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Little Red Riding Hood Activities

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The first time the story was collected into a book was in Charles Perrault's book published in 1695.

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Little Red Riding Hood, or Little Red Chaperon

Little Red Riding Hood, or Little Red Chaperon

Everyone knows: " Le Petit Chaperon rouge " or "Little Red Chaperon" - a European folk tale, more than seven centuries old, which in 1697 Charles Perrault recorded, literary processed and released in a collection. The book was called "Tales of Mother Goose, or Stories and Tales of Bygone Times with Teachings." The book was not intended for children, the texts have not yet been adapted for kids. The first translator of these non-children's fairy tales into Russian was L. Voinov, 1768.

Everyone knows the plot of Little Red Riding Hood: a mother sends her daughter to visit her grandmother in a neighboring village. In the forest, a child meets a wolf. We got talking. The wolf finds out the address, ahead of the granddaughter, and eats both. Moral: Never talk to strangers. But this is far from everything and everything is not so.

First, what is this chaperone, red, velvet? This is not your hat. Three linear meters of velvet will go to the chaperone, which is much more expensive. It's a thing! If the chronotope is a fairy tale of the 12th-14th centuries, Europe, a peasant family, then the granny could not have red velvet. Velvet is very prestigious, it was impossibly expensive. In addition, class differences in dress did not allow members of the lower classes to dress like a king.

Dyeing of cloth, silk, linen was very costly and time consuming. And then there's velvet. Well, you put on red - who are you? Who do you think you are? Royal blood, right? Present? Whose, for what, from whom? And it turns out: either the grandmother was a kept courtesan, or a thief. Both of them are a vice, a sin. And the piece lay hidden in the bins for half a century, until everyone died, who could present an account. And sin must be punished.

Dark business, this red flap. Whatever you want, then think. But a symbol is a symbol. Executioners were dressed in red hoods... Called himself a load - climb into the body. And not according to Senka, a hat - and a head off his shoulders. Maybe the grandmother wanted to show that she had rich relatives. Maybe her cousin is an executioner. And this is to save the granddaughter from hardship?

A cape with a hood - a chaperone, eventually reduced to a hat or panama hat, which can be seen on Yana Poplavskaya, who played Little Red Riding Hood in the Soviet film of the same name. How and why - I'll tell you a little later.

A folk tale is not only fun. This is a warning and a command, her task is to scare the child in order to protect her from death, which was everywhere. It is in our time that the child is insured with vaccinations against childhood diseases, cameras and mobile phones against accidents and abductions. And earlier, in medieval Christian Europe, there were problems with security. But forewarned is forearmed. And the more terrible the story, the stronger the child will remember, the more careful he will be. Fairy tales are like ten commandments for an adult: a rake that is better not to step on.

There are the worst, oldest versions. They were published anonymously. Firstly, the wolf is not just a predator, he is a werewolf, owns human speech, diabolical ingenuity. In one such wolf eats half the village. A brave girl opens a hunt, lures a wolf into a pit with boiling tar. (Hell fire again!) In another, a well-fed wolf's stomach is cut open and a grandmother and granddaughter come out. Little Red Riding Hood trains herself and fills the wolf's belly with stones. The wolf is dying. So from a victim, the frivolous egoist Little Red Riding Hood becomes an avenger and a sophisticated executioner. And a chaperon in suit, a scarlet cap was worn by the masters of the shoulder business, yes. Beast and man, prey and hunter, evil and good - change places.

In other versions, the wolf not only cynically devours the bedridden sick grandmother, but also prepares dinner from her meat, and mixes the blood into wine and gives Little Red Riding Hood a drink. All this preparation was seen by the cat. The girl gets drunk, relaxes, is seduced, undresses and goes to bed with the wolf. No happy ending. And the cat, she was on the side of the people and wanted to warn - the wolf ate did not choke. Everything is bad. But what an effect! Both adults and children will not forget this thriller, where all Christian commandments are trampled on by the wolf. But this is the point, since Evil acts in our world only within the boundaries allowed by Good.

