“Mother said, ‘Straight ahead, Not to delay or be misled’ ”: How “Little Red Riding Hood” has Changed through Social and Historical Context to make a Return to the Oral Tradition’s Ideals

Table of Contents:
I: Introduction…………………………………………………………………………..…2
II: General History of Fairy Tales………………………………………………………....3
III: “The Story of Grandmother”: the Original “Little Red Riding Hood”………………..6
IV: The Beginning of the Written Tradition: Perrault’s “Little Red Riding Hood”…….18
V: Familiar Tales: The Grimm’s “Little Red Cap”……………………………………...37
VI: The ‘Victorian’ Moral Tradition: Richard Henry Stoddard, Sabine Baring-Gould’s “Little Red Riding Hood”………………………………………………………..57
VII: “Little Red Riding Hood” Revised in the 20th Century…………………………..…64
A) Heather Amery and Stephen Cartwright; Mary Ann Hoberman              (children’s tales)………………………………………………………………....67
B) James Thurber; Roald Dahl; Merseyside Fairy Story Collective
       (gun-toting and fur-wearing Little Reds)…………………………………….…72
C) Angela Carter; Serena Valentino and FSc
        (“Little Red Riding Hood” as a love story)…………………………………....80
VIII: Conclusion………………………………………………………………………....87
IX: Appendix of Figures and Illustrations……………………………………………….91
X: Works Cited……………………………………………………………………..…..111
XI: Recommended Further Reading ………………………………………………..….114




IV: The Beginning of the Written Tradition: Perrault’s “Little Red Riding Hood”

Charles Perrault included his 1697 version of the story, entitled “Le Petit Chaperon Rouge” and typically translated as “Little Red Riding Hood,” in Contes de Ma Mère l’Oye (The Tales of Mother Goose), a small book he claimed his eleven-year-old son wrote (Curry, 92-93).  Despite his affectation of it being written by a child, and therefore with a child’s mind, his work was actually written with both the adults and children in the French educated upper classes in mind in particular, and was quite thoughtfully arranged for this haughty audience (Zipes, 9). Therefore it is not surprising that he changed much about this originally perverse tale (Zipes, 9).  Late seventeenth-century tastes in high society would simply no longer permit much of the kind of thinking that had gone into the oral tale, and so it had to be reshaped to be fit for such a culture.  As Delarue notes in his commentary about the various folk versions as compared to Perrault’s,
the common elements that are lacking in the literary story are precisely those which would have shocked the society of the period by their cruelness (the flesh and blood of the grandmother tasted by the children), their puerility (Road of Pins, Road of Needles), and their impropriety (question of the girl on the hairy body of the grandmother). (383)

In fact, the path of needles path of pins choice was purged from Perrault’s version not because it was viewed as a nonsense choice of pure childishness, but because it and the connotations it held were simply no longer relevant to society.  At that time, the concept of a “child” was being developed, especially among the upper echelons of society, the haute bourgeoisie and aristocratic classes for which Perrault wrote (Zipes, 9).  Even if the marriageable age was still around twelve for young girls, and some upper-class boys entered “adulthood” around the same age, distinct lines were beginning to be drawn between adulthood and childhood amongst these classes (Zipes, 9; Orenstein, 28).  Within these classes, childhood was believed to be the basis of a person’s future development and of the new, much stricter social rules divided by “codes of dress and manner” (Zipes, 12).  The result was that children in these classes no longer had the choice of when they were ready to ‘grow up’ or learn more about the world around them (Zipes, 9, 12).    Rather, “culture [was] being developed to civilize children according to stringent codes of class behavior,” along with the development of children as ‘children’ in the modern sense, according to age-appropriate behavior (Zipes, 9).  Books and literature like Perrault’s fit well into this “culture” where “self-control was actual social control” (Zipes, 12).  Girls would no longer choose the path of needles or pins on their own, but the time when they would take the path of adulthood would be decided by class; the very concept of their choosing for themselves became moot.  The lack of a choice of paths, therefore, creates a very different “little girl” in Perrault’s version.    
