Little Red Riding Hood. History and psychology

By Margarita dadykina

April 13, 2021

20210

Little Red Riding Hood. Fairy tale or legend?

Little Red Riding Hood and the Gray Wolf. Who doesn't know this tale?

The version that has survived to this day differs in many ways from the original story. The tale was born from a legend. Legends are usually not just for little readers. They are more moralizing, naturalistic, and even sinister.

Tanya Myers

Boris Dekhterev

Gabriel Ferrier

No wonder the famous psychologist Eric Berne uses Little Red Riding Hood's plot as an example of a common life scenario. He sees in a fairy tale a scenario of the formation of a teenage personality, violation of parental instructions, or a scenario of "victim-rapist-rescuer."

Hildegard Guzel

A hat or a cape?

Erich Fromm, in his interpretation, says that in a fairy tale, a red cape (yes, not a hat - an incorrect translation and a donkey in our minds) symbolizes the feminine principle, the transformation of a girl into a girl. That is, this is a story about the relationship and opposition of the sexes, where a woman emerges victorious, and a man (wolf) is defeated. The same idea is developed by the writer Angela Carter in her anthology of reimagined fairy tales "The Bloody Room".

Forest Rogers

Marina Bychkova

Wolf or werewolf?

In addition, there are many versions of the mystical. They suggest that Little Red Riding Hood met a werewolf in the forest. This is not surprising for a fairy tale born in France, where werewolf hunting was especially widespread in the Middle Ages. It was from there that the legend about a hunter who chopped off the paw of a huge wolf came to us. And when he came home, he found his wife with a bandaged hand, and in his trophy bag there was no longer a shaggy paw, but an elegant handle decorated with rings. It was this legend that was played in the famous film by Catherine Hardwicke "Little Red Riding Hood" (2011). References to this legend can be seen in one of the works that we present in this article as illustrations. It was also in France that the mysterious history of the Gevodan beast was officially recognized, for the capture of which Louis XV personally allocated funds and sent the best hunters.

Julia Turantseva

Katya Shardakova

Cruelty or Justice?

No matter how hard they tried to adapt for children the gloomy legend of Charles Perrault, and after him the Brothers Grimm, there was still a lot of mystical and frightening and rather cruel ending in it. And it is right. Many psychologists agree that children, with their purity and heightened sense of justice, should know that the villain is defeated and severely punished. Children are not afraid of a cruel ending for an evil character, on the contrary, the "mild sentence" makes them feel insecure and unfair. For example, Bruno Bettelheim (psychoanalyst and psychiatrist, author of the scientific work "On the benefits of magic") expresses the following thought in this regard: “The best thing about fairy tales is not that they tell us about witches and dragons, but what they say, that witches and dragons can be defeated. These are not just fairy tales, these are lessons. "

Gulya Alekseeva

Afraid or tamed?

In the selection of illustrations for this article, there is also the work of the author of the article entitled “Red. Walk with wolves. " This work is about freedom, victory over the inner "wolves" that darken the path and hinder the achievement of goals. It is important to tame your inner beast, make friends with it and accept it. Then creativity and freedom will bring us a hitherto unknown harmony and peace with ourselves (Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes about this in her book "Running with Wolves").