Consider the personality of Little Red Riding Hood. Grandmother is seriously ill - and she collects flowers in a clearing. Not in a hurry. Spoiled and narcissistic, she is a complete egoist. What will grow out of it? There was a chance, an initiation, she didn't pass it. This means that this is how she needs it, and the tragic version of the fairy tale is needed, appropriate and instructive.

To truly protect a child from disaster, very, very scary examples are needed. So my grandfather, for example, deliberately arranged a short circuit in my presence. A lesson for life. So that I do not climb into the sockets. I was three years old, but I perfectly remember this bang! ..

Charles Perrault replaced the steak with blood for semolina with lumps. Adults do not eat it, but children choke. He killed the essence and replaced it with poems of his own composition:

“For little children, not without reason
(And especially for girls,
beauties and spoiled girls),
Encountering all sorts of men on the way,
You can’t listen to insidious speeches -
Otherwise, their wolf can eat.
I said: wolf! Wolves are countless,
But there are others among them
Rogues, so ventilated0032 That, sweetly exuding flattery,
Guard the honor of the maiden,
Accompany them on their walks home,
They take them bye-bye through the dark nooks and crannies. ..
But the wolf, alas, is more modest than it seems,
That’s why he is always crafty and scarier!”

Why did he simplify everything, emasculate everything? Is it really out of a false pedagogical fear of presenting terrible things to children? No. Everything is easier. This is business. After all, the books were very expensive. Parents still buy them for their children. wallets for adults. Charles lowered the reading age limit from 16+ to 6+.

In those centuries, books were published for a society of educated people, representatives of high society, for adults, they did not think about children. In this society of the enlightened and rich, the problem of the safety of children looked different from that of the working people and peasants. The nannies and tutors coped well with their duties and earned at the level of today's highly paid baby-sitters. But they were engaged in the external, the purification of the external, not paying attention to the soul of the child.

In Christian Europe, people prayed at masses every Sunday in churches. It is today that the churches are empty, but before they were full of life. Everyone from young to old knew the Holy Scriptures, psalms were sung, alms were distributed. They knew: the first and main sin is disobedience.

Here the first parents Adam and Eve disobeyed God, this is the beginning of the retreat. The second step - Eve spoke to the Serpent. The third step - made contact, took an apple and tried it. Further more - she gave Adam the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, for which both lost their lives, died spiritually, and were expelled from paradise for pain and labor for a piece of bread.

The heroine of the fairy tale was without brakes. She had no sense of self-preservation at all. Did your mother and grandmother know about this? Yes. Why did her mother push her into the forest? Hit or miss. The mother realized that the beautiful daughter has a chance. But it was not the prince who caught her in the forest, alas. Well, not fate.

Never talk to strangers, don't go anywhere with them, don't eat or drink with strangers, otherwise you'll lose your head! That's what the ancient folk tales screamed about. And in almost all fairy tales of this type, there is the idea of ​​initiation: teenager, prove that you are already an adult, and not a demon, not an animal. Little Red Riding Hood broke all the prohibitions, not only mother's. And paid off.

According to V.Ya. There are always stages in fairy tales: prohibition or punishment (task), disobedience or mistake in fulfilling the order, getting into a difficult situation, trouble, overcoming trouble and exit. Either successful or unsuccessful. The end of the hero is glorious or inglorious. Lucky - if the hero has passed initiation, initiation into people. No - he is the prey of death, and there he is dear. And why does society need a nonhuman, a traitor, a weakling? There were fairy tales with happy and tragic endings. And now everything.

Years have passed and people have become even more pampered. Medieval horror stories have gone into the distance of centuries, and, devoid of essence, could no longer scare and benefit society.

And about a hundred years after the Parisian success, the German philologists, the Brothers Grimm, took up Little Red Riding Hood. They transposed and rejuvenated the ancient Tyrolean version of the tale and added the triumph of justice to Perrault's version, boldly replacing the terrible end with a kind and optimistic one. The fairy tale has become toothless. The more gag, the less truth and benefit, children chew semolina humanists. And valiant lumberjacks (hunters) rush to help Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother. They accidentally heard cries for help.