The “little girl” of the oral tale, described by Zipes as “forthright brave, and shrewd,” is transformed into a “pretty, spoiled, gullible, and helpless” girl called “Little Red Riding Hood” by Perrault (9).  At its beginning, the story is set up to characterize her as pretty, but spoiled by her family:
Once upon a time there was a village girl, the prettiest girl you can imagine.  Her mother adored her.  Her grandmother adored her even more and made a little red hood for her. The hood suited the child so much that everywhere she went she was known by the name Little Red Riding Hood (Tatar “Classic”, 11 ).

Little Red Riding Hood is adorable and doted on by her family, especially her grandmother, to the point that she is given a special and relatively costly, impractical gift.  Later, “the poor child, who [does] not know that it [is] dangerous to stop and listen to wolves,” is easily led astray by “Neighbor Wolf”, taking not only the longer path through the forest which suggested by the wolf in this version, but also giving in to all of the wolf’s other deceptions in its hunt for an easy meal.  Since her mother tells Little Red Riding Hood that her grandmother is ill, the girl thinks its “gruff voice” is the result of the grandmother’s cold, and doesn’t recognize him at all until he eats her (12).  Unlike her predecessor’s shrewd actions in the oral tale, this “village girl” is completely unable to save herself from her fate.   
   The written tale’s effects of transformation are created in many small ways, all of which can be traced back to Perrault’s ‘sincere intention’ “to improve the minds and manners of young people” through his stories; he was writing for children, in order to instill manners, but he was also writing for their parents who not only wanted to instill these very same socially acceptable and newly emerging ideas into their children’s minds, but also wanted some entertainment value themselves (Zipes, 10).  As a result, not only is Little Red Riding Hood left to take the path chosen for her by the wolf and so give up any chance of choosing her adulthood, but she becomes helpless in his power and, through her choices, “subconsciously contribute[s] to her own rape” (Zipes, 10, Bettelheim, 168-9).  In addition, she does not have the chance, as so many of her later counterparts and her predecessor have, to escape from this encounter with any new knowledge.  She is simply eaten, and that is the end of the story.  The moral is made clear: there will be no positive rebirth.  As Bettelheim put it, Perrault’s “Little Red Riding Hood is changed from a naïve, attractive young girl, who is seduced to neglect Mother’s warnings and enjoy herself in what she consciously believes to be innocent ways, into nothing but a fallen woman” (169).  Her encounter does not lead to any lesson for the protagonist, because once one’s purity is tainted, it cannot be recovered.  This story is a clear moral lesson for its readers instead.  If one disobeys his/her mother, children were meant to learn, and stray from ‘the common path’ to do such naughty and socially unacceptable things as talk to strangers, it is highly probable that they will be raped, which was a virtual death for unmarried girls at the time.  
This powerful lesson, scary for both children and adults, is made clear through Little Red Riding Hood’s character and the action (or inaction) she takes throughout the tale.  Like her unnamed predecessor, she lays out her own path to destruction when she talks to the wolf, giving it, once again, explicit directions to her grandmother’s house, which is now “beyond the mill…the first house you come to in the village” (12).  She, however, is so naïve that she does not know that “it’s dangerous to stop and talk to wolves”, which is a social taboo even if she is not aware of it (12).  Little Red Riding Hood listens to the wolf and follows his directions to take “that path over there” to “see who gets there first,” a race on the familiar road through the woods, on a path which will turn out to be longer for her than the one he takes (12).  Even if her mother failed to teach the young girl not to talk to “wolves,” it is implied that Little Red Riding Hood should have sense enough to know that her action is wrong, as this will prove to be her undoing.  The statement serves, therefore, as a double-edged sword; it both explicitly tells the children that it is not safe “to stop and listen to wolves” and simultaneously tells parents that it is their job to instruct their children in this important matter before something foul befalls them.  
