El poder de hablar consigo mismo

The voices within: The power of talking to yourself
 03 June 2013 by Charles Fernyhough

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Our inner speech turns out to shape our thoughts and decisions in more ways than you might have imagined

IT CAN happen anywhere. I can be driving, walking by the river or sitting quietly in front of a blank screen. Sometimes suddenly, sometimes gradually and imperceptibly, I become conscious of words that no one else can hear, telling me things, guiding me, evaluating my actions. I am doing something perfectly ordinary – I am thinking– and it takes the form of a voice in my head.

If you ask people to reflect on their own stream of consciousness, they often describe experiences like this. Usually termed inner speech, it is also referred to as the inner voice, internal monologue or dialogue, or verbal thought. But although philosophers have long been interested in the relationship between language and thought, many believed that inner speech lay outside the realms of science. That is now changing, with new experimental designs for encouraging it, interfering with it and neuroimaging it. We are beginning to understand how the experience is created in the brain; its subjective qualities – essentially, what the words "sound" like; and its role in processes such as self-control and self-awareness. The voice in our head is finally revealing its secrets, and it is just as powerful as you might have imagined.

Much of modern research has been inspired by the long-neglected theories of L. S. Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist whose career unfolded in the early days of the Soviet Union. Vygotsky only studied psychology for about 10 years before his untimely death from tuberculosis in his late thirties – a fact that has led some to call him "the Mozart of psychology". Starting with observations of children talking to themselves while playing, Vygotsky hypothesised that this "private speech" develops out of social dialogue with parents and caregivers. Over time, these private mutterings become further internalised to form inner speech.

If Vygotsky was right, inner speech should have some very special properties. Because it develops from social interactions, it should take on some of the qualities of a dialogue, an exchange between different points of view. Vygotsky also proposed that inner speech undergoes some important transformations as it becomes internalised, such as becoming abbreviated or condensed relative to external speech. For instance, when hearing a loud metallic sound outside at night and realising that the cat is to blame, you probably wouldn't say to yourself, "The cat has knocked the dustbin over." Instead, you might just say, "The cat," since that utterance contains all the information you need to express to yourself.

Partly because Vygotsky's work was suppressed by the Soviet authorities, it was a long time before his ideas became well known in the West, and even longer before researchers tested whether people actually report these qualities in their inner speech. In the first such study, conducted in 2011 at Durham University, UK, my colleague Simon McCarthy-Jones and I found that 60 per cent of people report that their inner speech has the to-and-fro quality of a conversation.

Eavesdropping on thoughts

So-called "self-report" methods have their limitations, not least that people are being asked to comment retrospectively on their inner experience. Another method, offering a richer picture of people's thoughts during a particular time period, was developed by psychologist Russell Hurlburt at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. It involves participants being trained to give very detailed descriptions of their own inner experience in response to random cues from a beeper. Such studies have shown that people often report a train of thought unfolding more quickly than circumstances ought to have allowed, and yet not seeming rushed, which could be taken as evidence for the compression of sentences that Vygotsky postulated.

Vygotsky's theory also suggests some possibilities about the way inner speech is created in the brain. If it is derived from external speech, as he proposed, both might be expected to activate the same neural networks. Sure enough, long after his death, fMRI studies have linked inner speech to the left inferior frontal gyrus, including a region called Broca's area, which is known to be important for speech production.

Quite how much our inner and outer speech overlap remains a matter of debate. According to one view, inner speech is just external speech without articulation: the brain plans an utterance, but stops short of kicking our muscles into action. If that is the case, our internal voice should resonate with the same qualities of tone, timbre and accent as our ordinary external speech.

There are some hints that this may be the case. In their lab at the University of Nottingham, UK, psychologists Ruth Filik and Emma Barber recently asked participants to read limericks silently in their heads. One was: There was a young runner from Bath, Who stumbled and fell on the path; She didn't get picked, As the coach was quite strict, So he gave the position to Kath.

The other limerick read: There was an old lady from Bath, Who waved to her son down the path; He opened the gates, And bumped into his mates, Who were Gerry, and Simon, and Garth.

Importantly, some of the participants had northern English accents, with short vowels (pronouncing "Bath" to rhyme with "Kath"), while the others had the long vowels of a southern accent ("Bath" rhyming with "Garth"). By tracking the volunteers' eye-movements, the researchers showed that reading was disrupted when the final word of the limerick did not rhyme in that volunteer's accent – when a southerner read "Bath" then "Kath", for instance. Although this study suggests that inner speech does indeed have an accent – and presumably other qualities of our spoken voice – one concern is that the inner speech we produce when reading is not necessarily the same thing as our everyday, spontaneous inner speech, which means that more naturalistic studies are needed.

So much for the subjective qualities of inner speech. What, if anything, does it actually do? Vygotsky proposed that words in inner speech function as psychological tools that transform the task in question, just as the use of a screwdriver transforms the task of assembling a shed. Putting our thoughts into words gives them a more tangible form which makes them easier to use. It may also be that verbal thought can allow communication between other cognitive systems, effectively providing a common language for the brain.

One of Vygotsky's most enticing predictions was that private and inner speech give us a way of taking control of our own behaviour, by using words to direct our actions. While driving up to a roundabout in busy traffic, for example, I'll still tell myself, "Give way to the right", especially if I've just been driving overseas. Knocking out the systems responsible for inner speech should therefore impede our performance on certain tasks that require planning and control, offering a powerful test of the hypothesis.

Such experiments typically require participants to repeat a word to themselves out loud to suppress their verbal thoughts while they perform a task (a technique known as articulatory suppression). Using this set-up, Jane Lidstone, one of my colleagues at Durham University, looked at the performance of children aged 7 to 10 on a planning task known as the Tower of London, which involves moving coloured balls around between three sticks of differing lengths in order to match a given pattern. Lidstone found that children performed worse if they had to repeat a word out loud, compared with trials in which they instead tapped repetitively with one of their feet. Similar findings have emerged from studies with adults. Alexa Tullett and Michael Inzlicht of the University of Toronto in Canada gave student participants a classic test of control known as the Go/No-Go task, which required them to press a button the moment they saw a yellow square pop up on the screen, but to remain still when they saw a purple square. It is a considerable test of impulse control, and, as predicted, the students were less accurate during articulatory suppression, compared with when they were doing a spatial task. Although experiments like these seem artificial, they allow researchers the kind of control over conditions that good science demands to test something like self-control.

Pep talks

So we know that inner speech has a role in regulating behaviour, but could it also have a role in motivating it? The research on children's private speech (Vygotsky's precursor of inner speech, remember) shows that it frequently has an emotional or motivational flavour. Athletes often give themselves pep talks before, during and after performances. In our study of the quality of inner speech, McCarthy-Jones and I found that two-thirds of students reported using internal speech that either evaluated their behaviour or served to motivate it.

Inner speech may even help us to become aware of who we are as individuals. Some philosophers have proposed that awareness of inner speech is important for understanding our own mental processes, an aspect of what psychologists call metacognition. Children typically do not become aware of their own inner speech until around age 4, although it is uncertain whether that reflects their inability to reflect on their own thought processes, or the fact that inner speech is not yet fully internalised by that age. At Mount Royal University in Calgary, Canada, psychologist Alain Morin has found that people who use inner speech more often show better self-understanding. "Inner speech allows us to verbally analyse our emotions, motives, thoughts and behavioural patterns," he says. "It puts to the forefront of consciousness what would otherwise remain mostly subconscious."

While researchers are still gathering the evidence, these results certainly suggest that the voice in the head is important to many cognitive processes. But what about people who, for various reasons, don't talk to themselves in the usual way? As you might expect, deaf people who communicate in sign language often talk to themselves in sign too. People with autism, meanwhile, who often have problems with linguistic communication, seem not to use inner speech for planning, although they do use it for other purposes such as short-term memory. A more dramatic difficulty comes from damage to the language areas of the brain, which can silence some people's inner voices. One such individual, neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor, reported a lack of self-awareness after a stroke that damaged her language system – supporting Morin's view that verbal thinking may be important for self-understanding.