The wolf is killed. So he deserves it. He alone is now to blame for everything, And the mother, grandmother and granddaughter are right in their infantilism, uselessness, short-sightedness and ignorance of the foundations of Christian morality. Thus, responsibility for self-will, for sin is removed from a person. Since childhood.

The Brothers Grimm recorded their own version, Tyrolean, soft, with a good ending, where the granddaughter and grandmother are saved by woodcutters or hunters. This is a big mistake that led to rejection of reading these days. And not only children. In the retold horror stories, the deep thought disappeared, for the sake of which everything was told. It doesn't touch the material. Yes, the grandmother and granddaughter survived. But what happened in the hut has not gone away. It is in the memory of both granddaughters and grandmothers. On their conscience.

The German version began to spread rapidly. And today no one thinks, but what actually happened there?

Excluded bloodthirsty scenes, cruelty, cannibalism. But questions remain. And who just did not plunge into them: psychologists, sexologists, historians and teachers. Grimms have done a disservice to us, people of the 21st century who read superficially, far from the Christian preaching and the Bible for the most part. They took and replaced the concept of transgression of Christian commandments with the violation of secular rules of behavior and etiquette. In folk tales, the salvation of the soul is put at the forefront, and in those retouched by humanists, the preservation of temporary life and nothing more. The softening of the finale of the fairy tale deprived the readers of subsequent generations of the idea of ​​​​the initiation of heroes. It turns out that woodcutters-hunters save the "beauty", which in years ... will become the prey of death and worms. Perrault and the Grimms affirm the struggle only for external, dead beauty, a temporary physical body, the beauty that Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother probably also possessed. Hereditary defects, an apple tree from an apple tree ... Transient beauty.

The evangelists point to it with the words of Jesus Christ about the coffins that have been left on (decorated on the outside), only dishes and vessels are washed outside... , temporary norms of existence - beauty, youth, health. And today's market is busy advertising the quality of life that our ancestors struggled with.

The quality of life is not in belly stuffing, not in expensive rags. The concept of life has been changed. Life - it is permeated with the Holy Spirit, it does not get tired and does not disappear. She is offended by what the faceless, nameless, selfish and cruel Little Red Riding Hoods have done.

Now consider the grandmother and mother. Were Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother and mother good parents? They have a very beautiful child, women have focused on the outside. Yes, their girl is an angel. And let's create an idol, an icon, and frame the pretty face of a girl in a red frame. For the Middle Ages, the depravity of these women is obvious. But today everything needs to be told and explained to parents again. No need to spoil Do not give the child. Spoiled children will sit on their necks and indulge in serious sins.

Today, when fathers and mothers are very busy with mortgages, and children receive services in kindergartens and schools, no one brings them up. And here a folk tale, as tough as a rod, can come to the rescue.

Libraries should be involved in the continuity of the process. There are almost no good librarians anymore. They were fired due to old age, against their will. And young librarians who grew up without Russian fairy tales, without morality and understanding, where can they read about it? And they do anything, but not comprehend the understanding of the literary depths, not the morality emanating from the primary sources. Yes, they report on the activities carried out, moan, take selfies, justifying their stay among the precious bookshelves with reports on the work done. And they remain the same.

Nii boast of documents confirming ignorance and unsuitability to work with the book. And the universities of the humanities are busy fertilizing barren fig trees, purifying the outer man. Souls and spirits do not touch. Around and everywhere service is replaced by the provision of paid services. The maximum that a librarian can do is to find a book in the catalog. And they don't read today, those who have to read everything that is on the subscription. At least a short summary. And in my opinion, the librarian must be old. To remember the era of great-grandmothers, grandmothers, mothers ... And at least somehow understand history.

