Hansel and Gretel

In Hansel and Gretel by the Brothers Grimm, the portrayal of women is portrayed in two different ways. Gretel is your typical young girl who is dependent of the males in her life. She is seen in the story has a helpless female who needs the help or reassure of Hansel in order to feel safe. She is your typical damsel in distress at the beginning and middle of the story. She is afraid and is constantly crying due to the fear of starving and being abandoned. By the end of the story she becomes strong and is the savior of her brother and shows great signs of courage. The other women of that are in the story which are the mother/stepmother and the witch. They are presented as evil women of the story. The mother/stepmother is selfish and shows no signs of remorse when she abandons the children in the woods. She is not even happy when the children return the first time she and the children's father leave them in the woods. The evil witch is a carnivore she eats children who come to her house or find their way there. She is blind but has a great sense of smell.I believe that it is due to these features Gretel was able to trick her and push her into the oven.



This story's biggest dilemma was that food was scarce which was what decided the fate of Hansel and Gretel. The fact that they were poor is what led the parents to take drastic measures and the lack of food made the children fall into the dangerous hands of the witch.
 

A Change Red Riding Hood

In Angela Carters "The Company of Wolves", she describes a new Red Riding Hood. Red Riding is valiant and confident. She knows what lies in the woods and yet she is determined to go through it no matter what she encounters. Unfortunately, she is not aware of the danger of man because she still has some innocence left in her that she doesn't see the evil that man has. She does not know who easy it was to be charmed by a wolf that is also a man. Yet without all of this knowledge she is able to seduce her presume to be attacker. She showed no fear when she knew the wolf-man wanted to kill her. She submitted to his animal desire and took off her clothes but she made him do the same and for some reason I think that she knew that without his clothes he will always be condemned to be a wolf. She had him toss his clothes too in the fire and she laid in bed with him without any fear. That takes lots of guts because if it were me I would have been dead. This makes this Red Riding Hood tougher than the other versions of the story. The other versions had the Red Riding Hood has a naive little girl or young lady who was in need of being rescued. She didn't carry a weapon and she knew that it wasn't her grandmother and yet she stayed in the house. This story by Angela Carter is similar like the versions of  Roald Dahls and James Thurber she is not easily deceived by the wolf. These versions give you a young woman ready to fight for her life and make sure that she shows that she has the strength to do it on her own. She seductress and she is strong willed.




Reference:
 Carter, A. "The Company of Wolves" Published in The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (1979)

The Wolf

This weeks reading was really interesting because we got a better look at the wolf and his interaction with Little Red Riding Hood. In the reading of the "The Wolf as Symbol" Carter's telling of the story changes the way LRRH is seen. It seems that while she was seen to be innocent she was also a seductress. She was depicted as being less of a damsel in distress.She has a knife in her basket and is ready to defend herself.  In the video lecture by the scholar Catherine Orenstein on the evolution of the wolf "Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked" they describe the different view and interpretations of the story. They also discuss the different behaviors of the wolf and Red. My favorite reading though from this week was Marie de France "Bisclavret". The way the women was depicted to be malicious and sneaky was out of the ordinary because it was not the norm or the usual way beautiful women would act. Her husband was a wolf and had the ability to transform from beast to man. When she finds out the reason why he constantly is leaving her alone she betrays him. She forces him to be a wolf for a long time and even remarries. This story makes you think about the possibility that the wolf in LRRH could have been a man and a wolf. Which makes you look at the story in a different light. It made me think that the wolf lusted for LRRH and planned the whole thing to not only eat her but to devour her in a sexual beastly manner. The different versions of the stories again have LRRH climbing into bed with the wolf knowing that it isn't the grandmother. Which also makes me think that she was longing for him just the same. I tell you this much I am really looking at this story with new eyes and it is amazing the different angles that this story has.


Marie France "Bisclavret". translated by Judith P. Shoaf. (1996)
Franz's Marie-Louise "The Feminine in Fairy Tales: The Wolf as Symbol"
Orenstein Catherine. The evolution of the wolf "Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked"