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Little Red Riding Hood ( French : ''Le petit chaperon rouge''; lit. translation: 'little red cap') is a folktale that has changed much in its history. The tale makes the clearest contrast between the safe world of the village and the dangers of the forest, conventional antitheses that are essentially medieval, though no versions are as old as that. The origins of the Little Red Riding Hood story can be traced to oral versions from various European countries and more than likely preceding the 17th Century , of which several exist, some significantly different from the currently-known version. It was told by French peasants in the 14th Century . For example in ''La finta nonna'' (The False Grandmother), an early Italian version, the young girl uses her own cunning to beat the Wolf in the end. It has been noted that she does so with no help from any male or older female figure. The later added woodcutter would limit the girl to a relatively passive role. This has led to criticisms that the story was changed to keep women "in their place", needing the help of a physically superior man such as the woodcutter to save them. In any case, the earliest known printed version was known as ''Le Petit Chaperon Rouge'' and had its origins in 17th Century French Folklore . It was included in the collection ''Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals. Tales of Mother Goose'' (''Histoires et contes du temps passé, avec des moralités. Contes de ma mère l'Oie''), in 1697 , by Charles Perrault . As the title implies, this version is both more sinister and more overtly moralized than the later ones. The story had as its subject an "attractive, well-bred young lady", a village girl of the country being deceived into giving a wolf she encountered the information he needed to successfully find her grandmother's house and eat the old woman while at the same time avoiding being noticed by woodcutters working in the nearby forest. Then he proceeded to lay a trap for the Red Riding Hood. The latter ends up eaten by the wolf and there the story ends. The wolf emerges the victor of the encounter and there is no happy ending. Charles Perrault explained the 'moral' at the end so that no doubt is left to his intended meaning: From this story one learns that children, especially young lasses, pretty, courteous and well-bred, do very wrong to listen to strangers, And it is not an unheard thing if the Wolf is thereby provided with his dinner. I say Wolf, for all wolves are not of the same sort; there is one kind with an amenable disposition — neither noisy, nor hateful, nor angry, but tame, obliging and gentle, following the young maids in the streets, even into their homes. Alas! Who does not know that these gentle wolves are of all such creatures the most dangerous! In the 19th Century two separate German versions were retold to Jacob Grimm and his younger brother Wilhelm Grimm , known as the Brothers Grimm , the first by Jeanette Hassenpflug ( 1791 – 1860 ) and the second by Marie Hassenpflug ( 1788 – 1856 ). The brothers turned the first version to the main body of the story and the second into a sequel of it. The story as ''Rotkäppchen'' was included in the first edition of their collection ''Kinder- und Hausmärchen'' (Children's and Household Tales ( 1812 )). This version had the girl and her grandmother saved by a huntsman who was after the wolf's skin. The sequel featured the girl and her grandmother trapping and killing another wolf, this time anticipating his moves based on their experience with the previous one. The Brothers further revised the story in later editions and it reached its final and better known version in the 1857 edition of their work. This widely known version is about a girl who travels through the woods to deliver food to her grandmother. The girl is approached by a Wolf on the way, who eventually tricks her, and eats her and her grandmother. A woodcutter, however, comes to the rescue and cuts the wolf open. Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother emerge unharmed. It is notably tamer than the older ones which contained darker themes. Modern scholars and audiences have often dismissed it as a mere watered-down version of the older story. Bruno Bettelheim , in '' The Uses Of Enchantment '', recast the Little Red Riding Hood motif in terms of classic Freud ian analysis, perhaps with unintentionally hilarious effect to a post-Freudian reader. The theme of the ravening wolf and of the creature released unharmed from its belly is reflected in the Russian tale ' Peter And The Wolf ,' but its general theme of restoration is at least as old as the '' Book Of Jonah ''. MODERN USES Modern uses have been made of Little Red Riding Hood, generally with a mock-serious reversal of Red Riding Hood's naïveté or some twist of social satire; they range from Stephen Sondheim 's musical '' Into The Woods '' to Bugs Bunny cartoons such as '' Little Red