Lending an ear to the differences between people might also tell us more about the dark side of inner speech, following a growing understanding that our internal monologue is not always beneficial to our well-being. When we worry and ruminate, we often do it in words, and our inner speech may contribute to anxiety and depression by keeping thoughts in the head that would be better off discarded. Inner speech may play its biggest role, however, in an experience that is often associated with other forms of mental disorder. People with certain psychiatric diagnoses (particularly schizophrenia), but also a small minority of people who do not have a mental illness, report the experience of hearing a person speak when there is no one present. Voice-hearing, or auditory verbal hallucination, is an enigmatic phenomenon whose cognitive and neural bases are not yet well understood. One prominent theory proposes that it occurs because the individual produces an utterance in inner speech that they do not recognise as their own. The result is that a bit of speech that was actually self-generated becomes attributed to another person: an alien voice.

Various lines of evidence converge to support this view. An early observation was that people who hear voices produce very slight activation in their articulatory muscles when their voices occur. Cognitive behaviour therapy to treat voice-hearing often focuses on blocking the phonological loop, by articulatory suppression or listening to music, so that the rogue inner speech cannot be generated. But the phenomenon of voice-hearing is undoubtedly more complicated than this. McCarthy-Jones, now at Macquarie University in New South Wales, Australia, notes that "while inner speech appears to be the basis of some voices, others are actual or mutated memories of earlier life-events (often traumatic ones)". Many researchers, particularly those associated with the worldwide hearingthevoice.org/looking-for-support Hearing Voices Movement, now believe that voices have important meanings for the individual, and therefore that they need to be understood rather than suppressed.

A shower of words

There is much more we need to learn about inner speech's roles in our thinking and behaviour. Some insights may come from people who, without any disability, don't report any inner speech at all. For some of these people, it may be that inner speech is present, but that it is so condensed and abbreviated that it no longer seems very like language. It will also be interesting to note the consequences when people try to suppress their inner speech (and indeed all conscious thought) through varieties of meditation.

One thing we can be sure about is that inner speech takes many forms. Some will be good for explicit self-regulation and motivation; others will be closer to a kind of deep thinking with no particular sound quality. In fact, understanding inner speech better will help us to be clearer about what we mean by the nebulous term "thinking", and in this way make progress with some long-standing philosophical problems about how language, cognition and consciousness work together.

When I think about my own inner speech, I keep coming back to Vygotsky's ideas about "condensation". Sometimes I catch myself in the middle of a full-blown argument with myself, debating things from different points of view. Most of the time, though, the experience is more fragmentary: thoughts and feelings that are close to being put into language, but are not yet quite the kind of speech you would hear spoken out loud. Vygotsky likened this transition of thought into speech to "a cloud shedding a shower of words". Condensed or expanded, this rich internal dialogue must hold clues to understanding the distinctively creative, flexible properties of human thought.

This article appeared in print under the headline "Life in the chatter box"

Bibliography

1. Links to the relevant papers can be found in the online version of this article

Charles Fernyhough is a writer and psychologist at Durham University. He directs Hearing the Voice (hearingthevoice.org), a project on voice-hearing and inner speech funded by the Wellcome Trust. His new novel, A Box of Birds, is published by Unbound.

Porn-Induced Sexual Dysfunction=PorNerización

Research: web porn stops men fromperforming
Men in their 20s have a lot to worry about.
Y los del doble de edad, tenemos dobles preocupaciones?

Will they ever get a job? Will they ever keep that job for more than a few months? Will they ever have enough money to pay their student loans and still be able to spend $100 a week on pot? Will they ever put their pants on the right way round at the first attempt?

Now it seems that something they do for recreation, in order to take their mind off their worries, is having increasingly worrying effects.

My hard-core reading of Psychology Today caused me to come across a pained and painful piece called "Porn-Induced Sexual Dysfunction is a Growing Problem."

The thesis behind this frightful news--supported by research performed in Italy and elsewhere--is that Internet porn desensitizes young men to such a degree that, when actually faced with a real human from their target sex group, they are entirely unable to participate as they should.

No, no. Not a good idea.

(Credit: CC AmusingThailand/Flickr)

Indeed, research from the University of Padua in Italy suggested that erectile dysfunction due to excessive Web porn begins for many men in their teens. 70 percent of those young men who came to seek help for performance issues said they were Web porn habitues.

The weary and wise might offer that this problem must be psychological. Yet the researchers declare: "Hold on there, big brains."

For their belief is that Web porn simply numbs men's pleasure receptacles, desensitizing responses to the neurochemical dopamine. This is a chemical associated with reward and, in young men, researchers believe that gorging on Internet porn simply shuts down the physiological sense of reward from sex.

Because the Web allows for so many different--and, if the user so chooses--ever more intense stimulations, the mind-body continuum begins to feel nothing at all. Yes, it's a little like 15 minutes of "Keeping Up With the Kardashians."

It seems that when these young men are suddenly confronted with a real sexual encounter, the idea of coupling with a real human being feels suddenly numbing--and therefore frightening.

You might wonder what happens when young men try to wean themselves off their Web porn habits. Studies show that they experience all sorts of withdrawal pains, including insomnia and catchall flulike symptoms.

I know that the Web is supposed to be the repository of all that is open and shared and loving. It seems possible, though, that its very ease offers so much of a good thing that the put-upon males of Generation Y just can't cope, poor dears.

Perhaps all porn Web sites should exclude anyone under 35. For public health reasons, you understand.

Y también a los mayores de 36!!

Un método peligroso

http://blogs.elpais.com/version-muy-original/  Un método peligroso,

La bella durmiente, versión original

Dornröschen - Rosita Espin[os]a
Hace muchos años vivían un rey y una reina quienes cada día decían: "¡Ah, si al menos tuviéramos un hijo!" Pero el hijo no llegaba. Sin embargo, una vez que la reina tomaba un baño, una rana saltó del agua a la tierra, y le dijo: "Tu deseo será realizado y antes de un año, tendrás una hija."

Lo que dijo la rana se hizo realidad, y la reina tuvo una niña tan preciosa que el rey no podía ocultar su gran dicha, y ordenó una fiesta. Él no solamente invitó a sus familiares, amigos y conocidos, sino también a un grupo de hadas, para que ellas fueran amables y generosas con la niña. Eran trece estas hadas en su reino, pero solamente tenía doce platos de oro para servir en la cena, así que tuvo que prescindir de una de ellas.

La fiesta se llevó a cabo con el máximo esplendor, y cuando llegó a su fin, las hadas fueron obsequiando a la niña con los mejores y más portentosos regalos que pudieron: una le regaló la Virtud, otra la Belleza, la siguiente Riquezas, y así todas las demás, con todo lo que alguien pudiera desear en el mundo.

Cuando la décimoprimera de ellas había dado sus obsequios, entró de pronto la décimotercera. Ella quería vengarse por no haber sido invitada, y sin ningún aviso, y sin mirar a nadie, gritó con voz bien fuerte: "¡La hija del rey, cuando cumpla sus quince años, se punzará con un huso de hilar, y caerá muerta inmediatamente!" Y sin más decir, dio media vuelta y abandonó el salón.

Todos quedaron atónitos, pero la duodécima, que aún no había anunciado su obsequio, se puso al frente, y aunque no podía evitar la malvada sentencia, sí podía disminuirla, y dijo: "¡Ella no morirá, pero entrará en un profundo sueño por cien años!"

El rey trataba por todos los medios de evitar aquella desdicha para la joven. Dio órdenes para que toda máquina hilandera o huso en el reino fuera destruído. Mientras tanto, los regalos de las otras doce hadas, se cumplían plenamente en aquella joven. Así ella era hermosa, modesta, de buena naturaleza y sabia, y cuanta persona la conocía, la llegaba a querer profundamente.