But initiation upon reaching childbearing age in adolescents has been and will be universal and obligatory, in all tribes, at all times. On this initiation, the logic of fairy tales is built, and the destinies of people, life itself, are built on the conclusions from fairy tales. “Sister Alyonushka and brother Ivanushka”, “Gingerbread Man”, “Snow White”, “Pinocchio”, “Frost”, “Sleeping Beauty”, author's tales about the same: “Pinocchio”, “Humpbacked Horse”, “Snow Queen”, “ Flint, Ugly Duckling, Malchish-Kibalchish... All the best films are stitched with a red thread of testing the human will on the verge of life and death, and ends with the hero growing up, initiation, a pass to adulthood with good marks.

One of the brightest examples of recent times is the ten-year-old heroine of Luc Besson's film Leon. Or the young hero of another film of the 50s of the last century - "The Last Inch", created based on the story of the English writer James Aldridge. And many, many other works, alas, forgotten.

Almost 30 years have passed since the release of Leon. And the new generation also passed its initiation, but not in cinema halls, but on computer screens. They were raised by Harry Potter and Wikipedia. And that's nothing. There are others, their idols are the heroes of bad TV shows, video games and anime. Plus a rewritten history of Europe. Simplification, flattening, separation, atomization.

In the 19th century in Russia there was no division into children's and adult literature. Parents recommended each other what to read to their children. It was believed that an adult would read it and understand, and if necessary, a child would prompt something incomprehensible or skip a paragraph or two. Nothing. Grow up - they will understand later. And the book lived in the house on the shelf, waiting for the undersized. The children of the townspeople, nobles and raznochintsy mastered the letter just in time for ten years, or for the first love. They didn’t ask their mothers-nannies to read to them, well, if they’re lucky enough to listen to a talented storyteller in company with adults, then yes, it’s good luck ...

So, the grandmother loved her granddaughter madly, making an idol out of the child. I.S. Turgenev translates very close to the text as follows: “Once upon a time in a village there was a girl of unprecedented beauty: her mother was crazy about her , and her grandmother was completely obsessed with her . This kind old woman bought her a red cap, which stuck to the girl’s face so much that her nickname came from the cap, and everywhere they called her Little Red Riding Hood .... “Go and see your grandmother; they say she's not well. Because of insane love that violates the first commandment, which says: love God with all your heart, with all your strength, with all your mind, and this chain of terrible crimes went on and on.

A conceited mother and grandmother, they wanted to draw attention to the girl, perhaps in order to get married favorably to the envy of people. As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. According to the logic of medieval listeners, Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother are punished rightly. After all, when a grandmother put on a shaperonchik for her granddaughter, she lost the name given to her at birth. So they began to call her from now on: Little Red Riding Hood. I. S. Turgenev writes: “This kind old woman bought her a red cap, which stuck to the girl’s face so much that from the cap she was nickname went, and everywhere they called her Little Red Riding Hood. The hat stuck to her. As in the American feature film "Mask", the main character could not take off his mask, the guise of the ancient Scandinavian demon Loki - the "god" of deceit and good luck.

Nickname! And the "kind old woman" sounds like an old woman out of her mind. The girl lost the patronage of heavenly intercessors, angels, and the nickname and red chaperone attracted a werewolf. The wolf is a servant of Satan, his task is to destroy the soul. This is the main motive of fairy tales, they boil down to one thing: disobeyed, decided to live with your own mind - prove that you can. Initiation.

Like Mother Eve, Little Red Riding Hood disobeyed her mother at first, didn't rush to her grandmother, got distracted from her task. The second thing she spoke to the wolf, completely distracted from the path and goal. She gave away her grandmother - a bedridden patient, such an easy prey for a hungry wolf! It's good that the mother did not betray, but she could. It seems that their short-sightedness and stupidity are a family trait.

Grandmother's address suggests that the old woman did not live in good fame. Her house is in the forest, where witches, sorceresses expelled from the community settled. In the version of the Brothers Grimm, the grandmother lived already on the edge of the village, in a house behind the mill, and not in a thick forest near three oaks. Not at the temple, not at the bazaar, in the center, where the houses of respected villagers usually stand, but on the outskirts.