Riding Rabbit ''. One of the most famous is the short Animated Cartoon , '' Red Hot Riding Hood '' by Tex Avery where the story is recast in an adult oriented urban setting. More recently, Neil Gaiman worked a darker, more erotic, and supposedly pre-Perrault version (according to Gaiman's fictional character Gilbert/Fiddler's Green) of the Red Riding Hood tale into an issue (entitled "Collectors") of the '' Sandman '' series of comics. Both the Wolf- ‘Bigby’, and Little Red Riding Hood- ‘Ride’, have become pivotal chacters in the '' Fables '' Comic Book universe. Bigby is the sheriff of Fabletown while Ride is, debatably, a spy for the series’ enemy, ‘The Adversary’. Also, the Japanese animated film '' Jin-Roh '', about a secret society within an anti-terrorist unit of a victorious post-World War II Japan, makes several literary and visual references to the Grimm story (most notably a book purchased by one of the characters and the young female bomb couriers, called "red riding hoods"), but follows the Perrault version of the tale, with an anti-terrorist commando as the wolf (the title is literally "Man-wolf" in Japanese, or, better still, could be translated as "a Wolf as a Man"), and a mysterious woman as the young lady. Filmmaker Neil Jordan 's Horror Fiction / Fantasy Fiction '' The Company Of Wolves '', based on a short story by Angela Carter , told an interweaving series of folkloric tales loosely based on Red Riding Hood that fully exploited its subtexts of Lycanthropy , violence and sexual awakening. The (called Bulletta in Japan), a young girl who is actually a Bounty Hunter and a Serial Killer of wolves. She carries an Uzi , hides Land Mine s underneath her dress, and her basket conceals a variety of weapons, from knives to a built-in Rocket Launcher and a Flamethrower disguised as a wine bottle. Multiple short stories have been written in the past century, which adapt the Grimm’s tale to their own interests. Most either empower Little Red or give the wolf victim status under the term ‘misunderstood’. Notable among these are Angela Carter 's ‘Company of Wolves’ in which Red seduces the wolf, Roald Dahl ’s ‘Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf’, in which Red turns the wolf into a wolf-skin cloak, and ‘Little Red Riding Wolf’, in which a game warden arrives at the last moment to save the wolf from poachers. Radio humorist Stan Freberg performed a radio play spoofing both Little Red Riding Hood and '' Dragnet '' called "Little Blue Riding Hood". '' Freeway '', a Feature Film adaptation, starring Kiefer Sutherland and Reese Witherspoon takes the story and transforms it into a modern and realistic, albeit over-the-top, story of an abused teen and a serial killer. There is also a 1997 Short Film starring Christina Ricci , see '' Little Red Riding Hood ''. A 2006 computer-animated children's Film , '' Hoodwinked '' uses the anachronistic parody approach to the tale typified by the '' Shrek '' films, envisioning the story as a '' Rashomon ''-like mystery in which the anthropomorphised animal police of the forest question the four participants of the story (Red, the Wolf, Granny and the Woodsman) after they arrive at Granny's house, with each participant telling their own version of how they arrived there and why. Also appearing in 2005 is a 45 minute short film by Singapore cult director Tzang Merwyn Tong , titled '' A Wicked Tale ''. Tzang's postmodern re-imagination of the fable is presented in a chilling style that combines the silent-era revivalism of Guy Maddin with the shock/sadistic horror of Audition -era Takashi Miike . Little Red is depicted as a lolita-type character (spoilers ahead) who cuts off the wolf's legs (a metaphor for castration) and rapes him in the final act. The Webcomic '' No Rest For The Wicked '' has a character called "Red". She lives alone in the woods and always carries an axe with her. After being attacked by a wolf (presumably killed and eaten) she has gone and systematically killed many of the wolves in the forest. In 1940 , Howard L. Chace, a professor of French, wrote '' Ladle Rat Rotten Hut '', where the story is told using English words, but never correct ones. A Flash Animation by Dirty Doll Creations also shows a much darker version of the tale here . INTERPRETATIONS There are many interpretations of the classic fairy tale. Two are listed below. :;Prostitution:One of the more common interpretations refers to a classic warning against becoming a "working girl." This builds off the fundamental "young girl in the woods" stereotype. The red cloak was also a classic signal of a prostitute in 17th century France. :;Sexual Awakening:Red Riding Hood has also been seen as a parable of sexual maturity. In this interpretation, the red cloak symbolizes the menstrual cycle and the entry into puberty, braving the "dark forest" of womanhood. The anthropomorphic wolf symbolizes a man, a sexual predator. EXTERNAL LINKS
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