Sucedió que en el mismo día en que cumplía sus quince años, el rey y la reina no se encontraban en casa, y la doncella estaba sola en palacio. Así que ella fue recorriendo todo sitio que pudo, miraba las habitaciones y los dormitorios como ella quiso, y al final llegó a una vieja torre. Ella subió por las angostas escaleras de caracol hasta llegar a una pequeña puerta. Una vieja llave estaba en la cerradura, y cuando la giró, la puerta súbitamente se abrió. En el cuarto estaba una anciana sentada frente a un huso, muy ocupada hilando su lino.

"Buen día, señora," dijo la hija del rey, "¿Qué haces con eso?" - "Estoy hilando," dijo la anciana, y movió su cabeza.

"¿Qué es esa cosa que da vueltas sonando tan lindo?" dijo la joven.

Y ella tomó el huso y quiso hilar también. Pero nada más había tocado el huso, cuando el mágico decreto se cumplió, y ellá se punzó el dedo con él.

En cuanto sintió el pinchazo, cayó sobre una cama que estaba allí, y entró en un profundo sueño. Y ese sueño se hizo extensivo para todo el territorio del palacio. El rey y la reina quienes estaban justo llegando a casa, y habían entrado al gran salón, quedaron dormidos, y toda la corte con ellos. Los caballos también se durmieron en el establo, los perros en el césped, las palomas en los aleros del techo, las moscas en las paredes, incluso el fuego del hogar que bien flameaba, quedó sin calor, la carne que se estaba asando paró de asarse, y el cocinero que en ese momento iba a jalarle el pelo al joven ayudante por haber olvidado algo, lo dejó y quedó dormido. El viento se detuvo, y en los árboles cercanos al castillo, ni una hoja se movía.

Pero alrededor del castillo comenzó a crecer una red de espinos, que cada año se hacían más y más grandes, tanto que lo rodearon y cubrieron totalmente, de modo que nada de él se veía, ni siquiera una bandera que estaba sobre el techo. Pero la historia de la bella durmiente "Preciosa Rosa" [Rosita Espinosa], que así la habían llamado, se corrió por toda la región, de modo que de tiempo en tiempo hijos de reyes llegaban y trataban de atravesar el muro de espinos queriendo alcanzar el castillo. Pero era imposible, pues los espinos se unían tan fuertemente como si tuvieran manos, y los jóvenes eran atrapados por ellos, y sin poderse liberar, obtenían una miserable muerte.

Y pasados cien años, otro príncipe llegó también al lugar, y oyó a un anciano hablando sobre la cortina de espinos, y que se decía que detrás de los espinos se escondía una bellísima princesa, llamada Preciosa Rosa, quien ha estado dormida por cien años, y que también el rey, la reina y toda la corte se durmieron por igual. Y además había oído de su abuelo, que muchos hijos de reyes habían venido y tratado de atravesar el muro de espinos, pero quedaban pegados en ellos y tenían una muerte sin piedad. Entonces el joven príncipe dijo:

-"No tengo miedo, iré y veré a la bella Preciosa Rosa."-

El buen anciano trató de disuadirlo lo más que pudo, pero el joven no hizo caso a sus advertencias.

Pero en esa fecha los cien años ya se habían cumplido, y el día en que Preciosa Rosa debía despertar había llegado. Cuando el príncipe se acercó a donde estaba el muro de espinas, no había otra cosa más que bellísimas flores, que se apartaban unas de otras de común acuerdo, y dejaban pasar al príncipe sin herirlo, y luego se juntaban de nuevo detrás de él como formando una cerca.

En el establo del castillo él vio a los caballos y en los céspedes a los perros de caza con pintas yaciendo dormidos, en los aleros del techo estaban las palomas con sus cabezas bajo sus alas. Y cuando entró al palacio, las moscas estaban dormidas sobre las paredes, el cocinero en la cocina aún tenía extendida su mano para regañar al ayudante, y la criada estaba sentada con la gallina negra que tenía lista para desplumar.

Él siguio avanzando, y en el gran salón vió a toda la corte yaciendo dormida, y por el trono estaban el rey y la reina.

Entonces avanzó aún más, y todo estaba tan silencioso que un respiro podía oirse, y por fin llegó hasta la torre y abrió la puerta del pequeño cuarto donde Preciosa Rosa estaba dormida. Ahí yacía, tan hermosa que él no podía mirar para otro lado, entonces se detuvo y la besó. Pero tan pronto la besó, Preciosa Rosa abrió sus ojos y despertó, y lo miró muy dulcemente.

Entonces ambos bajaron juntos, y el rey y la reina despertaron, y toda la corte, y se miraban unos a otros con gran asombro. Y los caballos en el establo se levantaron y se sacudieron. Los perros cazadores saltaron y menearon sus colas, las palomas en los aleros del techo sacaron sus cabezas de debajo de las alas, miraron alrededor y volaron al cielo abierto. Las moscas de la pared revolotearon de nuevo. El fuego del hogar alzó sus llamas y cocinó la carne, y el cocinero le jaló los pelos al ayudante de tal manera que hasta gritó, y la criada desplumó la gallina dejándola lista para el cocido.

Días después se celebró la boda del príncipe y Preciosa Rosa con todo esplendor, y vivieron muy felices hasta el fin de sus vidas.

The original story of Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty is another fairy tale with a weird sexual twist. In original, non-censored versions, the young maiden is certainly not woken with a kiss.

Sleeping Beauty falls into a hundred-year sleep due to a curse by an evil fairy. The curse stated that she would sleep after being pricked in the finger by a spinning wheel. This of course happens, and our heroine falls asleep.

A prince arrives, and falls in lust with the sleeping girl. He rapes her. She becomes pregnant, and – still sleeping – gives birth to twins. The twins crawl out of her and feed from her. During one feeding, one of the babies accidentally starts sucking on a finger instead of a breast, and sucks out a splinter of wood under Sleeping Beauty’s fingernail. The curse is broken, and Sleeping Beauty wakes up.

The morals of the original Sleeping Beauty: Progress and advancement does not have to be seen in order to happen. Trying to prevent a child’s sexual awakening is impossible. Sometimes you have to wait a long time for sexual satisfaction. Children are not just parasitic – they can also help the parents.

El sendero de los alfileres o de las agujas

El Cuento de la abuela

Fuente (con correcciones)
“Había una mujer que acababa de cocer pan. Le dijo a su hija:
- Ve a llevarle esta hogaza calentita y esta botella de leche a tu abuelita.
Y la niña partió. En la encrucijada se topó con un bzou, (un hombre lobo), que le dijo:
- ¿Adónde vas?.
- Le llevo esta hogaza calentita y esta botella de leche a mi abuelita.
- ¿Qué camino tomarás? – le preguntó el bzou- ¿el de las agujas o el de los alfileres?
- El camino de las agujas, le dijo la niña.
- Vale, entonces yo tomaré el de los alfileres.
La pequeña niña se distrajo recogiendo agujas. Mientras tanto, el hombre lobo llegó a la casa de la abuela, la mató y puso un poco de su carne en la despensa y una botella de su sangre en el estante. La niña llegó y llamó a la puerta.
- Empuja- dijo el bzou- está cerrada con paja mojada.
- Buenos días, abuelita. Te traigo una hogaza calentita y una botella de leche.
- Ponlo en la despensa, mi niña. Prepárate algo con la carne que está allí, y bebe de la botella de vino que hay sobre el estante.
Mientras ella comía, un pequeño gato maullaba:
"¡Te estás comiendo  a tu abuela!"
-Tírale tu zapato a ese gato molestoso.
Cuando tomó se sirvió el vino un pajarito gorjeó:"¡Te estás bebiendo la sangre de  tu abuela!"
-Tírale el otro zapato a ese pajarito bullicioso!
- Desvístete, mi niña- dijo el hombre lobo- y échate aquí, junto a mí.
- ¿Dónde dejo el delantal?
-Tíralo al fuego, mi niña, ya no te va a hacer ninguna falta.

Y cada vez que le preguntaba dónde dejaba todas sus otras prendas, el corpiño, el vestido, las enaguas, las largas medias, el bzou respondía:
-Tíralas al fuego, mi niña, no las necesitarás nunca más.
Cuando se tumbó en la cama, la niña dijo:
- Ay, abuelita, ¡qué peluda eres!
- Así no paso frío, mi niña.
- Ay, abuelita, ¡qué uñas tan largas tienes!
- Así me rasco mejor, mi niña.
- Ay, abuelita, ¡qué hombros tan anchos tienes!
- Así puedo cargar la leña para el fuego, mi niña.
- Ay, abuelita, ¡qué orejas tan grandes tienes!
- Así te oigo mejor, mi niña.
- Ay, abuelita, ¡qué agujeros de la nariz tan grandes tienes!
- Así aspiro mejor el aroma de mi tabaco, mi niña.
- Ay, abuelita, ¡qué boca tan grande tienes!
- Es para comerte mejor, mi niña.
- ¡Oh abuelita, me he puesto mala¡ Déjame salir a hacer pipí!
- Mejor háztelo en la cama, mi niña.
- Ay, no, abuelita, quiero ir fuera.
- De acuerdo, pero no tardes mucho.
El bzou le ató un cordón de lana al pie y la dejó salir. Cuando la niña estuvo fuera, ató el cordón a un ciruelo que había en el jardín. El hombre lobo se impacientó y dijo:
- ¿Estás haciendo mucho? ¿Estás cagando?.
Cuando vio que no le respondía nadie, salió de la cama de un salto y vio que la niña había escapado. La siguió pero llegó a su casa justo cuando ella cerraba la puerta tras de sí, poniéndose a salvo.

El cuento de la abuela. Relato oral tradicional recogido hacia 1885. Tomado de P. Delarue y M.L. Tenèze, en Le conte populaire francais, Erasme, París, 1957.===================
Source

The Grandmother's Tale comes in a variety of forms, but in general the story goes like this:

*       *       *

A woman had finished her baking, so she asked her daughter to take a fresh galette and a pot of cream to her grandmother who lived in a forest cottage. The girl set off, and on her way she met a bzou [a werewolf].

The bzou stopped the girl and asked, "Where are you going? What do you carry?"
"I'm going my grandmother's house," said the girl, "and I'm bringing her bread and cream."
"Which path will you take?" the bzou asked. "The Path of Needles or the Path of Pins?"
"I'll take the Path of Pins," said the girl.
"Why then, I'll take the Path of Needles, and we'll see who gets there first."

The girl set off, the bzou set off, and the bzou reached Grandmother's cottage first. He quickly killed the old woman and gobbled her up, flesh, blood, and bone - except for a bit of flesh that he put in a little dish on the pantry shelf, and except for a bit of blood that he drained into a little bottle. Then the bzou dressed in Grandmother's cap and shawl and climbed into bed.

When the girl arrived, the bzou called out, "Pull the peg and come in, my child."
"Grandmother," said the girl, "Mother sent me here with a galette and a cream."
"Put them in the pantry, child. Are you hungry?
"Yes, I am, Grandmother."
"Then cook the meat that you'll find on the shelf. Are you thirsty?"
"Yes, I am, Grandmother."
"Then drink the bottle of wine you'll find on the shelf beside it, child."
As the young girl cooked and ate the meat, a little cat piped up and cried, "You are eating the flesh are your grandmother!"
"Throw your shoe at that noisy cat," said the bzou, and so she did.
As she drank the wine, a small bird cried, "You are drinking the blood of your grandmother!"
"Throw your other shoe at that noisy bird," said the bzou, and so she did.
When she finished her meal, the bzou said, "Are you tired from your journey, child? Then take off your clothes, come to bed, and I shall warm you up."
"Where shall I put my apron, Grandmother?"
"Throw it on the fire, child, for you won't need it anymore."
"Where shall I put my bodice, Grandmother?"
"Throw it on the fire, for you won't need it anymore."
The girl repeats this question for her skirt, her petticoat, and her stockings. The bzou gives the same answer, and she throws each item on the fire. As she comes to bed, she says to him, "Grandmother, how hairy you are!"

Illustration by Charles Robinson

"The better to keep you warm, my child,"
"Grandmother, what big arms you have!"
"The better to hold you close, my child."
"Grandmother, what big ears you have!"
"The better to hear you with, my child."
"Grandmother, what sharp teeth you have!"
"The better to eat you with, my child. Now come and lie beside me."
"But first I must go and relieve myself."
"Do it in the bed, my child."
"I cannot. I must go outside," the girl says cleverly, for now she knows that it's the bzou who is lying in Grandmother's bed.

"Then go outside," the bzou agrees, "but mind that you come back again quick. I'll tie your ankle with a woolen thread so I'll know just where you are." He ties her ankle with a sturdy thread, but as soon as the girl has gone outside she cuts the thread with her sewing scissors and ties it to a plum tree. The bzou, growing impatient, calls out, "What, have you finished yet, my child?" When no one answers, he calls again. "Are you watering the grass or feeding the trees?" No answer. He leaps from bed, follows the thread, and finds her gone.

The bzou gives chase, and soon the girl can hear him on the path just behind her. She runs and runs until she reaches a river that's swift and deep. Some laundresses work on the river bank. "Please help me cross," she says to them. They spread a sheet over the water, holding tightly to its ends. She crosses the bridge of cloth and soon she's safe on the other side.

Now the bzou reaches the river, and he bids the women help him cross. They spread a sheet over the water — but as soon as he is halfway across, the laundresses let go. The bzou falls into the water and drowns.

*       *       *

Numerous variants of The Grandmother's Tale were collected by French folklorists in the 19th and 20th centuries in the Loire basin, the Nivernais, the Forez, the Velay, the northern Alps, and the Italian Tyrol. Italo Calvino published a version from Abruzzo in his collection Italian Folktales (1956). Called The False Grandmother, in this story a hungry ogress takes the place of the wolf - but in other respects, the story is quite similar to the French folktale. Just as in the French story, the girl is offered a grisly meal — beans (really teeth) boiled in a pot and fitters (really ears) in a frying pan; and she, too, escapes by feigning the need to relieve herself outside. Calvino had doubts that The False Grandmother actually came from the Italian oral tradition, suggesting it may have derived instead from published versions by Perrault and the Brothers Grimm. Yet the Abruzzo tale contains elements that link it clearly to the older folk tradition: the cannibal meal, the toilet ruse, the heroine who plots her own escape... all things that disappeared as the tale moved from oral transmission to print.

In the oral tales, the girl must chose between two paths of needles and pins. In some versions she chooses pins, in other versions she chooses needles, and in a few versions the bzou chooses the path for her. Folklore scholars have different theories on what precisely these paths are meant to represent. Sewing and spinning terms are ones we find often in fairy tales, for the making of cloth and clothes was a constant part of women's labor prior to the 20th century. Such work was often done communally, in spinning rooms and around the evening fire, when gossip was shared and tales were told to relieve the monotony of the tasks at hand. Small wonder then that needles, pins, distaffs, spindles, and other symbols of women's work make frequent appearances in folk stories largely told by female storytellers, and some folklorists attach no more significance to the two different paths than this. Paul Delarue and Marc Soriano viewed the choice between pins and needles as a nonsense question, a false choice (for both are equally prickly), a deliberate absurdity. Yvonne Verdier disagreed in her fascinating essay "Le petit chaperon rouge dans la tradition orale," first published posthumously in 1995. Verdier had extensively recorded and studied the folklore, traditions, and rituals of rural women in remote areas of France, and she brought her wider understand of traditional women's stories to her examination of The Grandmother's Tale.

