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For the Enchanted Forest character, see Red Riding Hood. |
"Little Red Riding Hood", also known as "Le Petit Chaperon rouge", is a fairytale featured on ABC's Once Upon a Time. It was written by French author Charles Perrault and incorporated in the book Stories or Fairy Tales from Past Times with Morals in 1697. It was revised by the German authors Jacob and Wilhelm of the Brothers Grimm and incorporated into the book Grimms' Fairy Tales in 1812.
Plot
There is a little village girl who is loved by everyone who sees her. Her mother and grandmother are especially fond of her. Her grandmother gives her a red cape with a hood. It looks so good on the girl that she becomes known as Little Red Riding Hood.
Little Red Riding Hood's mother makes a cake. She gives the cake and a pot of butter to the girl and tells her to take them to her grandmother, who has been ill. Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother lives in another village. In order to get there, Little Red Riding Hood has to pass through a forest. In the forest, a wolf comes up to Little Red Riding Hood. He would like to eat her but is unable to do so at that moment because there are some woodcutters nearby. The wolf asks the girl where she is going. Not knowing that it is dangerous to talk to wolves, Little Red Riding Hood tells him that she is taking a cake and some butter to her sick grandmother. The wolf asks Little Red Riding Hood where her grandmother lives. She points out her grandmother's house to him. It is the first one in the village and it is just beyond a mill. The wolf says that he will go to Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother's house too. He says that he will take one path and tells Little Red Riding Hood to take a different one. The wolf knows that the path that he has chosen for himself is the shorter one. Little Red Riding Hood also takes some time to get to her grandmother's house because she stops to gather nuts, pick flowers and chase butterflies.
The wolf arrives at Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother's house and knocks at the door. The sick old woman asks who is there because she cannot get out of bed. Disguising his voice, the wolf says that he is Little Red Riding Hood. The old woman says that the door is not locked. As soon as he is inside the house, the wolf, who has not eaten for three days, falls on the old woman and eats her. He then gets into her bed.
Little Red Riding Hood knocks on the door. Attempting to disguise his voice, the wolf tells her that the door is not locked. The voice sounds somewhat strange to Little Red Riding Hood but she assumes that is because her grandmother has a cold. When Little Red Riding Hood comes inside the house, the wolf hides under the bedclothes. He tells Little Red Riding Hood to put the cake and butter to one side, take off her clothes and get into bed with him. She does as she is told. She then sees the wolf but believes him to be her naked grandmother. Little Red Riding Hood says that the wolf has big legs. The wolf replies that he can run better with them. Little Red Riding Hood says that the wolf has big ears. He answers that he can hear better with them. Little Red Riding Hood says that the wolf has big teeth. The wolf says that he has the big teeth so that he can eat the girl. He falls on Little Red Riding Hood and eats her.
Perrault's version of "Little Red Riding Hood" ends with a verse which says that the moral of the story is that young people, especially pretty young girls, should not talk to everyone who approaches them. Perrault goes on to say that many men who appear to be kind and gentle are really dangerous wolves in disguise.[1]
The ending of the Brothers Grimm version of "Little Red Riding Hood" is quite different from how Charles Perrault's version of the story ends. The first part of the Brothers Grimm version, up to the point in the story when the wolf swallows the girl, does not differ significantly from the version that Perrault wrote. There are, however, some other minor differences:
In the Brothers Grimm version of the story, Little Red Riding Hood takes cake and wine, rather than cake and butter, to her grandmother. The girl's grandmother does not live in another village but in a house in the forest some distance from Little Red Riding Hood's village. The wolf does not eat Little Red Riding Hood when he sees her in the forest because he thinks he can come up with a clever plan that will allow him to eat both her and her grandmother. So that he can get to her grandmother's house first, the wolf points out some beautiful flowers to Little Red Riding Hood. The girl then leaves the path and goes into the forest to pick the flowers. The wolf remains on the path. After the wolf has swallowed Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother, he puts on her nightclothes, a detail which is not included in Charles Perrault's version of the tale. When Little Red Riding hood arrives at her grandmother's house, the front door is still open and she feels strangely uneasy as she steps inside. Little Red Riding Hood tells the wolf that he has large ears, eyes and hands. The wolf replies that he has large hands so that he can hug Little Red Riding Hood better. The girl tells the wolf that he has a horrible large mouth before he swallows her.
