Alexandra Laylor 

Professor Pastore
FIQWS Fairytale 10105
11 October 2022

         The Creation of Sex-role Based Interactions In Older Adaptions of Fairy Tales 

Think of what it means to be a predator. Does the predator in mind have a specific profile or sex? In the older versions of the Little Red riding hood Fairytale —written by authors like Grimm and Perrault— a particular criterion of who a predator and its prey has been formulated and set as standard. In the case of this fairytale, a wolf is designated as the predator, with Red Riding Hood set as its prey. Their interactions throughout the old versions—whether it be in the woods, at grandma’s house, etc.—act as the vector in presenting these criteria, which solidify a specific identity of the predator and the prey—which according to the old versions: the predator is always a male, and the prey is always a female. However, reasonably recent authors like Angela Carter blurs/disrupt older versions’ criteria of who matches the clear-cut identity drawn for a predator and prey. With Carter altering the interactions in her renditions of the fairytale, Red riding hood, a female, could somewhat be viewed as a predator. But based on the older versions, a male can only fit the criteria of the predator. The difference between the older versions and Carter’s versions makes me wonder: What notions influenced the older versions’ authors’ decision to assign a male sex to the tale’s predator, the wolf, and a female sex to the tale’s prey, red riding hood? With the aid of the sources incorporated into this essay, that question will be answered. 

SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS 

In “Stripping for the Wolf: Rethinking Representations of Gender in Children’s Literature,” Elizabeth Marshall, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland, strives to add to the feminist framework and expand the theoretical paradigms widely utilized in the analysis of gender and sexuality representation across children’s literature (Marshall 256). Her credentials as a person who teaches and researches gender/sexuality presented in children’s and adolescent literature aid in giving validity to her points made in her article due to her familiarity with the concept of her topic. Marshall utilizes poststructural feminist and literary theories to inspect gender in children’s literature. For the inspection, Marshall found that the sex-role paradigms, commonly used in children’s Literature like Red Riding Hood, are helpful in analyzing gender but also limited. While on the other hand, a poststructural lens enables researchers to view gender as a hypothetical socially produced identity marker. Her inspection also made clear how sex-role theories boxes gender identity as one aspect, “The construction of the girl in Hyman’s “Little Red Riding Hood,” for instance, relies on competing discourses rather than on a unified discourse of femininity. In addition, liberal feminists tend to privilege certain modes of girlhood, namely white”(Marshall 268). However, Post Structural theories open the floor for gendered identity to be theories on a more globally defined term. Last but not least, the inspection examines how Post Structural literary theory suggests that children’s literature should not be seen as a source of accurate representation of gender; it is instead a source of the limited view of certain cultural representations. Elizabeth Marshall’s article allows me to understand a significant aspect of sex-bound roles, which is the concept of gender identification. Presenting gender as specific modes of males and females, leads to the notion of gender identity being classified off of certain expectations of how a man/woman should act. This could explain why older sources of the Red Riding Hood tale stick to a limited description of gender to define the identity of prey and predator.

  In “Seeing is believing, but touching is the truth: Female Spectatorship and Sexuality in The Company of Wolves,” Catherine Lappas, an associate at Saint Louis University, proclaimed in her literary criticism that the gaze in  Angela Carter’s short story turned Film The Company of Wolves is not entirely brought on or seized by the male perspective but more so in the female perspective which signifies an essential moment for female spectatorship, and when accompanied with touch, accurately represents the potential expression of female desire (116). Lappas includes different points of view in her paper—whether they are applauding Carter’s use of the infamous gaze or scrutinizing/against her notion—one of such points of view is from Jack Zipes, who relatively believes in the gaze being classified as male. Lappas introduces Zipes’s understanding of the gaze as a medium through which male writers express their sexual desires toward women and their expectations of how women should be perceived. Lappas utilizes Carter’s alternative in her work that the gaze can be possessed by females to show that they have sexual desires of their own and that the female gaze is not to mirror the males’ desire for them, but instead, it signals the product of their want. Lappas also touches on how Carter’s work addresses the sexism towards the feminine gaze, to which female curiosity and daring nature are seen as encouragement for male violence and seduction toward women. Whereas older versions like Perault and Grimm would punish female curiosity and desire, Carter encourages it and shows that females can be curious and can be the ones to initiate seduction. Lappas concluded her argument with how Carter demonstrates that “it is sight in combination with touch, rather than sight alone, which most accurately reflects the complex and polymorphous potential of female desire” (Lappas 116). She explains that females can possess the gaze to express their desire, but it differs in that it can be seen/interpreted through the knowledge of touching, while the male gaze may rely on the knowledge of sight alone, according to patriarchy. Lappas points out that this could be seen in Carter’s film The Company of Wolves, where a little red riding hood shows her genuine desire for the wolf when she embraces him by engulfing him in her arms. This source contributes to my understanding of why authors of older versions of  Little Red Riding Hood would always have the predator’s sex as male because they go by the notion that the gaze could only be possessed by males. In the fairytale’s case, the gaze represents the predator’s desires and evil intentions toward Red Riding Hood.

