Alright everybody, welcome back. This is Food
for Thought. Thoughts if it were you. This is
Neogentrics, your host. I'm going to do another
one of my dark truth reveals for those childhood
stories that we used to love listening to that
we thought were all great and dandy. Now, keep
in mind, this whole premise for this channel
is education. And again, if what I'm telling
you seems like it could be something that you
don't want to hear, by all means, don't listen
to it. Okay, just skip this one, go on to the
next episode and, you know, enjoy the rest of
your day. And I'm not going to stay on the same
topic. I'm going to switch back and forth and
come back to other topics because different people
have different things that they want to hear
or listen to. And not everybody wants to have
their childhood ruined by knowing the original
story version of the fairy tale that they loved.
Okay, keeping with that theme, though, for this
episode here, you know, I already explained.
Fairy tales are full of creepy and terrible things.
And the original Little Red Riding Hood is no
exception. Cinderella's stepsisters... Well,
I haven't covered Cinderella yet. Or the Little
Mermaid. So, look forward to those in the future.
Okay? Even more popular collections from fairy
tales like Brothers Grimm include stories like
The Girl Without Hands and The Death of the Little...
But, I mean, I'll cover those at another point.
But the Brothers Grimm are known for writing
pretty dark stories. And Little Red Riding Hood
is the full story as a whole is actually pretty
dark. Unlike the modern version where a naive
and trusting girl, in a nutshell, more or less,
who can't tell the difference between a wolf
and her grandmother escapes in the end. In the
much older version, she doesn't. She's actually
eaten alive. Um, that's only the beginning of
the horrible things that actually happened in
the Little Red Riding Hood series, uh, story.
And, you know, the versions circulated in the
17th century France. Uh, Charles Parlett, uh,
first wrote down the story in his collections
called the Mother Goose Tales. It featured a
cannibalistic granddaughter. and a pedophile
wolf who tells Red to strip down before she climbs
into his bed. No wonder the fairy tale was originally
changed, actually. You know, it's supposed to
be for children, after all, and there's nothing
child -friendly about that. So, we're going to
take a short break right quick, and then I'm
going to go diving headfirst into this story,
the original version that hasn't been told in
centuries. Stick around. Alright, so let's begin.
Like I said before, Little Red Riding Hood never
used to really have a happy ending. At least
in the original versions, it didn't. And a long
time ago, it wasn't even written down, so it
was a folktale told by people for centuries.
Anthropologist Jamie Tirani argues that the fairy
tale was not invented by the French writer Charles
Perrault, the author of the Mother Goose Tales.
and the first person who wrote it down. Historian
Robert Darnton explains that Peralt's stories
came from the oral tradition, most likely through
his son's nurse, which is kind of where the whole
nursery rhymes thing came from, where he borrowed
the name Mother Goose. But, anyway, the story
of Little Red Riding Hood had a much deeper root.
It went through a number of versions. Even after
Peralt's French version, the story spread to
Germany and England and carried It was even carried
by French refugees of the wars of religion and
later conflicts until the Brothers Grimm finally
wrote it down in the 19th century. In fact, the
story of the girl wearing red who wanders off
and runs into a wolf dates back at least to the
11th century when a Belgian poet recorded the
tale. The long history of the story includes
A number of changes that transformed it from
a disturbing tale of cannibalism and pedophilia,
like I mentioned before, to a much more friendly,
childer version that we hear today, and that
version actually has a happy ending. Keeping
this in mind, though, in some versions of the
story, there is no Little Red Riding Hood. Okay?
One of the defining features of Little Red Riding
Hood is her red hood. It appears in nearly every
image of the story produced in the... last 200
years, I do believe. But in some of the versions
of the story, the little girl didn't actually
wear a red hood at all. One folk version told
in the 17th and 18th century, France, described
the main character as simply just a little girl.
In other versions, the hood is made from gold.