Illustration by Paul Woodruffe

In villages Verdier studied, she found that girls were sent at puberty to spend one winter with local seamstresses — a passage of time that marked a girl's change from child to young woman. Writing about a village in the Châtillonnais, she noted "This had less to do with learning to 'work,' to sew and use needles, than with refining herself, with polishing herself and learning to adorn herself, to dress up. The seamstress expressed this by saying of her young apprentices, 'They have been gathering pins.' When they reached the age of fifteen, both the winter with the seamstress and the ceremonial entry into the age group consecrated to St. Catherine signified their arrival at maidenhood (la vie de jeune fille), that is, permission to go dancing and to have sweethearts, of which the pin seemed to be the symbol. It was by offering them dozens of pins that boys formerly paid court to girls; it was by throwing pins into fountains that girls assured themselves a sweetheart."

While pins marked the path of maidenhood, needles implied sexual maturity. "As for the needles," wrote Verdier, "threaded through its eye, in the folklore of seamstresses it refers to an emphatically sexual symbolism." Indeed, in some parts of Europe, prostitutes once wore needles on their sleeves to advertise their profession. The versions of The Grandmothers Tale where the girl chooses to take the Path of Needles might well imply that the heroine is trying to grow up a bit too quickly.

At the end of the path, the werewolf awaits, disguised as the heroine's grandmother. We assume that he's wearing his human shape now, which makes the deception a bit more convincing, and yet — as Marina Warner points out in her fairy tale study From the Beast to the Blonde — it's odd that the granddaughter can't tell the difference. Perhaps, Warner suggests, it's because there's a similarity between the wolf and the crone. The grandmother lives apart in the forest — an unusual place for a helpless old woman, but a common dwelling for wise-women, witches, herbalists, and other femmes sauvage. Warner writes, "In the witch-hunting fantasies of early modern Europe they [wolf and crone] are the kind of beings associated with marginal knowledge, who possess pagan secrets and are in turn possessed by them. Both dwell in the woods, both need food urgently (one because she's sick, the other because he hasn't eaten in three days), and the little girl cannot quite tell them apart."

We're not surprised when the bzou slaughters the grandmother-that is, after all, what werewolves do. But the granddaughter's gruesome meal is shocking-particularly in those versions of the tale where the method of cooking and seasoning is elaborately described. Yvonne Verdier likens this ritual meal to a sacrificial act, a physical incorporation of the grandmother by her granddaughter. Such a scene is reminiscent of a wide variety of myths in which a warrior, shaman, sorcerer, or witch attains another's knowledge or power through the ritual ingestion of the other's heart, brain, liver, or spleen. But Verdier looks at this part of the story in more symbolic terms. "What the tale tells us," the scholar conjectures, "is the necessity of the female biological transformation by which the young eliminate the old in their own lifetime. Mothers will be replaced by their daughters and the circle will be closed with the arrival of their children's children. Moral: grandmothers will be eaten."

Illustration by Doré

The slow striptease then demanded by the wolf hints at another kind of appetite, as does the fact that the bzou is not just a wolf, but also a man. Though focusing on those aspects of the tale that speak the language of female initiation, Verdier also acknowledges the powerful role of the wolf at the center of the story. He is more than just a symbol of the dangers of sexual deception; he is the agent of change. "At the crossroads when she chooses the pins, he is at the origin of the choice; it is when she is face to face with him, under his gaze and at his demand, that she incorporates her grandmother and undresses. This is as much to say that he leads the game...." He leads, but he does not win-for in the folktale (unlike Perrault's retelling), she is not eaten by the wolf. She sees through the bzou's tricks at last, takes his measure, and shrewdly escapes him.

The werewolf is finally destroyed not by a passing woodsman or hunter, but by a group of women engaged in traditional women's labor. Verdier comments: "This double role held by the laundresses — on the one hand allowing the girl to pass, thereby rescuing her, on the other drowning the wolf, killing him — is consistent with their role in the social reality of village life. In fact the job of assisting in 'passages,' of helping in childbirth and helping people to die, is held-at least in the Châtillonnais-by one and the same person, an aged woman, a woman who can at the same time handle the swaddling and the shroud, who washes infants as she washes the dead....If the laundresses bring about the death of the wolf, they bring about the [re-]birth of the girl."

Looking at The Grandmother's Tale within the context of rural French history, we should also remember that the story comes from a time when wolves were still a real danger, and when people of all classes still believed in the existence of werewolves. As German folklorist Marianne Rumpf has documented, France was positively rife with werewolf trials in the 15th to 17th centuries — a masculine counterpart to the witch hysteria of the time. In werewolf trials, men stood accused of shape-shifting, killing and devouring children, as well as of incest and other unnatural acts. These men transformed into wolves, it was said, with the help of salves purchased from the Devil. Any man might be a wolf in disguise, and any wolf, a man. In 1598, to give just one example, a man named Jacques Raollet was tried as a werewolf in Angers, Touraine — which was a time and place when Perrault's own mother might have witnessed these events. Raollet was eventually declared insane and placed in a metal hospital, but other men were hung and burned for crimes supposedly committed as wolves. Rumpf points out that the regions of France where folklorists found The Grandmother's Tale being told were also the very regions where werewolf trials had once been widespread.

By the end of the 17th century, when Perrault published his Little Red Riding Hood, popular belief in werewolves had dwindled, at least among the upper classes. Educated people generally disdained the "backwards" folklore of the countryside-but that was about to change, due to a group of Parisian writers. These writers, congregating in the influential literary salons of Paris, created a vogue for magical stories, for which they coined the name contes des fées, or fairy tales. The salon writers drew inspiration from peasant tales of magic and enchantment—but they reworked this material, dressing it up in rococo language and aristocratic clothes, penning stories that commented on life in the court of Louis XIV. In many respects, the salon fairy tale movement was the fantasy genre of its day—lively, inventive, popular with readers, and held in suspicion by the literary establishment (in particular because it was a movement dominated by outspoken women authors). The salon tales proved to be so popular that they were eventually collected in forty-one volumes in the Cabinet des fées, and were also reprinted and translated in smaller editions across western Europe. Simplified versions of the stories reached the lower classes in the pages of the Bilbliotheque Bleue—inexpensive chapbooks sold by traveling booksellers-and many tales then filtered back down into the groundwater of the oral tradition.

Although not the first or the only successful fairy tale writer to emerge from the Paris salons, Charles Perrault is the author whose tales were most often reprinted, and are still read and loved today. Perrault was an influential civil servant in the court of Louis XIV, as well as a prolific writer on a variety of subjects and a member of the French Academy. He wrote his fairy tale collection, Histoires ou contes du temps passé, during the final years of a busy life-and probably little dreamed that this is what he'd be remembered for three hundred years later. Like the other salonnières, Perrault used themes and characters drawn from peasant tales, turning them into droll little stories for adult readers of the upper classes. Unlike a number of the other salon writers, however (including his niece, Marie-Jeanne L'Héritier), Perrault maintained traditional ideas about the role of women, and his tales demonstrated the "correct" behavior expected of women of his class. His heroines are uniformly beautiful (whereas we know nothing of the appearance of the granddaughter in The Grandmother's Tale); they also tend to be hapless creatures — either passive saints or active fools.