In the old original versions of the tale, the mother gives bread and wine to her daughter. It is possible that this is the last attempt to give communion to the old woman, wine and bread are obligatory attributes of the Holy Eucharist and, most likely, were consecrated. The mother convinces the girl not to leave the path so as not to break the bottle of wine. But she could go on her own. Why didn't mother go? Why risk the girl's health and life? The mother wanted to test her daughter for obedience and endurance, intelligence, honesty, independence and vitality. If the grandmother is a witch, the mother knows it, everything falls into place. The mother justifies herself in the event of the death of her daughter.

And the distance from each other of relatives' houses, and wine and bread, and the nameless granddaughter, and the werewolf, which interferes with the purification and salvation of the old woman's soul, and cruel retribution - the mother calculated everything. First. The granddaughter goes on a Christian mission of love for a seriously ill grandmother. Facing hate, living evil. Dies. Second. The vile depraved girl is to blame for her wicked behavior. Dies. That's where she belongs. The mother is in a winning position in both cases.

Mother. If she gave birth at 13-14, then she wants to get married again. She does not need a bedridden mother or a beautiful daughter. This is a burden.

So, if Little Red Riding Hood has to go through initiation, start living on her own. But it does not pass, he dies in the womb of a wolf with his grandmother at the same time. According to the logic of the medieval storyteller, they should not live, they are frivolous and stupid - the prey of hell. The test didn't pass. This is not a bad ending, but the right one.

The simplification of the morality of the folk tale to the level of consumer demand began with the advent of the printing press and the transformation of the folk epic into a commodity. In the rewritten version of the Brothers Grimm, the Red Hat and the grandmother are saved by the hunters, which means that the heroines of the fairy tale are justified. The Brothers Grimm even wrote a sequel, in which the next meeting, Little Red Riding Hood no longer answers the questions of the wolf. They drown the villain in the trough with their grandmother.

My reflections are supported by later transcriptions. So N.P. Pletnev translates the contents of the basket, it contains bread and wine, a prototype of the sacrament as a means to heal and save grandmother: “Well, Little Red Riding Hood, here, take this piece of cake and a bottle of wine, take it to grandmother; she is both sick and weak, and it will do her good.” The mother warns the girl not to walk through the meadows through the forests, but rather go straight ahead so as not to break the bottle. Later I.S. Turgenev replaced the wine with oil: "Yes, bring her a pie and a pot of butter." But this is a successful replacement, it does not spoil the meaning and task: wine is fornication, and oil is of great benefit. With oil (oil), Christians anoint the sick, sanctify, the presbyters admonish the dying to eternal life. Turgenev's middle and ending are also close to the original: “Little Red Riding Hood undressed and went to bed. She was very surprised that her grandmother was so strange without a dress. - She says: - Grandmother, what long arms you have! - This, granddaughter, to hug you better. - Grandma, what long legs you have! - This, granddaughter, to run better. “Grandma, what big ears you have!” “This, granddaughter, is to hear you better” ... The next question is guessed, and there should be a smile, eyes on the floor and red ears. Then everything is clear.

Since then, the fairy tale has been translated into Russian dozens of times. Of the well-known writers, only this: Zhukovsky, Polevoy, Vvedensky, Marshak ...

It was Samuil Yakovlevich Marshak who defended the fairy tale as such at the First Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934. Before that, fairy tales were banned in the country of the Soviets for ten years. It was believed that children - the builders of communism, the builders of a new society - did not need any fairy tales. But, Marshak set a course for children's writers on optimistic endings in fairy tales. This is the payment that the forces of evil have taken for themselves, having weakened the fairy tale, making it worthless fun. So "Little Red Riding Hood" has since been reprinted and republished with a good ending: the grandmother and granddaughter are saved, everyone seems to be happy. But Samuil Yakovlevich, who understands the texts more than all the Soviet writers present at the First Congress, showed, using the example of the fairy tale about Little Red Riding Hood, how to deal with folk wisdom: “If you were sent on business, then do not stop along the way, but do not talk to strangers ... ”, - that’s the whole Marshakov morality. And in fact - strict censorship. And Christian norms, values, and national health are being blacked out.