Actually, that would have been a really interesting
version of the story to hear. The red hood doesn't
appear until the 17th century, however. So the
question stands right now. Where did the famous
hood come from? I'll be honest with you. It's
most likely it was invented by the original mother
goose, Charles Peral. I mean, in his version,
which was first published in, I think, 1967,
the girl's mother had a little red riding hood
made for her as products. you know explained
and it suits the girl so extremely well that
everyone called her little red riding hood after
all uh it just seemed to work and after that
it just kind of stuck you know once the red hood
appeared though you know people claimed it symbolized
the coming of age or sin however you want to
look at it uh the red hood made its first appearance
in perrault's version but was such a popular
detail that it came to define the story as a
whole. In fact, much has been made of the red
color. Psychoanalyst Eric Fromm, he claimed that
the red hood was a symbol of menstruation. Man,
I hate saying that word. Turning the tale into
a morality lesson for young girls who might quote
unquote stray from the path. You know, putting
their honor at risk, if you know what I mean.
The wolf, in Fromm's version, becomes a seducer
of young girls. Introducing the wolf pedophile.
The red was a color associated with sin. When
Perrault first wrote the fairy tale in the 1990s,
he actually wrote it down. It was still folklore
before then. And many folklorists pointed out
that the red color was often a symbol that the
girl was coming of age. Linking it to menstruation,
when the wolf tricks Little Red Riding Hood and
eats her up, the message is clear. Become aware
of predators, or better, beware of predators,
is the best way to put it, who want to take advantage
of young girls. And there's a twisted part of
the earlier French versions that really drives
the point home. I mean, it's something that a
lot of people don't, really want to hear. I mean,
even in the child -friendly version today, in
one version she escapes, and in one version she
gets eaten by the wolf. It makes perfect sense.
You know, be aware of your actions. Be aware
of pedophiles. Be aware of creepy people. And,
you know, that stood as the child -friendly version
up until now. At least in the last five to ten
years, though, that has changed. the girl getting
eaten has been seen as too violent, so they've
dumbed it down to the girl escapes safely. But
then a lot of things have changed over the years.
Let's take a short break here, and we'll be right
back. right everybody now that we're back let's
go in a little deeper into the story okay so
in the original version like i mentioned before
the wolf makes red strip and climbing the bed
with him wow and before i go any further that
does sound a little dark doesn't it well the
original version of little red riding hood gets
very quick uh creepy very quickly actually the
little girl is at her grandmother's house and
You know, where the wolf has disguised himself
as basically her grandmother. The wolf asks Red
to strip her clothes off. In the story, the wolf
says, Undress and get into bed with me. More
or less. When Red asks, What do I do with her
apron? Well, that's the original translation.
The wolf says, Throw it on the fire. You won't
need it anymore. After Red tosses her apron into
the fire, the wolf also makes her take off her,
you know, skirt, petticoat, stockings, and everything
else. With each item of clothing, the wolf says,
throw it into the fire, you won't need it anymore.
You know, and once she takes off her clothes,
Red climbs into bed with the wolf. That's when
she notices that something's not right with her
grandmother. And then we get into the part where,
oh, grandmother, how hairy you are, she declares.
You know, and in today's version of the fairy
tale, Little Red Riding Hood definitely doesn't,
you know, get naked, obviously, but it's still
the same scenario when she realizes something's
wrong with her grandmother. The next part where
this gets a little gruesome is a little bit before
that. Before Red climbs into the bed with the
wolf in the older version of the story, the wolf
sneaks into the, after the wolf had snuck into
the grandmother's house, he kills and butchers
the elderly woman, okay? Then he pours her blood
into a bottle, slices up her flesh on a platter.
And if that wasn't bloody enough, when Little
Red Riding Hood shows up, the story quickly turns
into a tale of cannibalism. When Red hands over
the bread and milk to the wolf, he says, Have
something yourself, my dear. This is meat and
wine in the pantry. He points to the blood and
the flesh of her grandmother. And Red eats the
snack. And a little cat whispers, slut, to eat
the flesh and drink the blood of your grandmother.
