Activity: Who are your grandmothers? Did/do you know them well? Did they ever tell you stories? Did they share their memories with you? Did your grandparents speak of the past much at all? Describe their voices. How old are they, or how old did they live to be? Have you seen pictures of when they were younger? Did they change much? What do you know of your grandmothers’ lives before you and your parents were born?
Grandmothers abound in folk and fairy tales. But in the West, when most people hear “fairy tale” and “grandmother,” the story that comes to mind is probably “Little Red Riding Hood.”
The fate and depiction of Grandmother in “Little Red Riding Hood” varies widely, since there are many variants of the tale. In the classic Western European telling (by Perrault and/or Grimm), however, a young girl goes to visit her elderly grandmother who lives in the woods. On the way, she meets a wolf, who tricks her and/or overtakes her journey to Grandmother’s house. The wolf tricks the grandmother into letting him in (or lets himself in, due to the grandmother being feeble and bedridden), devours the grandmother and dons her clothes, then waits for the girl to arrive. When the girl arrives, the wolf mimics Grandmother’s voice to instruct the girl to let herself in. The girl notes the wolf’s big eyes, big ears, big teeth: “All the better to see you with!” answers the wolf, before pouncing on the girl and eating her too. Sometimes a huntsman enters the story here and kills the wolf, cuts open its belly, and sets free the girl and her grandmother.
This version relies on the helplessness of two females—one very young, one very old—for its effect as a moral (don’t talk to strangers) and warning to women and girls of male predation. But many versions feature a much more capable young girl and/or grandmother, who outwit the wolf and do not require the need of a male rescuer such as the woodsman.
However the story comes out, a notable element of the Red tale is how much it relies on the young’s devotion and obligation to their elders. Without the initial element of the young's duty to care for the old, the story cannot advance. In Lon Po Po, a famous Chinese version of the tale, the grandmother is absent. The story is told from the point of view of three young children whose mother, not the children, is going to visit the grandmother on her birthday. Left alone, the wolf comes along and pretends to be their Po Po, or grandmother. The two youngest children let him in after some conversation, seemingly out of concern for her (the wolf claims Po Po’s low voice is due to a cold and expresses fear about the coming dark) as much as because of their own naivete. Fortunately, the children’s quick thinking keeps them safe from the wolf, whom they outwit, until the mother returns.
More recent interpretations of the Red tale challenge ageist stereotypes in their depictions of the grandmother. In “Wolf” by Francesca Lia Block (from her 2000 book The Rose and the Beast), which recasts the wolf as an abusive stepfather and Red as a teenage girl from Los Angeles who flees her abusive homelife to live with her grandma in the southwest U.S. desert, the grandma is a formidable woman, fiercely protective of her daughter and granddaughter. She is described as “sort of this wise woman of the desert who’s been through a lot in her life” and “cool, with a desert-lined face and a bandanna over her hair and long skinny legs in jeans.”
Hoodwinked, an animated movie from 2005 that parodies fairy tale tropes in the Shrek vein, has a Granny (voiced by Glenn Close) with a pile of white hair on her head who bakes (and sells) cookies and lives in the woods. In a phone call with her granddaughter, Granny rushes off the phone to “put down fresh doilies.” Eventually Red learns Granny is really leading a double life as a champion extreme sports athlete.
There are many collections of fairy tales that are posited as “told by” a grandmother, similar to the “Mother Goose” character. Whether the stories actually came from the author’s or collector’s grandmother or not, these collections at the very least offer positive depictions of elder female relatives as important keepers of tales, memories, and history.
Below is a video of a storytime reading of Lon Po Po, a telling of the Navajo folk tale “Grandmother Spider Brings the Sun,” and a clip of Granny doing her thing in Hoodwinked. The annotated bibliography page includes detailed information about Little Red Riding Hood variants and collections of grandmother stories.
Photo credits: Header--Wikimedia Commons, postage stamp of Grandmother and Little Red Riding Hood / Thumbnail--AlmaFlorAda.com
Grandmothers abound in folk and fairy tales. But in the West, when most people hear “fairy tale” and “grandmother,” the story that comes to mind is probably “Little Red Riding Hood.”
The fate and depiction of Grandmother in “Little Red Riding Hood” varies widely, since there are many variants of the tale. In the classic Western European telling (by Perrault and/or Grimm), however, a young girl goes to visit her elderly grandmother who lives in the woods. On the way, she meets a wolf, who tricks her and/or overtakes her journey to Grandmother’s house. The wolf tricks the grandmother into letting him in (or lets himself in, due to the grandmother being feeble and bedridden), devours the grandmother and dons her clothes, then waits for the girl to arrive. When the girl arrives, the wolf mimics Grandmother’s voice to instruct the girl to let herself in. The girl notes the wolf’s big eyes, big ears, big teeth: “All the better to see you with!” answers the wolf, before pouncing on the girl and eating her too. Sometimes a huntsman enters the story here and kills the wolf, cuts open its belly, and sets free the girl and her grandmother.
This version relies on the helplessness of two females—one very young, one very old—for its effect as a moral (don’t talk to strangers) and warning to women and girls of male predation. But many versions feature a much more capable young girl and/or grandmother, who outwit the wolf and do not require the need of a male rescuer such as the woodsman.
However the story comes out, a notable element of the Red tale is how much it relies on the young’s devotion and obligation to their elders. Without the initial element of the young's duty to care for the old, the story cannot advance. In Lon Po Po, a famous Chinese version of the tale, the grandmother is absent. The story is told from the point of view of three young children whose mother, not the children, is going to visit the grandmother on her birthday. Left alone, the wolf comes along and pretends to be their Po Po, or grandmother. The two youngest children let him in after some conversation, seemingly out of concern for her (the wolf claims Po Po’s low voice is due to a cold and expresses fear about the coming dark) as much as because of their own naivete. Fortunately, the children’s quick thinking keeps them safe from the wolf, whom they outwit, until the mother returns.
More recent interpretations of the Red tale challenge ageist stereotypes in their depictions of the grandmother. In “Wolf” by Francesca Lia Block (from her 2000 book The Rose and the Beast), which recasts the wolf as an abusive stepfather and Red as a teenage girl from Los Angeles who flees her abusive homelife to live with her grandma in the southwest U.S. desert, the grandma is a formidable woman, fiercely protective of her daughter and granddaughter. She is described as “sort of this wise woman of the desert who’s been through a lot in her life” and “cool, with a desert-lined face and a bandanna over her hair and long skinny legs in jeans.”
Hoodwinked, an animated movie from 2005 that parodies fairy tale tropes in the Shrek vein, has a Granny (voiced by Glenn Close) with a pile of white hair on her head who bakes (and sells) cookies and lives in the woods. In a phone call with her granddaughter, Granny rushes off the phone to “put down fresh doilies.” Eventually Red learns Granny is really leading a double life as a champion extreme sports athlete.
There are many collections of fairy tales that are posited as “told by” a grandmother, similar to the “Mother Goose” character. Whether the stories actually came from the author’s or collector’s grandmother or not, these collections at the very least offer positive depictions of elder female relatives as important keepers of tales, memories, and history.
Below is a video of a storytime reading of Lon Po Po, a telling of the Navajo folk tale “Grandmother Spider Brings the Sun,” and a clip of Granny doing her thing in Hoodwinked. The annotated bibliography page includes detailed information about Little Red Riding Hood variants and collections of grandmother stories.
Photo credits: Header--Wikimedia Commons, postage stamp of Grandmother and Little Red Riding Hood / Thumbnail--AlmaFlorAda.com