As before, Little Red Riding Hood goes farther than to simply “talk” to the wolf.  Although talking to the wolf is probably bad enough to affect Little Red Riding Hood’s subsequent death, she goes further in helping him accomplish his goal.  Like the child she is, she follows his instructions and heads down the longer path, only to quickly become distracted by all of the temptations the woods offer:  “She had a good time gathering nuts, chasing butterflies, and picking bunches of flowers that she found” (12).  This choice, spurred into action by nothing but an idle mind, like “the little girl[‘s]” decision to pick up needles in the oral tale, gives the wolf ample time to run “as fast as he could” along the shorter path, trick the grandmother by disguising his voice, then “devour…her” before slipping into her nightgown and taking her place in bed (12).  On one level she is acting as a typical, unattended young girl who is on a pretty path with inviting things on either side of it; she is having fun and picking up things that catch her fancy.  While chasing butterflies, it is quite possible that she has forgotten all about her chore for the moment, and is merely enjoying her time alone and away from the ‘real’ chores of housework, the small tasks that await her when she is finished taking the basket of food to her grandmother.  But on another level, she has just childishly agreed to race the wolf to “see who gets [to her grandmother’s house] first,” even though she knows him to be a dangerous creature.  Instead of hurrying along her path to win the “race”, however, she “continue[s]” along at her present speed, and then makes “the fatal error” by slowing herself down by playing in the forest (12; Tatar “Classic”, 4).
Little Red Riding Hood’s half-hearted “race” is the real beginning of what famed fairy tale psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim considers to be her self-seduction into the path of a “fallen woman,” and also what first leads Zipes to wonder about her subconscious desires (Bettelheim, 169; Zipes, 10).  Once again, the heroine contributes to her own rape by giving her seducer time enough to not only arrive at the destination, but also to do away with the adult figure who could have prevented it.  She, however, continues to follow her path of naïveté and subconscious desires into death and rape, unlike the “little girl” in “The Story of Grandmother.”  Once in the house, she fails to recognize the wolf, instead taking off her clothes and climbing into bed with the wolf after he tells her to “Put the cakes and little pot of butter on the bin and climb into bed with [him]” (12).  There appears to be no reason for her to fully undress, nor does the wolf tell her to do so, as in the oral tale.  Perrault most likely kept this detail for parents reading the tale who would consciously recognize the sexual tension in it.   Also, he had to take out much of the original oral material, and this detail remained innocuous enough for his younger court audience.  It was also there, however, for those who read it as an “adult” tale to begin with, the fashionable ladies and men at court, where “sexual indiscretions were notoriously indulged” in to the point that, at Versailles, mistresses had their own separate suites in the palace, as did husbands and wives, who often did not share rooms as would be expected (Orenstein, 23-24).  
The fact that she does undress creates real sexual tension when she gets into bed with the wolf, and sets her up to be devoured as well.  Not until she is physically in bed with the wolf, as in the oral tale, does Little Red Riding Hood notice something is different about her ‘grandmother.’  She is “astonished to see what her grandmother look[s] like in her nightgown” and begins to ask the “big” questions, wondering about the sudden change in her grandmother’s arms, legs, ears, eyes, and finally, teeth (13).  Several of the more sexual body parts have been omitted by Perrault, but legs, arms, eyes, and teeth all connote sexual power (in their “big”ness) for adult readers.  This is also the sequence which led Bettelheim to state that this Little Red Riding Hood is “either…stupid or she wants to be seduced”, since even after she gets into bed with her grandmother, the girl merely questions the changes and sits, supposedly passively, until “the wicked wolf [throws] himself upon [her] and gobble[s] her up,” finishing the story with sudden violence (Bettelheim,169; 13).  Her passivity at the end, and the fact that she does not escape from the wolf in any way, leads Bettelheim to dismiss the tale, since no escape from the wolf renders the story “devoid of…recovery, and consolation” while it “deliberately threatens the child with its anxiety-producing ending” (Bettelheim,167).  The fear involved with the story for young listeners is real, especially since many of the children who were told the tale also had it acted out for them, with the teller grabbing the child as they said the line “The better to eat you with!” (Zipes, 7).  The original illustrations would have also added to this slight fear for the child.     
