Little Red Riding Hood Discussion Questions:
1. What do you think of Maria Tatar’s statement that the fairy tale tradition emerged from peasant culture? What might be the implications of this?
2. The first version, “The Story of Grandmother,” is short, ribald, and filled with double entendre, crude bodily humor, and other coarse insinuations. Why?
3. How might we compare “The Story of Grandmother” with Perrault’s version, “Little Red Riding Hood” ? How are they different? How are they the same? What do you make of the moral at the end of Perrault’s version?
4. What do you think the story of the little girl/Red Riding Hood is really about? Are we meant to read it symbolically? As the developmental stages in a girl’s life?
5. What do you think is the significance in adding the huntsman to the story in the Brothers Grimm version?
6. Do you think that the survival of the grandmother is important (in some versions she’s eaten, in others she is saved)? Why?
7. Find all the “morals” that you can among the tales and compare them, remembering that every tale doesn’t overtly claim to have a moral. How do you compare the morals? Do they aim to teach different lessons?
8. Discuss "Tselane and the Marimo" and compare it to one other version of the LRRH tale type.
1. Do you think there is a conflation of the grandmother and wolf in some versions? Why is this important?
2. Eating is significant to all the versions. Why?
3. Italo Calvino’s version, “The False Grandmother” is different from all the rest. How so? What’s changed in this version? What kinds of issues does this version engage?
4. "The Tale of the Tiger Woman" seems to change the story significantly as well. What happens? Do you think it addresses the same ideas as the other versions?
5. Discuss the poetic versions “Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf” and “The Three Little Pigs”. How do they play with gender issues?
6. How do the poetic versions by Dahl play with humor?
7. Do you think the poetic versions by Dahl respond to some of the other versions?
Angela Carter, "The Erl King," from The Bloody Chamber:
1. How does Carter play with nature and personification in this story? What about nature and magic?
2. Consider this quote: "It is easy to lose yourself in these woods" (p. 85). Why is it easy? What about these woods might lead a young girl to be lost?
3.How does Carter play with the erotic and the hunger/sex idea in the story?
4. Do you think this story is about an abusive relationship between the narrator and the Erl-King? Are the "birds" women who are lured by him?
5. What do you think of the last line, "Mother, mother, you have murdered me!"?
Angela Carter, from The Bloody Chamber, "The Werewolf," "The Company of Wolves," and "Wolf-Alice," pp. 108-26
"The Werewolf"
6. This very short story plays with boundaries of real vs. imaginary and deals with the kind of superstitions of the past and what might have instigated them. What happens in this tale, and what do you think we're meant to take away as the message from it?
"The Company of Wolves"
7. How does this story work with the earlier (older) classic versions we've read in class? Does it revise the ending of most versions to be more less tragic?
1. How does the Erl-King symbolize death? Or does he symbolize obsessive love? Do they become one and the same?
2. Nature is incredibly important in this story, and the woods become a key symbol. How so?
"Wolf-Alice"
3. In this story, the figures of wolf and the girl ultimately converge. Why do you think Carter chose to do this?
4. Discuss the symbol of the mirror in this story. It is reflecting different images to Alice. What does she see? How is the mirror the most important symbol in the story?
5. How does this story deal with the idea of "the fall"--the Genesis story of Adam and Eve, temptation, death, and innocence lost? What's lost here?
6. Do you feel sympathy for the girl? What does she experience?
7. How does the Duke represent death?
Extra Questions:
8. Why do you think Carter wrote so many versions of this tale? How are they all different? How are they all the same?
9. Among all the versions of this tale, the figure of the innocent girl is treated tragically and sympathetically. Do you think, in some ways, that the girl in various forms represents a process all women must experience? All people, men or women?
Bernheimer edition questions:
"The Erlking":
1. In Bynum's "The Erlking," how does she re-imagine the story?
2. What happens to Ruthie?
3. What do the dolls symbolize? How are they like the birds in Carter's version?
4. How does this version deal with race?
"The Girl, The Wolf, The Crone":
5. Wells's version of LRRH is fairly absurd. Does this make the horrific elements non-literal and more symbolic? Why do you think she makes this choice?
6. Parts of this story/version consciously repeats the communion service in a Christian ceremony. Do you think this is a religious reading of the wolf/grandmother/girl's eating of blood and flesh? Are there spiritual elements to the tale? Or does it deflate the idea of religion, suggesting it is superstition, like the tale itself?
"Drawing the Curtain":
7. Discuss this "meta-tale"--meaning a piece of fiction that is itself conscious of being a work of fiction. What do you make of the quote on p. xxxi, "Life itself is the most Wonderful of Fairy Tales"? What else does this "tale" have to say about the genre of fairy tales?