Irony. There are some strange parallels here
with the religious tradition of taking the Eucharist,
you know, the blood and body of Christ here.
It's a little play on the biblical story. However,
you know, for obvious reasons, the cannibalism
was obviously omitted in later versions of the
story. pretentious reasons. One is the parallelism
with the Bible, and the other is the whole cannibalistic
thing in the first place. It's not exactly child
-friendly. But you can see how dark the original
story originally had gotten. Now, like I mentioned
before, it didn't always have a happy ending.
However, Little Red Riding Hood does escape in
one version using some what they call poop humor.
That's the nice way to put it. In most versions
of Little Red Riding Hood, the girl never figures
out the wolf's disguise, which is kind of surprising
since most people would recognize a wolf wearing
a nightdress pretty readily. Perhaps Red didn't
have the best eyesight, I'm assuming. But in
one version, Red manages to escape from the wolf's
trap. She climbs into bed with the wolf. She
notices that it isn't her grandmotherly, uh,
exactly. Red makes up a lie to leave the bed.
She says that she has to poop and does what doesn't
want to do it in the grandmother's bed. The wolf
then lets Red leave for the woods, but he ties
a piece of string to her so that she can't escape.
Well, in this version, the girl tricks the wolf
by slipping the string over a branch and running
away. Very clever thinking in this version, you
know. it still doesn't change the fact that you
know everything else before it had happened but
in this version she doesn't die or get eaten
but it's still the wolf is a pedophile even in
the mother goose version you know the grandmother
gets eaten so there's no really escaping that
uh in the mother goose version it's less gruesome
and many of the than most of the original folktales
as we've already covered for example red doesn't
eat her grandmother obviously and there's not
a long description of her taking off her clothes
or throwing it into the fire though it does say
red took off her clothes before climbing into
bed with the wolf which can be interpreted as
something totally different altogether but the
mother goose version still maintains some of
the darker elements of the folk tale for example
when the wolf snuck into the grandmother's house
he immediately fell upon the good woman ate her
up at the moment uh in that moment for it had
been more than three days since he had eaten
and after all if the moral of the story is to
watch out for predators the grandmother was just
as guilty as red since she was also tricked by
the wolf i mean you know that's pretty much the
the gist of that and in the mother goose version
along with that it doesn't have a happy ending
just so you know um in addition to the grandmother's
death in the mother goose's version uh It doesn't
end well for Red either. The girl is tricked
into climbing into bed with the wolf, and the
two have their famous dialogue. I'm not going
to go into that whole thing again. You know,
grandmother, what big arms you have, so on and
so forth. And finally, Red says, grandmother,
what big teeth you have. And at this point, the
wolf says, all the better to eat you with, at
which point he jumps on top of Red and eats her.
And this is the end of the story in the Mother
Goose collection. There's no friendly woodsman
or anything to rescue Little Red Riding Hood.
Throwing that out there. I'll take a short break
here and then we'll continue. All right. Well,
let's dive back into this. The next bit is the
moral lesson for the Mother Goose version anyway.
It's actually pretty heavy. A little dark. Forgive
me for saying this. It's actually all about virginity.
I'm laughing, but it isn't funny. I promise you.
At the end of the Mother Goose version of Little
Red Riding Hood, the Charles Perrault version
included a moral. Just in case, you know, children
didn't pick up on the message in the story, he
writes, children, especially attractive, well
-bred young ladies, should never talk to strangers
for they, you know, they should do so. They may
well provide dinner for a wolf. Just in case
his wolf analogy goes over the children's head,
Proff also adds, 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. Reading between the lines, Perrault
warns girls that wolves might appear like gentle
grandmothers, even if their intentions are bad.
Perrault concludes by saying, unfortunately,
it is these gentle wolves who are also the most
dangerous ones of all. Moral lesson for young
ladies is very clear. Guard yourself and your
virginity against predators who want to take
advantage. Ironic, isn't it? However, in the
Brothers Grimm version, Red fills the wolf's
wide open innards with rocks. I'm not going to
try to translate that, but for the most part.