The original illustration in Perrault’s book, created from a sketch he made in the 1695 prototype, plays to both adult and child sensibilities, showing Little Red Riding Hood (considerably older than the tale claims her to be and in fact almost indistinguishable as a character from her grandmother) under the covers in bed as a shadowy wolf leaps out from under the covers to devour her, its paws splayed on either side of her body (Orenstein, 25; Le Men, 34, 28-29, Figures 1-2).  For the adults, since a popular euphemism for losing one’s virginity was elle avoit vû le loup (“she’d seen the wolf”), the sexual innuendo is obvious, especially since the female character also has her hand raised up to the wolf’s snout in a manner that hardly suggests self-defense (Orenstein, 25-26; Figure 1-2).  Their relative positions in bed are also highly suggestive.  On the other hand, this illustration would be rather frightening for a child, with the wolf, almost larger than the girl herself in the published version, seemingly leaping out of the dark recesses of the bed on top of Little Red Riding Hood, his mouth partially open (Le Men, 34; Figures 1-2).  
A later illustration used for this same story, created by the famed illustrator Gustave Dore in 1867 as a frontispiece to a collection of illustrated Perrault fairy tales, is geared more towards adults than children (Figure 3; Orenstein, 23; Len Men, 37-38).  Here, Little Red Riding Hood is quite literally in bed with the wolf, under the covers and lying down, though fully clothed.  The wolf, too, is clothed, wearing the granny bonnet today’s culture has come to associate with his ‘costume.’  However, Orenstein has noted, even with both figures fully clothed, the scene appears to be something out of “an old Parisian boudoir,” mirroring the countless real-life affairs of upper-class French society in Perrault’s day, a couple “caught in an intimate cliché” (22).  Little Red Riding Hood (her hair somewhat disheveled under her identifying cap) is pulling the covers up to her chin over her non-existent bosom and looking up at the wolf, her expression one of mixed fear, revulsion, and desire, as she stares “saucer-eyed” at the wolf, who is merely inches away from her and leaning slightly toward her (Orenstein, 22).  Only Little Red Riding Hood’s stiffness, slight movement away from the wolf, and her expression belying her fear and repulsion as she realizes what the wolf is, keep this from being a love scene.  Although this illustration did not appear until well after Perrault’s original promiscuous audience was gone, it neatly sums up the complicated ideas within his story, and continues to play to the ghost of a French court all too well-aware of its meaning.  
Although the illustrations and Little Red Riding Hood’s repressed sexuality were new additions which served only to make the story’s symbolism covert and ‘civilized’ rather than bawdy and blatant.  According to many, another addition to the first written version did the opposite.  With Perrault’s story, “the little girl” gained something new, which not only changed the title but has added speculation to the symbol and the story’s meaning for centuries.  He gave Little Red Riding Hood her red hood, as it is called in English.  In fact, the very first girl to be called “little red riding hood,” Perrault’s, did not wear a hood at all, but a special type of red cap known as the chaperon (Orenstein, 56).  It was English versions that would later change the cap to the famous hood, and many translators into English still change the hat into a hood in Perrault’s version due to the obscurity of the hat and the fact that the red riding habit she acquires was the “icon” of rural dress in England, worn in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries (Orenstein, 56-57).  The red hat/hood has been viewed by scholars, since they first began to analyze fairy tales, as symbolizing numerous things; today, it is most commonly read in some way as visual imagery for Little Red Riding Hood’s “budding sexuality”, as Bettelheim has dubbed it (Bettelheim,173).  
The color, and even the fact that it is merely a hat, has been re-interpreted almost as many times as the story itself has been studied.  Beginning in 1865 with cultural anthropologist Edward Taylor, the hat has been connected to the sun, turning the story into a myth where the sun was swallowed by night, then released at dawn (Dundes, 205).  A slightly later scholastic interpretation transformed Little Red Riding Hood into the evening, also due to her hat’s color, and turned the story into a slightly different type of myth (Dundes, 205).  Frederic Dillaye denoted her as symbolic of the autumn sun, while others have made her the queen of May with her crown, all on account of her red cap (Saintyves, 80; Delarue, 382).  More symbolic, psychological interpretations abound as well; red is also the beginning of Little Red Riding Hood’s menstruation/puberty (and therefore sexual maturity), or more generally, her just-awakening sexuality, with the red standing for blood in both cases (Bettelheim,173; Zipes “Male”, 122; Dundes, 211).