The heroine of Little Red Riding Hood, one of the eight stories in Perrault's Histoires, is a pretty, naive child, doted on by her mother and grandmother. Perrault gives her a red chaperon to wear — a fashionable little hat, not a hood, that was generally made out of velvet or satin. Red would have been an unusually flamboyant color choice for an unmarried girl; more modest attire, the text implies, might not have attracted the attention of the wolf. But attract him she does, and worse, she stops to talk with him, "not knowing any better." She tells him where Grandmother lives, whereupon he suggests a race to the house. He runs, while she foolishly dawdles, amusing herself with butterflies and flowers. (Here again the text implies that the heroine's fate is her own blessed fault.) Perrault eliminates the cannibal meal, and the details of the girl's striptease, merely telling us that the girl undresses and climbs into bed beside the wolf. When she says, "Grandmother, what big teeth you have," the wolf gives his well-known reply: "All the better to gobble you up!" And then he pounces, eats her up, and there the story ends. Perrault finishes with a moral, making the point of his story crystal clear. "Now there are real wolves, with hair pelts and enormous teeth," he writes, "but also wolves who seem perfectly charming, sweet-natured and obliging, who pursue young girls in the street and pay them the most flattering attention. Unfortunately, these smooth-tongued, smooth-pelted wolves are the most dangerous of all."**

Once again, let's look at this tale within an historical context, for it was published in 1796 for a very particular audience: aristocratic readers in the court of Louis XIV. The Sun King's court was famed for its wealth, its intrigues, and its sexual excesses, particularly as practiced at the King's sumptuous playground of Versailles. (Read the letters of the Marquise de Sévigné for a glimpse of this fascinatingly decadent society.) At the same time, virginity in young brides was absolutely insisted upon — for marriage was a business arrangement contracted between two families, and a girl's market value decreased sharply if her virginity was compromised. Perrault's story addressed the subject of seduction and rape — but rape as it was understood at the time, not as we define today. Fathers had the absolute legal to right to determine whom their daughters would marry — and a man who seduced or married a young woman without her father's consent was guilty of rape, regardless of the wishes of the woman in question. To avoid this occurrence, daughters were often kept locked in convents until they married in order to avoid romances and elopements. Perrault's own wife had been raised in a convent, emerging shortly before their marriage, and Perrault had laid eyes on her only once before the wedding.

At the same time, certain women were agitating for greater freedom for their sex — particularly the influential women who hosted the Parisian salons. Within the salons, men and women could mix more casually than was possible at court; they could converse about art and politics, and meet on more equal terms. Perrault himself was a frequenter of the salons (one of them run by L'Héritier); and as an academician, he championed Modern culture, which was generally more favorable to women. But in his tales he consistently stripped folk heroines of the power of self-determination, holding up modesty and demur good manners as the feminine ideal. By lacking these things, Red Riding Hood walks blindly into the jaws of the wolf; and her fate is as merciless as that of girls seduced by wolves in human skin. The wolves are only doing what comes naturally; it's female behavior that is under scrutiny here. As Catherine Orenstein writes in Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked, "Perrault's 'girls' are bien faites and gentilles: of the aristocracy. His warning is not simply to girls, but to the well-bred, educated women of high society who, in inviting men and women together in mixed company, set a dangerous precedent. Perrault's wolf is the dapper charmer of Parisian high society, seducer of young women and a threat to the family patrimony-he is, as one folklorist has called him, the 'unsuitable suitor," who insinuated his way into the best beds in town, deflowering young women and robbing their value as virgin pawns in the marriage de raison."

Illustration by Arthur Rackham

Little Red Riding Hood was a popular tale, and it soon spread beyond the borders of France. As it became well known, elements from Perrault's story (such as the red chaperon and the foolish heroine) slipped into the oral tradition just as though they'd always been there. When the Brothers Grimm published their version of the story, Little Red-cap, one hundred years later, they convincingly proclaimed it as part of the oral folk tradition of Germany. Contrary to public perception, however, the stories published by Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm in their famous collection of German folktales did not come straight from the mouths of stout German peasants. Many tales came from their circle of middle class friends, who had heard them from nursemaids and governesses (some of whom were French), and whose re-tellings bore the influence of literary tales from France and Italy. The Grimms collected Little Red-cap from Marie Hassenpflug, an educated woman of French Huguenot ancestry; it's a tale complete with red hat and gobbling wolf that clearly derives from Perrault. They then altered the story for publication, as they did with many of their tales — particularly in the later editions of the collection, aimed more and more at children. (The first edition had been geared toward scholars.) The Grimms begin their tale with a warning from the mother instructing Little Red-cap to stay on the path, which subtly shifts the emphasis of the story to the girl's disobedience. Whereas Perrault had warned girls to be modest and chaste lest they be gobbled up by the wolf, the Grimms warn them to mind the rules and stay on the straight and narrow. They also changed the ending, adding a hunter who comes to save the day. He cuts the wolf's belly open, and out steps Grandmother and Little Red-cap, as good as new. The wolf's belly is then filled with stones, which causes him to fall down dead. Just in case we don't get the point, there's a second ending appended to the Grimms' re-telling in which Little Red-cap encounters a second wolf, but this time she's a good little girl. She stays on the path and reaches her Grandmother's house in safety.

Little Red Riding Hood became popular with English language readers in the middle of the 19th century when the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm took Victorian England by storm. The red cap then became a red cloak and hood like those worn by English country women, and it's in this guise that the heroine of the tale has been known to us ever since. Advances in printing methods led to the rise of the children's book industry, and Victorian editors-following in the footsteps of the Grimms-continued altering fairy tales to make them suitable for younger and younger children. Some publishers found even the Grimms' edited renditions of fairy tales too harsh, and soon there were versions of Little Red Riding Hood in which the huntsman comes to the rescue before the wolf pounces on the girl. "In England and America," notes folklore scholar Jack Zipes, "sweet, innocent, and helpless Little Red Riding Hood suffered through hybrid adventures. That is, the Perrault and Grimms versions were often mixed together, and, whether the plot was developed in verse, prose, theatrical scenes, or illustrations, there was a general tendency to make Little Red Riding Hood into a Victorian middle-class lass whose virtue is threatened because she forgets to control her sensual drives and disobeys her super-ego mother."

With a few exceptions, it was not until after World War I that writers began to examine the fairy tale anew-whereupon we begin to see it used in literary works that were not expressly aimed at younger readers, such as Charles Guyot's The Granddaughter of Little Red Riding Hood (1922), Milt Gross's Sturry from Rad Ridink Hoot (1926), and James Thurber's wonderful, wry tale The Girl and the Wolf (1939.) [For an in-depth look at early 20th century versions of the tale, see The Trials of Little Red Riding Hood by Jack Zipes.] By the end of the 20th century, the pendulum had fully swung, and fairy tales could be found once again on the shelves of adult literature. Echoing the fairy tale movement of 17th century France, the writers of the new contes des fees were largely (but not exclusively) women, using the stories to comment on life in the 20th/21st centuries. Two primary texts of the new movement were Transformations by Anne Sexton (1971) and The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter (1979), both of which contained powerful re-workings of Little Red Riding Hood. In Transformations — a volume of seventeen poems based on the themes of Grimms' fairy tales — Sexton used Little Red Riding Hood to explore the subject of deception—the lies we tell and the lies we believe. In The Bloody Chamber, Carter's "The Company of Wolves" was a sensual fever-dream of a story that skillfully manipulated the themes, the symbols, the very language of Little Red Riding Hood. In "The Werewolf," in the same collection, Carter re-examined the fairy tale from a different angle, taking a more historical, less psychoanalytical approach in this dark rendition.

In the years since Sexton's and Carter's ground-breaking volumes, the field of fairy tale literature has become a lively one-but to seek out its treasures, readers must travel to many different parts of the bookstore. Due to the idiosyncrasies of the modern publishing industry, this type of literature is published under a variety of labels: mainstream fiction, fantasy fiction, historical fiction, horror fiction, feminist fiction, and young adult fiction. A number of novels and stories make use of the themes of Little Red Riding Hood, including the following:

Novels: Wolf by Gillian Cross (1990), winner of the 1991 Carnegie Medal, is a rich, engrossing novel set in contemporary London, involving wolves, IRA terrorism, and the complexities of family relationships. Little Red Riding Hood in the Red Light District by Manlio Argueta (1998) is another award winner, this one set on the streets of El Salvador. It's a brutal, haunting political novel with tenderness at its heart. Darkest Desire: The Wolf's Own Tale by Anthony Schmitz (1998), is a quirky little novel in which the wolf meets the Brothers Grimm and tells them his story.