Europe and America also began to recycle folklore, now all American fairy tales are punished with evil, happy endings are everywhere. The era of tolerant animation has begun. Business dictates its terms: children should not cry, otherwise no one will want to buy a ticket in the cinema. Roaring children - a ruined weekend ... Wasted dollars. On the dollar is a pyramid, on the pyramid is the all-seeing eye of Big Brother. Christian values ​​are retreating under the onslaught of the consumer society. The translators distorted folk tales by authorial interference.

Over time, evil has become funny, cute, original and attractive. Children wanted to imitate evil, negative characters. Remember, in our cartoons and films, the replicas of robbers and villains were used for quotes: “Children need to be pampered. Only then do real robbers grow out of them. “Normal heroes always go around”, “You can’t become famous for good deeds”, “I respect a pirate, but I respect a cat”, “Never wash your ears, neck, hands and face” ... Cute, talented musical numbers, inserts into cartoons and addressed to adults are taken literally by children. We then laughed, applauded, and three generations of weaklings, dissidents and deserters have already grown up. Black really became gray, then almost white. Vice is justified, sinners are saved without repentance, without correction. Everything became permitted. You can insult your mother, you can change gender, jump naked. Jump out of a window while holding hands with a same-sex partner.

This is how long ago we, in our good, correct, Russian world, won a hundred times with blood, have been going through this hellish process, this damn Maidan. Don't play with fire, Little Red Riding Hood, don't go out of your way. Where is the path? Silence.

And they remember fairy tales.

The true story of Little Red Riding Hood

© Tatyana Vorontsova

190 years ago, on October 18, 1812, two young scientists, brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, put an end to which was to become the final book major bestseller in German-language literature. The book was called "Children's and Household Tales", and it was from it that the world became known

“Once upon a time there was a sweet little girl. And whoever looked at her, everyone liked her, but her grandmother loved her more than anyone and was ready to give her everything. So she once gave her a cap of red velvet, and because this cap suited her very well and she didn’t want to wear any other, they called her Little Red Riding Hood ... ”Who in childhood was not fascinated by this seemingly naive, artless text? Nevertheless, the story of Little Red Riding Hood is not so simple: it is tortuous and intricate, just as human consciousness is tortuous and intricate.

The first literary version of this old folk tale was published by Charles Perrault in 1697 in Paris, in the book “Tales of My Mother Goose, or Stories and Tales of Old Times with Instructions”, dedicated to the princess of the French royal house. In those days, the story of a girl who went to visit her grandmother and met a wolf on the road was told all over Europe - both in the homes of commoners and in the castles of the nobility. The tale was especially popular in the Tyrol and the foothills of the Alps, where it had been known at least since the 14th century. Actually, it was a lot of stories: in the north of Italy, the granddaughter brought fresh fish to her grandmother, in Switzerland - a head of young cheese, in the south of France - a pie and a pot of butter; in some cases, the wolf was the winner, in others, the girl ... Perrault took one of the options as a basis, dressed up the nameless girl in a “companion” cap of scarlet velvet and bestowed the name - Little Red Riding Hood. I must say that in France at the turn of the 17th-18th centuries, when social differences in clothing were strictly regulated, only aristocrats and middle-class women wore such headdresses. A simple village girl, who easily walked in a velvet cap of a defiant color, and even - contrary to her mother's orders - entered into a conversation with a stranger, obviously understood a lot about herself, which the harsh era of the Enlightenment did not encourage. In the finale, the wolf taught a cruel lesson to all the windy young ladies: he "attacked Little Red Riding Hood and swallowed her."

The gallant author crowned the “cute trifle” (as he called his fairy tale) with a moral:

Little children, not without reason

(And especially girls, beauties and spoiled girls),

Encountering all sorts of men on the way,

No speeches

Otherwise, the wolf might eat them...

The popularity of Perrault's book was amazing, although the 69-year-old author himself, a prominent royal official and member of the French Academy, fearing ridicule, at first did not dare to put his own name on the collection, therefore for the first time, "Tales of Mother Goose" was published signed by the 11-year-old son of the writer - D'Armancourt.