The problem with a good deal of these interpretations is that the story is not old enough to have started as a traditional myth, having been first seen in the middle ages in an oral form (Tatar “Classic’, 17).  More importantly, it was Perrault who added the color red to the tale; it wasn’t present before and so is most definitely not old enough to count as myth (Delarue, 382; Tatar “Classic”, 17).  This immediately gets rid of all of the sun and season interpretations.  Even the more recent psychological interpretations were not valid when the tale was first set down in paper or read by the fire; as Darnton has noted, the details on which these interpretations were based, including the red hat, were not added until at least Perrault (and usually only appear with the Grimm brothers) (qtd in Dundes, 212).  Even had they been around at the time, “the psychoanalysis takes us into a mental universe that never existed, at least not before the advent of psychoanalysis” (qtd in Dundes, 212).  For a good deal of psychoanalytical interpretations of the original tale, it is true that the details did not exist in the oral tales.  Therefore, the claim that such symbolic, mythical meanings were passed down to newer, written versions is simply not valid.  Yet, even without these details, the original oral tale can still be looked at in some psychological terms, even if they were not known as such then.  They can be seen as layers of meaning in a tale meant to be understood by the adults and not the children.  It is, however, unlikely that all, or even part of the interpretations, put onto the red hat by the psychoanalysts such as Bettelheim were in Perrault’s original reasons for choosing the red hat.          
If there is a symbolic explanation for Perrault’s giving the hat specifically a red color, it, like all of his other new details, comes from the society in which he lived.  Red hats stood for the liberty-seekers, especially the Jacobins, in France; in 1673, a mere two years before Perrault’s manuscript was completed, counterrevolutionary magazines were publishing satiric articles using red hats as a symbol of their target (Jäger, 102-103).  Therefore, Perrault may have chosen the red hat to make Little Red Riding Hood a sinning little girl in more than one way: she was seduced by the wolf and she was seduced by the ideas of the revolution (unpopular in court for obvious reasons).  This however, is far-fetched given his stated reasons for writing his book of fairy tales.  Most likely, both the choice for the type of her hat and its provocative hue resulted from much more mundane societal circumstances.  Just as the hat was transformed into a hood by the English because of its significance as a particular type of clothing, the hat was most likely produced out of societal clothing norms.  In late-seventeenth-century France, clothing (like everything else) was rigidly codified, and a chaperon was “a small, stylish cap worn by women of the aristocracy and middle classes;” village girls ordinarily would not have worn such a piece of clothing (Zipes, 54).  To clothe a village girl in such a hat signals that she “bear[s] the sign of” the middle class (a symbolic gesture not actually assigning her as a part of the middle class; she is still a peasant village girl), and that she is “individualistic and perhaps nonconformist,” since village girls wouldn’t typically wear this; her specific name created through her hat also marks her as distinctive (Zipes “Male”, 122).  This rebellious image then matches her ‘rebellious’ and unmannerly actions in the story, from talking to the wolf to allowing herself to be raped.