Short Stories: "Wolfland" by Tanith Lee, first published in her fine story collection Red as Blood (1983), is a deliciously gothic tale set in 19th century Scandinavia. "I Shall Do Thee Mischief in the Woods" by Kathe Koja, from Snow White, Blood Red (1993), is a dark, sharp story that forces us to re-examine the roles of predator and prey. "Little Red" by Wendy Wheeler, from Snow White, Blood Red (1993), is a disturbing contemporary tale about wolves whose skin is on the inside, and the ways that young girls can be preyed on. "The Apprentice" by Miriam Grace Monfredo, from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (November, 1993), mixes fantasy, mystery, and fairy tales in a poignant exploration of the subject of child abuse. "The Good Mother" by Patricia Galloway, from Truly Grim Tales (1995), reworks the fairy tale into a post-nuclear-disaster science fiction story. "Riding the Red" by Nalo Hopkinson, first published in Black Swan, White Raven (1997), is an extraordinary story about sex and female power, influenced — at least in the rhythm of the language — by the author's Caribbean background. "Wolf" by Francesca La Block, from her urban fairy tale collection The Rose and the Beast (2000), is another story using the fairy tale to explore the subject of childhood sexual abuse. "Little Red and the Big Bad" by Will Shetterly, from Swan Sister (2003), is a sly urban version of the story, street-wise and sassy.

Illustration by G.P. Jacob Hood

There are also many good rewordings of Little Red Riding Hood over on the poetry shelves. Olga Brooms explores familial relationships between women in her "Little Red Riding Hood," from Beginning With O (1977). Roald Dahl's "Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf," from Revolting Rhymes (1983), is a hilarious poem in which the wolf is no match for a little girl with gun. Gwen Strauss's disturbing poem "The Waiting Wolf," from Trail of Stones (1990), is one that should not be missed. "Waiting in this old lady's ruffled bed, I am all calculation," says the wolf as he justifies his behavior and awaits his tender prey. Alice Wirth Gray's "On a Nineteenth Century Color Lithograph of Red Riding Hood by the Artist J.H.," from What the Poor Eat (1993), turns the tale into a police report, examined from multiple points of view. "In a tupperware wood, mix child and hood. Stir slowly. Add wolf," begins "Journeybread Recipe" by Lawrence Schimel, from Black Thorn, White Rose (1994). "....Serve swaddled in a wolfskin throw, cradled in a basket and left on grandmother's doorstep." In the same volume, the narrator of "Silver and Gold" by Ellen Steiber is asked how it was that she could not manage to tell her grandmother from a wolf. Perhaps, her doctor suggests in the poem, she was actually living with wolves all along. The heroine of Carol Ann Duffy's "Little Red-Cap" knows precisely why she followed the wolf. "The wolf, I knew, would lead me deep into the woods, away from home, to a dark tangled thorny place it by the eyes of owls." The poem comes from Duffy's splendid collection The World's Wife (1999). In Lawrence Syndal's "Grandmother," from Conjunctions #31 (1999), the old woman muses on her time in the belly of the wolf: "I lay me down between his ribs and let each sighing lung massage the ache from these old bones." Sinking happily into the dreams of the wolf, she is not pleased to be rescued. Other Little Red Riding Hood poems can be found the following two excellent collections: The Poets' Grimm, edited by Jeanne Marie Beaumont and Claudia Carlson, and Disenchantments, edited by Wolfgang Mieder.

Dramatic adaptations of Little Red Riding Hood include Tex Avery's wickedly salacious cartoons: Little Red Walking Hood (1937), Red Hot Riding Hood (1945), and Little Rural Riding Hood (1949), as well as Disney's first animated short, Little Red Riding Hood (1922). Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre: Little Red Riding Hood (1983) starred Malcolm McDowell as the Big Bad Wolf and Mary Steenburger as the heroine. Angela Carter's story "The Company of Wolves" became a wonderfully evocative film of the same title, directed by Neil Jordan in 1984. Carter wrote the screenplay with Jordan, and is reputed to have disliked the end. (In the film, a dreaming young girl is awakened when a pack of wolves bursts into her home. In the story, the heroine tames her wolf lover and sleeps safely in his arms.) Cannon Movie Tales: Little Red Riding Hood (1987), a rendition set sometime during the Middle Ages, tells the story of the daughter of a village lord, her evil uncle, and an enchanted wolf. Freeway (1986) is a rather dreadful film that turns the story into a contemporary serial killer flick. Rees Witherspoon plays the heroine, and Kiefer Sutherland plays the urban wolf. Far more worth seeing is Little Red Riding Hood, a short film directed by David Kaplan (1997) — a surprising and sensual version of the story that's definitely not for children.

If you are looking for good versions of the tale adapted for children, I recommend these three picture books: Little Red Riding Hood, illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman (1988); Little Red Cap, illustrated by Lizbeth Zwerger (1995); and Little Red Ridinghood: A Classic Collectible Pop-up Book, illustrated by Marjorie Priceman (2001).

If you'd like to know more about the history of Little Red Riding Hood, there are quite a few good books to chose from. For an introduction to the tale, including a primer on fairy tale history, I recommend Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: Sex, Morality, and the Evolution of a Fairy Tale by Catherine Orenstein (2002). It's a lively, entertaining book, written for casual readers rather than folklore scholars. Jack Zipes presents numerous versions of the tale from Charles Perrault's to Angela Carter's, along with an excellent essay on the subject, in his useful book The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood (Second Edition, 1993). In Little Red Riding Hood: A Casebook (1989), Alan Dundes presents critical writings on the tale from a wide range of folklorists, including Wolfam Eberhard's essay on Asian variants, "The Story of Grandaunt Tiger". For a general history of fairy tales, including Little Red Riding Hood, try From the Beast to the Blonde by Marina Warner, Twice Upon a Time by Elizabeth Wanning Harries, and Touch Magic by Jane Yolen. Recommended articles: "Little Red Riding Hood in the Oral Tradition" by Yvonne Verdier, Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-tale Studies, Vol. 11, Numbers I-2 (1997); "Red Riding Hood: An Interpretation from Anthropology" by Mary Douglas, Folklore, #106 (1995); and (for fun)"Little Red Riding Hood Revisited" by Russell Baker, The New York Times Magazine (January 13, 1980).

The characters in familiar fairy tales have a way of sinking deep into our psyches. Charles Dickens claimed Little Red Riding Hood as his first love, and felt that if only he could have married her, he would have known perfect bliss. Yet Little Red Riding Hood was changed through the years, diminished, punished, literally gobbled up. By knowing and retelling older versions of her story, and by re-imagining her in fiction and poetry today, we reclaim the spirit of girls everywhere who can face down the wolves in their lives, and outwit them.

LRRH: annotations

Source

The following is an annotated version of the fairy tale. I recommend reading the entire story before exploring the annotations, especially if you have not read the tale recently.

Since this version is most likely not the one you are most familiar with, you might also want to read the more popular version by the Grimms at Little Red Cap.

 

ONCE upon a time there lived in a certain village a little country girl, the prettiest creature who was ever seen. Her mother was excessively fond of her; and her grandmother doted on her still more. This good woman had a little red¹ riding hood made for her. It suited the girl so extremely well that everybody called her Little Red Riding Hood².

One day her mother, having made some cakes, said to her, "Go, my dear, and see how your grandmother is doing³, for I hear she has been very ill. Take her a cake, and this little pot of butter."⁴

Little Red Riding Hood set out immediately to go to her grandmother, who lived in another village.