But the “canonization” of the text did not end there. From the pages of a French book, Little Red Riding Hood returned to oral stories, and a hundred years later reappeared in a literary version - in German Kassel. This time, the philologists brothers Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm acted as authors, who saw in fairy tales by no means “trifles”. Grimms perceived folk tales as a necessary link in the unification of the fragmented German principalities-electors, who spoke different dialects, into a single national state. The goal of the Grimms was to collect and voice "living folk poetry", to preserve the authenticity of folk art. They believed that the “German pramith” was contained in fairy tales, and in their book “Children's and Household Tales” they selected only those stories that were popular in the territory of German settlement. Grimm's fairy tales were considered as pantries in which a single memory of the mythological ideas and beliefs of their ancestors was preserved, and they saw their task in revealing the “authenticity”, the true nationality of the plot. Based on the idea of ​​the unity of the people, the Grimms did not distinguish between written and oral sources, as well as the belonging of authors to different social and cultural strata, believing that in any of the options there is both truth and artificiality. They presented their own version of Little Red Riding Hood, combining oral stories, the fairy tale of Charles Perrault, as well as the verse play “The Life and Death of Little Red Riding Hood”, written in 1800 by the German romantic writer Ludwig Tiek (it was Tiek who introduced the hunter who saves the girl and grandmother from the belly of a wolf).

A feature of the fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm is the abundance of details, sometimes seeming nonsense, sometimes everyday life, sometimes just rudeness and cruelty. The girl's grandmother does not live in another village, but in the forest itself. Little Red Riding Hood brings her a piece of cake and a bottle of wine in her apron, and her mother sternly admonishes her: “Go modestly, as you should; don’t turn aside from the road, otherwise you’ll fall and break the bottle, then grandmother won’t get anything. And when you enter her room, do not forget to say hello to her, and not only to look back and forth in all corners first. The wolf reproachfully tells the girl that she is going, “as if she is in a hurry to go to school”, offers to “have fun in the forest”, and Little Red Riding Hood, succumbing to persuasion, enters the forest thicket and begins to collect flowers. Having eaten the grandmother, the wolf not only lays down in her bed, but first puts on a dress and cap. At the same time, he leaves the door wide open. Having swallowed the girl, the wolf snores so loudly throughout the forest that the hunter passing by the hut thinks if he needs to help the old woman. Seeing the wolf, the hunter takes the scissors and rips open the sleeping belly: “As soon as he made the first incision, he sees that the little red cap is visible inside. He quickly made a second incision, and a girl jumped out of there and screamed:

— Oh, how scared I was! It was so dark in the wolf's belly!

Grandmother also got out after Little Red Riding Hood, barely alive - she could not catch her breath. Then the wolf is punished: his belly is stuffed with large stones. Waking up, he wants to run away, but heavy stones are pulled down, and the wolf falls dead. Each of the winners receives his reward: the hunter takes home the skin taken from the wolf, the grandmother, after eating a cake and drinking wine, gets better, and Little Red Riding Hood learns a life lesson: “From now on, I will never turn off the highway alone without my mother’s permission” . Soon the girl meets another wolf in the forest, and this meeting turns out to be fatal for him: Little Red Riding Hood and Grandmother drown the stupid villain in the trough without anyone's help.

The first publication of "Children's and Household Tales" did not arouse much enthusiasm. The Brothers Grimm's book was seen as a cross between a scientific document and children's fun, the publication was not bought up - readers demanded fabulous romantic short stories. However, after some time, either the authors successfully finalized the material, or the public got used to a strange mixture of archaic oral folk tradition and its literary fixation - the book began to diverge with a bang. Numerous translations were also not long in coming...

Since then, Little Red Riding Hood has become the most popular folk book tale in Europe, and then in the world - always relevant and full of hidden meaning, which many tried to comprehend, sometimes crossing all sorts of boundaries in their conclusions.