One of the most familiar versions of the Little
Red Riding Hood version story comes from the
Brothers Grimm. And in the 19th century, even
their ending, which saves Red and their grandmother,
was a strange twist. The Brothers Grimm introduced
the Huntsman, who saves the day right after Little
Red Riding Hood, or Little Red Cap, as she was
known in their version, is eaten by the wolf.
The Huntsman finds the wolf sleeping after his...
big meal and cuts open his belly with a pair
of scissors then again he is a huntsman so i
guess that kind of makes sense uh the girl and
her grandmother you know leap out of the wolf
with red crying oh i was so frightened it was
so dark inside the wolf's body which sounds kind
of weird now that i've said that out loud but
uh you know then red takes over filling the wolf's
body with large stones The wolf apparently sleeps
through this entire process, but when he wakes
up and tries to run away, the stones are so heavy
that he falls down dead. Actually seems even
more brutal than the girls getting eaten. It's
not quite stripping or cannibalistic, but it
is still a dark twist on the original fairy tale
in comparison, because someone still dies in
this version. And believe it or not, there was
even a sequel in the Brothers Grimm version where,
you know, Red gets her revenge. In case you're
wondering why the movie Hoodwink and Hoodwink
2 exist. The Brothers Grimm also wrote the sequel.
Red teams up with the grandmother to kill another
wolf. And in this first fairy tale version, Red
encounters a wolf in the forest, or woods. And
by this time, she ignores him. When the wolf
tries to break into the grandmother's house,
the grandmother doesn't let him in. Both have
learned their lesson from the first time, when
they were eaten by the wolf. In the sequel, Red
and her grandmother lure the wolf into the chimney
with the smell of sausages. In the hearth, you
know, or... place a large tub of water for uh
from cooking the sausages the wolf falls in and
drowns and then red rejoices along with her grandmother
having killed the wolf and you know that definitely
doesn't sound any better than the previous versions
but you know you can easily they just how do
i put it in this version of the story they both
get their revenge they didn't exactly kill the
original wolf but they killed a wolf That tried
to do the same thing again. And it made them
feel better. You know. Fairy tales are like PSAs
from the past. You know. For the most part. You
know. It's hard to imagine children listening
to older versions of the Little Red Riding Hood
story. After all, today we don't generally encourage
children to eat their grandmothers, obviously,
but Perrault's 17th century moral to the story
is a reminder that fairy tales were originally
meant to educate children about real dangers,
not just wolves, but others who wanted to take
advantage of young girls, tricking them to strip
and climb into bed, which sounds really bad.
In a sense, though, Little Red Riding Hood and
other... You know, fairy tales were the medieval
equivalent of the more -you -know PSAs theme
that we have now. The strange variations in Little
Red Riding Hood are a reminder that fairy tales
are created and recreated in particular times
and places, and Charles Perrault's 17th century
French version is different from the 19th century
German version, which was then popularized by
the Brothers Grimm that we all know today, or
at least a variation of it. The fairy tale communicates
specific messages that are linked with those
cultures in some ways. Other versions of Little
Red Riding Hood are windows into the past, and
it's those same windows that we cherish nowadays,
or at least become aware of. This is the type
of thing that we should be teaching our children,
instead of sheltering them from everything that
we think is disgusting or creepy or weird. These
are things that people used to teach their kids
in the past, and they were normal. So, with that,
it brings this very creepy story to an end, and
I hope you learned something from it as far as
the different variations of the story, but actually
the morals that were originally designed to go
with this story. This is also one of those times
where, you know, I have to say, for once in my
life, it's a... It's a story I didn't exactly
want to bring to light, but I feel like it's
needed to be told. So, with that being said,
again, this is food for thought. Thoughts if
it were you. This is your host, Neogentrix. I
hope you all enjoyed this episode of Dark Truths
Behind Original Fairytale Stories. Next time,
I'm going to cover a different story, or maybe
something totally different altogether. Stick
around to find out. I hope you enjoy the rest
of your day. Peace!