"Little Red Riding Hood" for Babies & Toddlers

While searching for a suitable “Little Red Riding Hood” video on YouTube, I happened to stumble upon one by Oxbridge Baby, written “specifically for babies and toddlers.” I thought this was a particularly interesting selection, and so I watched the short animated video to see what their version of the classic tale would be. The tale turns out to be an even more “cleaned up” version of the tale told by the Brothers Grimm.



In this version, Little Red Riding Hood wears a red cloak with a hood and, as a result, is called by how she dresses. (There is no explanation of why nor how she got her hood.) One day, Mother decides to send Little Red Riding Hood to Grandmother’s to take her some cakes. She gives her specific, moralistic instructions (like in the Bros. Grimm’s tale) before Little Red Riding Hood departs. Although the young girl was told not to stray and pick flowers, she does anyway, and a Wolf suddenly appears beside her. She tells him of her plans to see her Grandmother in the forest, and he dupes her into a deliberate race to Grandmother's house. The Wolf arrives first and gobbles up Grandmother in one swallow. He puts on Grandmother’s nightgown, her cap, and some of her perfume (“for good measure”), and then takes her place in bed. When Little Red Riding Hood arrives, she asks the Wolf the usual questions, and then she realizes he is not actually Grandmother and dashes away (without stripping, getting into bed, nor further interrogation). A Woodsman comes along, saves Little Red Riding Hood, and turns the Wolf upside down until he releases Grandmother. Afterward, the Woodsman takes the Wolf into the woods so he cannot harm anyone else ever again. At the end, Grandmother and Little Red Riding Hood have their overdue picnic with the cakes. The end.

Departures:
• No wine nor milk taken to Grandmother
• No specified paths of pins nor needles; instead, a deliberate race
• Little Red Riding Hood has to tell the wolf where Grandmother lives
• Little Red Riding Hood never gets into bed with the Wolf
• The hunter is now a woodsman
• No one dies – not even Grandmother!

This version of the tale actually blames no one but the Wolf for the narrative conflict. Little Red is (somehow) absolved of all blame usually placed on her in "moral" versions of the tale, even though she does not obey her Mother’s orders to the letter. The tale also reinforces the sense of patriarchal order established in the Bros. Grimm tale by permitting the woodsman to save the day (again). Also, both Little Red Riding Hood and Grandmother survive in the end (true in the Bros. Grimm tale, but nowhere else).

In the end, this particular video follows the Bros. Grimm tale, but “cleans it up” even more so than the Grimms did. In addition, although this particular video emphasizes the moral side of educating the young child, it never persists in teaching the child a lesson from her mistakes; instead, it places all blame on the insidious Wolf.

The Meaning of "Mother Goose" vs. The Struggle for Meaning

Although the essays “Peasants Tell Tales” and “The Struggle for Meaning” contend with the same subject matter, fairy tales – something I will account for later in the blog - their arguments lie in different realms, the former based in anthropology and the latter founded in psychoanalysis. However, referring to the title of my blog post, I want to focus on the “versus” aspect of their essays and how the author of “Peasants Tell Tales” attempts to indirectly debunk “The Struggle for Meaning.”

Robert Darnton, the author of “Peasants Tell Tales,” is invested in an anthropological way of extracting historical and cultural information, based on the oral tradition of peasants’ recounting of folk tales. Interestingly, he begins his essay by acknowledging the psychoanalytic rhetoric of authors such as Erich Fromm and Bruno Bettelheim. However, he (quite acerbically) narrates their findings by refuting them due to fairy tales’ transformations from culture to culture: “In fact … folktales are historical documents. They have evolved over many centuries and have taken different turns in different cultural traditions” (Darnton 283). In turn, I would say that Darnton probably finds psychoanalysis too unreliable for tales that are so marked by different meanings as a result of the history and “the context[s] in which [they] take place” (285). This is curious because Bettelheim’s “The Struggle for Meaning” uses psychoanalysis dependent on how fairy tales – and “our cultural heritage” (Bettelheim 269)” – can help a disturbed child find meaning through morality.

Are Darnton and Bettelheim simply arguing two sides of the same coin, then? Bettelheim’s rhetoric synonymizes fairy tales with history and culture just as much as Darnton’s argument does. Nevertheless, Darnton seems to be unjustly critiquing only one of Bettelheim’s psychoanalytic interpretations, instead of studying how Bettelheim’s general approach to fairy tales might be remarkably similar to his own. Certainly, Bettelheim’s particular interest in fairy tales might be different (as he is trying to cure disturbed children’s mental ailments and lack of self-importance), just as Darnton is interested in what the oral tradition tells us about peasants and their milieux.

Is Darnton correct in using Bettelheim’s interpretation of “Little Red Riding Hood” as one piece of evidence in order to discredit him? I think his judgment is too hasty, especially if he returns to Bettelheim’s “The Struggle for Meaning” and sees how his respective work simply tackles fairy tales from another angle.

Thoughts?