As for the red color of the hat, it has been said that “The red color was more or less accidental” (Jäger, 109).  This seems only partially true.  Many fairy tales, including a number circulating around France at the time, have titles and characters, made distinctive through clothing (Delarue, 382).  Tales like “The Green Hat,” “The Red Shoes,” and “The White Coat” all gained their titles thanks to “a detail of the heroine’s clothing in [the] particular version” belonging to an item which is “accessory and accidental to the story” (Delarue, 382).  It is highly probable that Perrault merely borrowed this tradition of naming characters and titles after their distinguishing characteristics, and chose red due to a number of tales already utilizing the “Red Bonnet” as a title and characteristic (Delarue, 382).  Simultaneously, red had very distinct connotations in French society, just as it does now.  “…we know that red was generally associated at the time with sin, sensuality, and the devil,” which may have been one reason for his decision to color the hat red (Zipes, 9).   All of this makes the idea that he chose the color arbitrarily, as just another color for a fairy tale girl’s hat like in the oral traditions, with no symbolism at all behind it, unlikely.  The symbolism even then was common knowledge.  Whether he liked it or not, Little Red Riding Hood’s hat color would be just as analyzed by adult audiences as was the rest of the story, even if they merely unconsciously noted the connection between the hat color and both the ‘sin’ Little Red Riding Hood commits by talking to the wolf and her deadly sexual curiosity.  
Yet, as much as it would be tempting to leave the interpretation at the historical probabilities, the reality is that Perrault’s tale, and all that came after it, are popularly read today in a psychological, symbolic manner that taints the attentive reader’s view of the tale.  Most see all versions of “Little Red Riding Hood” in view of Bettelheim’s famous interpretation.  Using the Grimms’ later tale as a jumping off point, he sees the entire story in light of Little Red Riding Hood’s trademark cap:
Red is the color symbolizing violent emotions, very much including sexual ones.  The red velvet cap given by Grandmother to Little Red Cap thus can be viewed as a symbol of the premature transfer of sexual attractiveness…not only is the red cap little, but also the girl.  She is too little, not for wearing the cap, but for managing what this red cap symbolizes, and what her wearing it invites. (Bettelheim, 173).

He details her encounter with the wolf in terms of her holding a sexuality which she is not ready for and pushing it off onto her grandmother because she feels as though the older woman can handle the wolf’s sexual advances even as she tries to eliminate this “more experienced [competitor]” by tarrying along the path so that she can “win out in sex” (Bettelheim, 173-4).  With valid roots in the oral tale and heavily considered in all modern interpretations, such an interpretation cannot be ignored, although his reasoning for the original choice of a red hat is not fully true.  As has been shown, sexuality which the protagonist cannot yet handle was not Perrault’s reasoning for picking red in his tale meant to caution children about talking to strangers.  Yet, no matter the interpretations that would follow his creation of “Little Red Riding Hood,” Perrault’s story contains more than a character called “Little Red Riding Hood,” and he had to take his audience into consideration with every other character in the tale; they too had to be altered to fit late-eighteenth-century French society and Perrault’s resulting changes held just as much symbolism as his changes to “the little girl” did.        
The written version also had to comply with other changing values, such as those dealing with werewolves and witches.  Perrault himself was most likely familiar with werewolf stories; the case of Jacques Raollet, sentenced to death in the town Perrault’s mother grew up in, gained national acclaim when the sentence was appealed at the Parliament of Paris, and there is no doubt that his mother, and probably his nursemaid, told him tales like Raollet’s (Zipes, 4).  Tales of werewolves attacking children and adults in towns and outlying areas of France continued to be taken seriously, with Royal Proclamations given for the capture of these beasts as late as 1765 (Summers, 235-236). All of this, however, was far removed from his upper-class, typically inner-city audience; they felt they had little to fear from werewolves (Orenstein, 98).  To adults reading his tales to children, on the other hand, the appearance of a werewolf would seem an inappropriate scare tactic, inconsistent with the careful monitoring of the upper-class children’s literature of the day.     
  In short, werewolves were no longer as dangerous as they once had seemed, but had instead been replaced by the more subtle, urban dangers which Perrault so unsubtly warns about in his version.  The wolf, for Perrault, is no longer even an animal.  Rather, it serves as a metaphor for men who would seek to cause trouble for young women in an age which demanded that its women remain virgins before marriage (despite the rampant affairs at court), and considered marriage without parental consent a form of rapt, a crime punishable by death (Orenstein, 36).  Little Red Riding Hood, as is obvious through her actions, contributed to her own rape, and the story served partially as a warning to young girls and the slightly older court populous about the danger of flirting with men.  The written moral Perrault tacks onto the story’s end gives this warning most clearly and noticeably, on the off-chance that the audience did not understand the more subtle text:
Moral
From this story one learns that children,
Especially young girls,
Pretty, well-bred, and genteel,
Are wrong to listen to just anyone,
And it’s not at all strange,
If a wolf ends up eating them.