In “The Girl Who Sighed Wolf,” Manohla Dargis, a co-chief film critic of The New York Times since 2004, labels the film “Red Riding Hood” directed by Catherine Hardwicke, as a goofily amusing film that is not in the slightest degree frightening, but hit its mark for showcasing sensuality and bloodshed, however, it is pretty tamer than its fairytale source which is often-gruesome. Dargis being a co-chief critic of films for a good number of years marks her as an expert in analyzing and critiquing film choices and how intended messages are displayed. She first talks about how the theme of sensuality was perfectly illustrated through Amanda Seyfried, who plays the role of the film’s red riding hood: Valerie, an excellent performance guided by Hardwicke’s guidance. Hardwicke’s awareness of how to weaponize beauty in her film and how she has a way with young actors allows her to draw out young actors’ full potential in delivering an outstanding performance. Dargis also discusses a crucial moment in one of Hardwicke’s earlier scenes that foreshadowed Valrie’s readiness to kill/shed blood if need be. She talks about the scene where young Valrie tries to make her friend Peter slaughter a rabbit, but he refuses, so instead, the end of the scene shows her holding a knife to the bunny like a natural-born killer” (Dargis). Dargis added that Hardwicke relays the story theme of sex and death weakly. Dargis suggests that Hardwicke’s choice of weakly adapting those themes was due to the movie’s target audience being young adults.  The understanding I gathered from this source about the topic is that older versions may go by the notion that men can become natural-born killers over women, but in Valerie’s and Peter’s case, Valerie had no problem embodying the role of killer, while Peter was opposed to it. 

SYNTHESIS 

While Elizabeth Marshall’s article “Stripping for the Wolf: Rethinking Representations of Gender in Children’s Literature” offers up a direct view on the misidentification of gender in assessing the sex-role problem of the Little Red Riding Hood fairytale, Catherine Lappas’s article  “Seeing is believing, but touching is the truth: Female Spectatorship and Sexuality in The Company of Wolves,” offers up a concept: The gaze of desire and intentions, between the two sexes as a means of assessing the sex-role problem in the fairy tale. Manohla Dargis’s movie review article “The Girl Who Sighed Wolf” also offers a different way of evaluating the sex-role problem, which is through reversing a male-described role and giving it to a female and vice versa; In this case, it is the switching of the role of natural-born killer/predator to Valerie.

CONCLUSION

In this paper, the notion behind why predators in the old versions of The Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale were always assigned the sex of male was explored. Some notions behind why authors of older versions of the Little Red Riding Hood tale preferred to imagine the predator as male is because their idea of what gender is may be narrow and limited to one culture; they may not consider the idea of women possessing the gaze that can reflect their true needs; they also maybe could not imagine a female as a predator over the choice a male being a predator. After examining my sources, the following questions are some things I would like to know further about: How does predetermined sex-role assignment affect both sexes? What criticism did Angela Carter face with her changing the norm of sex role interactions that older versions set? 


Works Cited

Dargis, Manohla. “The Girl Who Sighed Wolf.” The New York Times, 10 Mar. 2011, https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/11/movies/red-riding-hood-with-amanda-seyfried-review.html?searchResultPosition=9. Accessed 16 Oct. 2022.
Lappas, Catherine. “Seeing Is Believing, but Touching Is the Truth: Female Spectatorship and Sexuality in The Company of Wolves.” Women’s Studies, vol. 25, no. 2, Jan. 1996, p. 115. EBSCOhost,https://doi-org.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/10.1080/00497878.1996.9979099. Accessed 16 Oct. 2022.
Marshall, Elizabeth. “Stripping for the Wolf: Rethinking Representations of Gender in Children’s Literature.”Reading Research Quarterly, vol. 39, no. 3, July 2004, pp. 256–70. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/10.1598/RRQ.39.3.1.  Accessed 16 Oct. 2022.