mouth you have" and he said "all the better to eat you with" to which she said she needed the bathroom. The wolf wanted her to go in the bed, to her surprise and she refused. "Tie a rope around your wrist so I can pull you back inside if you get too far away," as is totally normal in this situation. When Red, still naked, she burned all of her clothes, made it outside she wrapped the rope around a plum tree and bolted. The Wolf heard the naked girl bolting through the forest. He chased after her but she made it home and slammed her door in his face. He wandered off after that but grandma, sadly was still dead."
British Library: Angela Carter's Wolf Tales ('The Werewolf', 'The Company of Wolves' and 'Wolf-Alice')