As she was going through the wood, she met with a wolf,⁵ who had a very great mind to eat her up, but he dared not, because of some woodcutters working nearby in the forest. He asked her where she was going. The poor child, who did not know that it was dangerous to stay and talk to a wolf, said to him, "I am going to see my grandmother and carry her a cake and a little pot of butter from my mother."

"Does she live far off?" said the wolf

"Oh I say," answered Little Red Riding Hood; "it is beyond that mill you see there, at the first house in the village."

"Well," said the wolf, "and I'll go and see her too. I'll go this way and go you that, and we shall see who will be there first."

The wolf ran as fast as he could, taking the shortest path, and the little girl took a roundabout way, entertaining herself by gathering nuts, running after butterflies, and gathering bouquets of little flowers. It was not long before the wolf arrived at the old woman's house. He knocked at the door: tap, tap.

"Who's there?"

"Your grandchild, Little Red Riding Hood," replied the wolf, counterfeiting her voice; "who has brought you a cake and a little pot of butter sent you by mother."

The good grandmother, who was in bed, because she was somewhat ill, cried out, "Pull the bobbin, and the latch will go up."

The wolf pulled the bobbin, and the door opened, and then he immediately fell upon the good woman and ate her up in a moment,⁶ for it been more than three days since he had eaten. He then shut the door and got into the grandmother's bed, expecting Little Red Riding Hood, who came some time afterwards and knocked at the door: tap, tap.

"Who's there?"

Little Red Riding Hood, hearing the big voice of the wolf, was at first afraid; but believing her grandmother had a cold and was hoarse, answered, "It is your grandchild Little Red Riding Hood, who has brought you a cake and a little pot of butter mother sends you."

The wolf cried out to her, softening his voice as much as he could, "Pull the bobbin, and the latch will go up."

Little Red Riding Hood pulled the bobbin, and the door opened.

The wolf, seeing her come in, said to her, hiding himself under the bedclothes, "Put the cake and the little pot of butter upon the stool, and come get into bed with me."⁷

Little Red Riding Hood took off her clothes and got into bed. She was greatly amazed to see how her grandmother looked in her nightclothes, and said to her, "Grandmother, what big arms you have!"⁸

"All the better to hug you with, my dear."

"Grandmother, what big legs you have!"

"All the better to run with, my child."

"Grandmother, what big ears you have!"

"All the better to hear with, my child."

"Grandmother, what big eyes you have!"

"All the better to see with, my child."

"Grandmother, what big teeth you have got!"

"All the better to eat you up with."

And, saying these words, this wicked wolf fell upon Little Red Riding Hood, and ate her all up.⁹

Moral: Children, especially attractive, well bred young ladies, should never talk to strangers, for if they should do so, they may well provide dinner for a wolf. I say "wolf," but there are various kinds of wolves. There are also those who are charming, quiet, polite, unassuming, complacent, and sweet, who pursue young women at home and in the streets. And unfortunately, it is these gentle wolves who are the most dangerous ones of all.

by Charles Perrault

Lang, Andrew, ed. "Little Red Riding Hood." The Blue Fairy Book. New York: Dover, 1965. (Original published 1889.) 

 

 1. Red: Scarlet or red is a sexually vibrant and suggestive color. At one time, it was not worn by morally upright women thanks to its sinful symbolism. It is also the color of blood with all of its connotations. Perrault introduced the color red to the tale when he first wrote it.

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2. Little Red Riding Hood: The red riding hood is a popular and familiar symbol to much of Europe and North America. In the height of portraiture in the nineteenth century, many young daughters of wealthy families were painted wearing red capes or hoods. Today, some little girls still want to wear red capes for Halloween or other imaginative play.

Some scholars, such as Erich Fromm consider the hood to symbolize menustration and the approaching puberty of the young character who wears it.

Scholars also debate whether the red garment is a hood or a cap according to the earliest versions which more closely translate from the French and German to "cap."

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3. Go, my dear, and see how your grandmother is doing: In Charles Perrault's version of the tale, the mother simply instructs the young girl to take the items to her grandmother. The Grimms, however, added an admonition from the mother to not stray from the path, adding a moral message to children. Perrault adds the moral to "not talk to strangers" at the end of the tale. Through the moralizing of both Perrault and Grimms', critics explain that the tale moved away from its obvious sexual and horrific tones, to more closely resemble a fable or cautionary tale (Tatar 1992). You can read the Grimms' version here: Little Red Cap.

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4. Cake, and this little pot of butter: These are the food items originally described by Charles Perrault. Later versions have included other food items, most often a bottle of wine.

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5. Wolf: The wolf has become a popular image in fairy tales thanks to this tale and The Tale of the Three Little Pigs. The wolf is a common predator in the forest and thus is a natural choice for the story unlike the witch, ogre or troll found in other tales. The wolf is often a metaphor for a sexually predatory man.

The wolf also figures prominently in other parts of British folklore, such as the traditional children's game, "What's the Time, Mr. Wolf?"

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6. Ate her up in a moment: In some versions of the tale, the wolf swallows the grandmother whole, foreshadowing her rescue by a huntsman later.

In feminist criticism of the tale, the eating of the grandmother and Little Red Riding Hood is seen as a metaphor for rape. This interpretation has led to the story's frequent reinterpretation by authors, both male and female, in poetry, fiction, and film.

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7. Come get into bed with me: Most of the later versions of the tale omit this element of the story due to its sexual connotations. However, one of the most famous illustrations of the tale by Gustave Dore shows Little Red Riding Hood in bed with the wolf. A study from the illustration is in the upper right hand corner of this page. The full illustration can be seen here Gustave Dore's Little Red Riding Hood.

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8. "Grandmother, what big arms you have!": These exclamations are a favorite story element for tellers and listeners. They are an excellent storybuilding tool, creating anticipation and horror for the listener/reader as Little Red Riding Hood realizes she is not talking to her grandmother. Many oral versions of the story add extra body parts to increase the bawdiness of the story. The list inevitably ends with the teeth however.

Marina Warner considers Little Red Riding Hood's initial failure to distinguish the wolf from her grandmother to be a crucial element of the story. She explains that the wolf and the grandmother (as a crone character) are related as forest dwellers needing nourishment (Warner 1994).

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9. Ate her all up: In Perrault's version, Little Red Riding Hood is not rescued but actually dies at the end of the story. The terrifying ending makes the story more realistic and solidifies his advice to not talk to strangers. Bruno Bettelheim is especially critical of Perrault's version since it "deliberately threatens the child with its anxiety-producing ending" (Bettelheim 1976).

The Grimms offer a different ending in which a huntsman happens by and rescues the grandmother and Little Red Riding Hood by disemboweling the wolf. The two females escape from the wolf unharmed, like Jonah from the belly of the whale. The huntsman then sews rocks back into the wolf's stomach for punishment. The huntsman in this version represents patriarchal protection and physical superiority.

Yet another version of the tale--the French "The Story of Grandmother"--has Little Red Riding Hood rescuing herself. After she is fed a piece of her grandmother by the wolf, she announces that she needs to go to the bathroom. Since this activity is done outside--this is before the common appearance of indoor bathrooms--she goes outside and then runs away.

While the interpretations are almost unanimously dismissed today, early scholars considered the tale to symbolize death and rebirth specifically with Little Red Riding Hood as the sun or dawn and the wolf as night (Dundes 1988).

Both Roald Dahl's poem of the tale and Stephen Sondheim's musical, Into the Woods, have Red Riding Hood overcome the wolf and later appear wearing a fur coat made of the wolf's fur, instead of the identifying red cloak.

But perhaps my favorite version of the tale comes from James Thurber's "The Little Girl and the Wolf." Red Riding Hood is not fooled by the wolf, but takes a gun from her basket and shoots him. Thurber explains, "It is not so easy to fool little girls nowadays as it used to be." You can find full bibliographic references for this short story and the others mentioned in these notes on the Modern Interpretations of Little Red Riding Hood Page.

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