I never imagined Little Red had so many variations and interpretations. The two standouts, “Little Red Riding Hood” by Charles Perrault and “Little Red Cap” by the Brothers Grimm are interpreted in great detail by Zohar Shavit in his “The Concept of Childhood and Children’s Folktales.” Shavit comes to the conclusion that Perrault’s version of the classic tale could only have been for adults, as childhood wasn’t quite a thing yet, whereas the Grimms meant it to be an educational piece for children to mind their manners and mind their parents. This makes sense, as the Grimm version is much more tame and void of the kind of adult elements which flow throughout Perrault’s writing. But as we look to more modern adaptations of Red, especially those of Angela Carter, Perrault’s story could certainly be defined as innocent in comparison.
Certainly Carter can not have children as the intended audience of “The Werewolf.” To determine her audience, we must determine her purpose. To determine her purpose, we must look at the elements that make up her story. The most notable is that her tone is dark and her style is, at times, choppy and shocking. These are combined, in such statements as:
“It is a northern country; they have cold weather, they have cold hearts” (1).
“Winter and cold weather” (1).
Each of these statements are lone paragraphs, causing that choppiness I am speaking of, causing them to stand out, forcing the reader to take notice of them, singled out in their importance.
There is also, as an ending, after the witch-grandmother is stoned to death: “Now the child lived in her grandmother’s house; she prospered” (2). This statement is in stark contrast to the content which precedes it. The juxtaposition here is difficult to navigate as it is hard to know what emotion to feel at the end. The second paragraph tells us that the people who live in this bitter cold are aware of the evil that surrounds them, in the form of the Devil, who “…holds picnics in the graveyards and invites the witches; then they dig up fresh corpses, and eat them. Anyone will tell you that” (1). Perhaps that is why such nonchalance is placed on the stoning of the grandmother in the end; the child is no stranger to the evil which surrounds her, which causes her to need to pack a weapon wherever she goes. She is rewarded for her violence against this evil. This, paired with the carefully crafted atmosphere, causes me to believe that the Carter’s purpose here is to teach a lesson, but also to frighten.
But I also feel it goes deeper than this. What does she want us to fear? For Carter to choose to echo Little Red Riding Hood in this way and to so strongly juxtapose it to the children’s version makes me wonder if she has a deeper agenda. She wants us to ask questions, like “why is the grandmother the evil one?” In the earlier versions of LRRH, the grandmother and the wolf are synonymous in identity, which I never really questioned before. Is Carter pointing this out for a reason? There is certainly a lesson that those closest to us, even our family, can be our greatest enemy. This would be fitting of a more modern adaptation, as familial ties are not what they were in the age of Perrault and the Grimms. It seems Carter is using the age-old tale to reteach us that that which is familiar should never make us comfortable and that we should ever be on guard for the secret evil that surrounds us, no longer in some obsolete woods, but in our own homes or the homes of those we love.
So….her audience…the unsuspecting, naïve adult? Perhaps.
I don’t claim to have all of the answers to this one, but there is one thing I know: I must know more of this Angela Carter. Her style is as intriguing as her subject matter and I have a feeling she has a lot to say about and a lot of light to shed on the fairy tales we think we understand.