Variations of "Little Red Riding Hood"

“Oh Granny what big teeth you have”, “The better to eat you with my child” Almost every child in America has heard a variation of this quote by little red riding hood and the big bad wolf. “Little Red Riding Hood” is a common childhood folktale often told to children by their parents, teachers, and baby sitters.  This story has many variations and interpretations such as the “Little Red Cap” and “The Grandmother”.  All of these stories share many similarities and differences.

       These folktales posses many similarities such as location, gender roles, binary oppositions, and morals.  All of these variations take place in a small village near the woods. The detail of location allows the reader to grasp a sense of era. We can make the observation that this story did not take place in modern times, which might have supplied Little Red Riding Hood with more protection.  The roles of the characters and their genders reveal how our American society expects males to be the manipulators and the females to be innocent.  “Little Red Cap” introduces another character to the story. A young masculine huntsman played the role of a concerned hero. Unlike the other two variations ,“Little Red Riding Hood” and “grandmother”,  Little Red cap and her grandmother were retrieved from the wolf's stomach and the wolf dies.

The binary oppositions in these folktales are very obvious, “good” vs. “evil”, “naïve” vs. “sharp-witted” and “male” vs. “female”.  The Wolf is evil conniving and manipulative.  He takes advantage of young naive red riding hood, persuading her to tell him where she is going.  In the story of “Little Red Cap” the wolf takes initiative to pose as temptation by directing her to be distracted by the flowers in the forest making his task easier to accomplish. These stories provide assumption that women are easier to manipulate and be distracted by temptation than men. 

          The underlying moral of this folktale is to avoid strangers and obey your parents.  In both “Little Red Riding Hood” and “The Grandmother” the consequences of Little Red Riding hood talking to strangers and disobeying her mother results in her and her grandmother getting devoured by the wolf. In “Little Red Cap” it gives a different interpretation it reveals to children that there is a chance that someone will save you from danger and the consequences will not be so drastic.

     The teller of this folktale has many option of how they may decide to tell it.  As long as they correctly disclose the proper events in the proper order and the same moral is revealed then the folktale remains consistently sacred.