I say a wolf, but not all wolves
Are exactly the same.
Some are perfectly charming,
Not loud brutal, or angry,
But tame, pleasant, and gentle,
Following young ladies
Right into their homes, into their chambers,
But watch out if you haven’t learned that tame wolves
Are the most dangerous of all. (13)         

He has, as Warner notes, “openly turn[ed] the usual identity of the wolf on its head and located him near at end, rather than far away and Other” for the sophisticated court audience (183).  The audience is told that “wolves,” “perfectly charming…tame, pleasant, and gentle” are one of their biggest dangers because they will follow them home and straight to the bedroom.  The implications of rape cannot possibly be missed in this appended moral, especially since those he addresses are “young ladies” and “young girls,” the adolescents and young adults of the court world, who wouldn’t have allowed non-familial men into their rooms unless illicit acts were involved.  The language characterizing Perrault’s “wolves” inarguably paints them as literal gentlemen of the court rather than of any wild beast which no girl in upper-class Paris was likely to see, let alone get the chance to talk to.  
Yet, despite Perrault’s assertion that these beasts in men’s clothing are “the most dangerous of all,” his moral states that it is the girl herself who would invite such danger, much as in the actual tale itself.  Unless a girl, a Little Red Riding Hood, speaks to a ‘wolf’, it appears that she will not be in any danger, just as if Little Red Riding Hood had ignored her wolf altogether and continued down the path as she was supposed to.  It is when “Pretty, well-bred, and genteel” girls of the court “listen to just anyone” that they can expect to be eaten, for they have opened the door to their own rape by talking to a man who may do them harm.  Perrault even expressly said that girls should “watch out” if they have not discovered that the “tame wolves” of their court life are more dangerous than other men because of their ability to smooth-talk girls; if they haven’t, then “it’s not at all strange/If a wolf ends up eating them” and their virginity.  The smart girl, it is implied, will be on the lookout for such “tame wolves” among regular men and safeguard herself by not talking to “just anyone.”  If she does not, she will end up like Little Red Riding Hood, virtually dead, her all-important virginity lost because she naively thought she could trust a man simply because he had good manners and an aptitude for polite conversation.  Essentially, the clear lesson and warning of rape is made explicit in Perrault’s tale through the sexual allusions, and the stated moral at its conclusion, the wolf metaphor actually suggesting dangerous men rather than a literal beast.
Witches, like werewolves, were far from a commonplace in French court life, and so their reality and powers were not much of a concern.  Therefore, the grandmother, a witch-like figure in the oral tale, was also slightly altered to make her more familiar and ‘human’ to Perrault’s audience, even though she is not mentioned at all in the blatantly obvious moral.  The wolf and the little girl are Perrault’s main concerns in his crusade against bad manners and rape.  The grandmother and her death are included into the story mostly for Little Red Riding Hood to have a reason for going into the woods and to serve as yet another consequence of Little Red Riding Hood’s actions.  Because she talked to the wolf and was led astray by her own desires, her grandmother is killed; there is no symbolic transference of power through the eating of flesh here either because Perrault’s “little girl” does not escape with her virginity (or her life) intact.  The grandmother, in fact, hardly resembles the original grandmother since she neither nourishes her granddaughter post-mortem nor imparts some knowledge to her in that way, but she also has no familiar in the shape of a cat.  Instead she is pet-less, incapable of giving any warning to her granddaughter, and performs only one significant act in the story other than being eaten.  She, the doting grandmother every girl had or wanted, spoiled Little Red Riding Hood and gave her the red hood or hat.
