The Little Riding Hood: Self-Defense In Different Eras

Introduction
The story of the “Little Red Riding Hood” (Petit chaperone rouge), is perhaps one of the most famous fairy tales in the world. The tale filled with and sense of adventure and packed with good morals are indeed one of the best supplements to pique the children’s interests as well as educate them about the dangers of the outside world. Contrary to what most people know, most fairy tales, such as the Red Riding Hood, were conceived in an entirely different light and would surely be considered as obscene by today’s standards. Nevertheless, thanks to the efforts of chroniclers to make a more suitable version of these tales, that we’ve now enjoyed these stories to the extent that it has become a part of the modern-day popular culture. In retrospect, however, I believe that these looking back at these different versions of the same story would prove to be useful since they provide a cross-section of the different times when they were conceived. Specifically, the author of this article believes that the reason why Charles Perrault’s and The Grimm Brothers’ version is different is because of the changing times between the authors, and the morals that are particularly suited for these contexts. To further this idea, I’ve dedicated the next section to analyzing the underlying contexts behind the times when the two authors have wrote their pieces.
Particularly, Grimm lived in the era of romanticism, whereas Perrault has preceded him years prior in the era of classicism. As according to Encyclopædia Britannica, romanticism is “emphasized the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental” (p.1). Thus, by the end of this article, I would demonstrate my hypothesis that the reason why Grimm’s version is different is due to the idea of “security and the need for self-defense” for an individual in relation to the era when he lived, which is characterized by the “personal, emotional, and the subjective”. Thus, by using a friendlier approach for towards the role of women, they were able to elicit a better emotional response, that is primarily characterized by most fairy tale stories today, that is the “happy ever after”.
Self-defense in Different Eras
The Little Red Riding Hood appeals to the many for its story is simply straightforward and for the reason that showcases a little girl as the main protagonist. In both versions of the story, the journey of our main protagonist starts off with a task to deliver food for her grandmother who was sick. During the journey the girl would then encounter a wolf that would trick her so that he could wait in the grandmother’s house and take advantage of the little girl. On the classic version of the story (Perrault’s) the wolf tricked the girl into using a different path for the purposes of knowing which is faster (Perrault, 2). On Grimm’s rendition of the same story, Red Riding Hood was convinced by the wolf (Grimm and Grimm, p.3) by prompting her to explore the deep forest so that she could fetch some flowers for her grandmother. In relation to the idea of self-defense in diff...