So, since the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm came out in the year of the victory over Napoleon, in 1812, and were collected at a time when the lands of the Rhine were under the French heel, some researchers saw the French “intruder” in the wolf, and the suffering German people in Little Red Riding Hood , and in the hunter - the expected disinterested liberator. And a century later, the ideologues of the Third Reich, who declared "Children's and Household Tales" by the Brothers Grimm a sacred book, wrote in all seriousness that Little Red Riding Hood embodies the German people, persecuted by the wolf of Jewry.

The Grimms themselves, deeply religious people, saw in Little Red Riding Hood a single symbol of rebirth - descent into the darkness and transformation. A hundred years later, Christian researchers who developed this idea declared Little Red Riding Hood the personification of human passions: vanity, self-interest and hidden lust. In the wolf, these same passions are embodied clearly and definitely. Only freed from the wolf's belly, as if born again, the girl is transformed.

Neo-mythologists, supporters of the so-called “wolf-solar theory”, who also considered themselves followers of the Grimms, argued that the fairy tale reflects the change of natural phenomena: the grandmother living in the forest in a house “under three large oaks” is mother nature, Little Red Riding Hood is the sun , the wolf is winter, and the hunter is the new year. Neo-pagans (there were some) considered the wolf to be the most positive character in the fairy tale. The red color of the girl's headdress seemed to them the embodiment of danger, and the grandmother, living in a dense forest, evoked associations with Baba Yaga and the goddess of death of the ancient Germans (by the way, pies and wine were a common sacrifice for the dead and other representatives of the underworld among all Indo-Europeans). So the wolf seemed to them to be something like an ancestor hero, who was trying to free the world from death and fell victim in an unequal struggle.

Initially, in the oral tradition of the fairy tale about Little Red Riding Hood, the wolf was not just an animal, but a werewolf (this is where his ability to speak in a human voice and successful attempts to disguise himself as a grandmother come from). The Grimms, like Perrault, did not advertise it, but implied it. At the end of the 20th century, interest in mysticism provoked a number of relevant interpretations of Little Red Riding Hood, among which the most famous interpretation of the British "Oscar" Neil Jordan - he turned this story into a love thriller about werewolves "In the company of wolves".

People of the 19th century saw a pure image in Little Red Riding Hood. A fan of "Children's and Household Tales" Charles Dickens in his "Christmas Stories" shared naive childhood reflections: "I felt that if I could marry Little Red Riding Hood, I would know true happiness. " And the Grimms themselves, who dreamed of returning to their national roots, generally believed that before the world was asexual, and “people produced children with just one look (as God acts only with a thought)” - only “then they needed kisses for this and, finally, hugs and carnal intercourse." “Teutonic religious neurotics” (so the brothers were dubbed by little-believing psychoanalysts of the 20th century) when preparing fairy tales for publication, they expelled from them all to any extent erotic scenes and expressions, because they believed that “old poetry” was “innocent”.

The 20th century made Little Red Riding Hood a brand and a diagnosis. So, in the 30s, supporters of Freud's student Erich Fromm declared that Little Red Riding Hood is a fully matured girl, and her headdress is a symbol of physiological maturity. The mother's warnings to stay on the road and beware of breaking the bottle are warnings against casual relationships and loss of virginity. The main characters of the tale are three generations of women. The wolf, embodying the masculine principle, is a “ruthless and treacherous animal”, and the hunter is a conventional image of Little Red Riding Hood's father (which is why he is not among the despised men). In general, the story tells about the triumph of the female half of humanity over the male and returns the reader to the world of matriarchy.

In the 1960s, the era of the sexual revolution and the rise of feminism, researchers began to talk about swallowing as rape, a symbolic description of uncontrollable sexual appetite. At the same time, the girl herself provokes the wolf to active actions: she wears a bright hat, talks to a stranger, has fun in the forest ... At the same time, the wolf turns out to be a transvestite and secretly envies the woman's ability to become pregnant. That is why he swallows his grandmother and granddaughter whole, making an attempt to put living beings in his stomach. At the end of the wolf, stones are killed - symbols of sterility, which is a mockery of the desire to play childbirth .

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