After he swallows Little Red Riding Hood, the wolf falls asleep and begins to snore loudly. The snoring attracts the attention of a hunter who goes inside the house. The hunter is about to shoot the wolf when it occurs to him that the animal might have eaten Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother and that it might still be possible to save the old woman. The hunter cuts the wolf's stomach open with a pair of scissors. Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother both emerge from the wolf's stomach alive. Little Red Riding Hood then fills the wolf's stomach with stones. When the wolf wakes up, the weight of the heavy stones inside him makes him fall down and kills him.
The Brothers Grimm version of "Little Red Riding Hood" ends with an episode involving another wolf that the girl meets when going to see her grandmother another time. Having learned from her previous experience, Little Red Riding Hood does not speak to the wolf when he approaches her. When she arrives at her grandmother's house, the girl tells the old woman about the wolf she saw. Shortly afterwards, the wolf knocks on the door, claiming to be Little Red Riding Hood. Neither Little Red Riding Hood nor her grandmother open the door. They stay quiet and still inside the house. The wolf climbs up on the roof, hoping to pounce on Little Red Riding Hood when she leaves the house in the evening. Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother has some water in which she boiled some sausages the day before. She tells Little Red Riding Hood to pour the water into a large stone trough in front of the house. When the girl has done that, the smell of the sausages reaches the wolf on the roof. He looks down to see where the smell is coming from, loses his balance, falls into the trough and drowns.[2]|
The Plot section is taken from the Literature wiki's article on the fairytale of "Little Red Riding Hood" (view authors). |
Show Adaptation
- Red Riding Hood is much older in the show than in the traditional tale and has a true love named Peter.
- As a twist, Red Riding Hood is the wolf as she inherited her family's genetics of shape shifting.
- The mother of Red Riding Hood, Anita Lucas, is a shape-shifting wolf as well.
- Instead of Red Riding Hood visiting her grandmother, they both live in the same household.
- In one version of the tale, "The True History of Little Golden Hood" from The Red Fairy Book by Andrew Lang, Red Riding Hood wears a golden cloak instead of a red one, which repels the wolf because it's enchanted. On Once Upon a Time, Red Riding Hood's cloak keeps the wolf within her at bay while she wears it.
- The woodcutter/hunter that rescues Red from the wolf is actually the huntsman from Snow White, who falls in love with Red and rescues her from the Evil Queen's army of werewolves.
- Another form of the hunter/woodcutter is a werewolf killer/bounty hunter known as "The Woodcutter".
Characters Featured
| Original Character | Adapted as | First Featured in |
|---|---|---|
| Little Red Riding Hood | Red Riding Hood | "Pilot" |
| Red Riding Hood's grandmother | Granny | "Pilot" |
| The wolf | Red Riding Hood | "Red-Handed" |
| Little Red Riding Hood's mother | Anita Lucas | "Child of the Moon" |
| The hunter/woodcutter | Huntsman | Shadow of the Queen |
| Gabriel[3] | "Heartless" |
Items Featured
| Original Item | Adapted as | First Featured in |
|---|---|---|
| Red Riding Hood's cloak | Enchanted cloak | "Pilot" |
| Red Riding Hood's basket | Red Riding Hood's basket | "7:15 A.M." |
Location Featured
| Original Location | Adapted as | First Featured in |
|---|---|---|
| Grandmother's house | Granny's cottage | "Red-Handed" |
References
- ā Little Red Riding Hood: Charles Perrault. University of Pittsburgh (September 21, 2003).
- ā Grimm's Household Tales, digitized edition:
Grimm's household fairy tales, by the Brothers Grimm. HathiTrust. Retrieved on August 3, 2020. āLittle Red Riding Hoodā - ā
@JaneEspenson (Jane Espenson) on X, formerly Twitter (November 7, 2016). "The Wood Cutter who rescued Little Red Riding Hood in the original fairy tale."
| This page uses Creative Commons Licensed content from Wikipedia (view authors). |