The grandmother’s gift-giving and typically grandmother-ish doting turn her into a very human, mundane character.  It also serves as a new symbol for the passing on of ‘adult’ characteristics to a younger generation that replaces the path of pins or path of needles choice.  The grandmother, as Bettelheim has noted, is transferring her physical “attractiveness,” a sign of sexual maturity and something which made an impression in the French courts full of corsets, make-up, and frills.  “Whether it is Mother or Grandmother—this mother once removed,” writes Bettelheim, “—it is fatal for the young girl if this older woman abdicates her own attractiveness to males and transfers it to the daughter by giving her a too attractive red cloak” (Bettelheim,173).  With the mother still barely mentioned in the tale and essentially only serving to highlight Little Red Riding Hood’s spoiled personality and to give her the task of taking food to her grandmother, the grandmother is truly the “mother once removed,” and is as of yet the only significant adult presence in the tale.  Therefore, she is once again given the task of imparting important adult skills to her granddaughter, but in a way that is more domestic and in keeping with an appearance- and sex-driven court than with village skills or witch-like knowledge of ways to escape from men.  
Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother also no longer lives in the middle of the forest where witches traditionally reside; she instead lives by the woods in a village.  This is an important distinction, for living near the woods still allows her to be plausibly eaten by a wolf without anyone else’s interference, but she is still on the margins of society with her home’s position.  She quite literally lives on the edge of town, a widow in “the first house you come to in the village” (Tatar, “Classic”, 12).  She is still marginalized enough to make her death seem relatively unimportant to readers and to allow the plot to continue, but she is apparently a mostly respectable woman who could have a well-bred, spoilt village girl as a granddaughter.  The only similarity to a witch she now holds is the fact that Little Red Riding Hood is still unable to distinguish her from a wolf until she questions his “big teeth” in the tale.  The fact that the wolf dresses himself up as the grandmother both partially explains her confusion and serves to tie the two characters closer together in the narrative.  
In his later illustrations, Dore restored the grandmother’s pet cat, which can be seen diving under the bed as the wolf leaps up to devour her (Figure 4).  Yet, the essential difference between the beast and the grandmother is maintained; the wolf with its open mouth, long tongue, and large claws, is something wild and unsuited for the grandmother’s curtained bed and many pillows (Figure 4).  The grandmother herself is far from witch-like; with a plump face, granny bonnet, and falling glasses, she does not even remotely evoke the image of a witch, although her falling snuffbox suggests that she has more bad habits than just spoiling her granddaughter (Figure 4).  This illustration (and Perrault’s own original illustration which does not clearly suggest whether Little Red Riding Hood or the grandmother is being devoured) makes it clear that the image of the witch has been effectively purged from the tale in its written incarnation, although her clothes continue to link her to the wolf (Figures 1-3).  
The grandmother is essentially less witch-like and a lesser character, serving more to foreshadow Little Red Riding Hood’s death as well as, through the grandmother’s own death, highlight Little Red Riding Hood’s wrongful actions in talking to the wolf and the seemingly lethal gift of the too-pretty red hood/hat which not only assures that the wolf notices her, but is the typical symbol of her “budding sexuality” (Bettelheim,173).  The wolf too is less wild and less likely to literally kill anyone.  He does not even murder the grandmother in the grisly way given in “The Story of Grandmother,” but instead swallows her whole, turning her into himself, so that he can teach Little Red Riding Hood her final lesson about sexuality, rape and a virtual (or literal), death from prematurely encountering sex.  The blame in Perrault’s tale falls squarely on Little Red Riding Hood’s shoulders, with her actions heralding her doom, even if her grandmother initiated the process by giving her the hood or hat and the wolf actively seeks her out, winning her over through smooth talk.  This is almost entirely a moral story attempting to play both to the French bourgeois taste for moralizing literature for children that imparted new codes of behavior and yet also bended to their still very sensual adult tastes by adding/keeping the double-meaning details for which the conte de fees would become rather famous.  Approximately one hundred years later, between 1811 and 1812, this tale found its way into the hands of Germany’s foremost folk and fairy tale recorders and collectors, the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (Zipes, 14).