by Apex Authors
A century or so later, the Brothers Grimm gave the story a happy ending and removed the sexual bawdiness and overt violence. Little Red is shown as a silly little girl who gets herself and her Granny into trouble by disobeying her mother, dawdling, and talking to hairy strangers. The wolf once again wins the race to Granny's house, where he eats the old woman and then her foolish granddaughter. Luckily, there is a woodsman, a big strong man, to get them out of trouble. In this version, Little Red's warning from her mother is more explicit than in Perrault, and although she still ignores it, she and Granny are rescued nonetheless.xix Zipes interprets the message as “Only a strong male figure can rescue a girl from herself and her lustful desires."xx
Little Red, who in the oral tradition was a brave, resourceful little girl, is no longer able to get herself out of trouble; the only virtues allowed her are passivity and dependency, and the hope that a male will always be around to rescue her. She was pulled back onto the path, made to be safe, turned into an object requiring rescue.
When fairy tales began to be written down and published, they gradually became static after being subjected to an editing process to take out anything that wasn't sanctioned. When their form became “satisfactory,” they became “Good Girls’ Guides on How to Behave.” In Germany, at the time of the Grimms, Jeanine Blackwell observes that the phenomenon of young mothers reading to their children from the new books of sanctioned Grimms’ tales replaced the oral tradition of tale telling in the evening. Old women—nurses, grandmothers, servants—were suspect as tellers of tales; they were the kind of old wives who would change the tales, who would improvise, and who would not conform.xxi The mutability of old women's tales was due at least in part to the fact that many of them were illiterate, so the oral tradition was the only one open to them. The power of the literary tale for the patriarchy lay in its static nature—the pattern did not change, the end did not change, girls stayed girls and boys, boys. If female tellers changed the stories, they were behaving independently and subverting the patriarchy.xxii
Blackwell summarises Ruth Bottigheimer's quantitative survey on the speech patterns of women in the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm.xxiii The tales collected by the brothers came directly from the oral tradition, from a variety of women whom they met on their travels (indeed, Wilhelm married one of his sources: Dortchen Wild). The Grimms’ fairy tale collections went through many editions between the early 1800s and 1856, and across these editions significant changes were made: “good” girls spoke less and less from edition to edition; silence as a task for men lasted up to three days, but for women it was often seven years; the female's voice was frequently taken away from her, whereas the male willingly stopped speaking to achieve a goal; girls spoke when spoken to and generally did not ask questions unless invited; and, perhaps most tellingly, those characters who spoke most were witches (bad women who did not conform) and boys (in whom activity and curiosity were lauded).xxiv
The editing of female speech in fairy tales by male authors/transcribers shows in a very real way how tales have been used as a means of training women how to behave in a socially (i.e., patriarchally) acceptable fashion.
Blackwell makes the assessment that “authority is removed from the oral female voice to the male editor/author, but returned to her in a sanitized form, when she is the properly behaving dispenser of his tale."xxv The story “teller” is no longer the old wife but the nurturing figure of the mother. The voice of the mother is used to enforce ideas of sanctioned behaviour—girls are quiet, pretty, submissive and there to be rescued. The power of maternal voices enforces the edicts of the ruling order, and with the hand that rocks the cradle co-opted by the other side, mothers as models of, and conduits for, female behaviour were now complicit in the subjugation of their own daughters.xxvi Women told their children through the medium of static bedtime stories: I have no value beyond beauty, passivity, silence and fertility. My daughter, you are like me. My son, you are not like me, you are special!
Fairy tales also teach girls about reward and punishment—those who conform are rewarded, those who do not are punished, ridiculed and subjugated, or worse, killed. Under the pens of male transcribers Little Red Riding Hood became such a tale.
The tales in Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber are reclaimed from the patriarchy and stretched out of their sanctioned shape—Carter has firmly placed herself on the side of the “old wives” under whose hands tales were mutable and malleable. Warner says that Carter “deliberately [draws the tales] out of the separate space of “children's stories” or “folk art” and into the world of change."xxvii
Carter's work restores female agency, independence, intelligence, and allows the heroine freedom to be a sexually active desiring object—in direct contrast to the “approved” condition of literary fairy tale heroines as passive, dependent, virginal and self-sacrificing. Warner refers to The Bloody Chamber as Carter's “answer to Perrault's vision of better things."xxviii
Carter's Little Red (in the Bloody Chamber tale “The Company of Wolves") is described as “an unbroken egg; she is a sealed vessel; she has inside her a magic space the entrance to which is shut tight with a plug of membrane; she is a closed system; she does not know how to shiver. She has her knife and she is afraid of nothing."xxiv This is possibly the best summary of the strengths of Carter's heroine: she is brave and independent (a closed system), she has the power of an intact virgin, she is fearless and ready to protect herself—no waiting around for the woodsman for this girl. She can and will look after herself. She is confident and when she meets the wolf/huntsman (in Carter, the huntsman and wolf suffer a similar “critical collapse of roles” to Granny and the wolf in Perrault's version) on the path to Granny's house she is in no way intimidated. In fact, she decides “she's never seen such a fine fellow before, not among the rustic clowns of her native village;"xxx she will not settle for any old village boy.
They make a wager with a kiss the prize, and she happily dawdles so he may reach Granny's house first. When she arrives, Granny is a rattling bundle of bones wrapped in a napkin under the bed, and the wolf makes no real attempt to pretend to be the grandmother. Their exchange, informed by knowledge rather than fear, breaks the traditional pattern. She undresses quite willingly, combs out her hair, and stands “up on tiptoe and unbutton[s] the collar of his shirt."xxxi Upon hearing “All the better to eat you with” she laughs: “she knew she was nobody's meat. She laughed at him full in the face, she ripped off his shirt for him and flung it into the fire, in the fiery wake of her own discarded clothing."xxxii There is no fear of sex, or of male desire, or even a hint of shame about her own desires. This girl is no one's victim.
The tale ends “See! Sweet and sound she sleeps in Granny's bed, between the paws of the tender wolf.” Carter's heroine is fearless on many levels: she has sex outside the bounds of the approved space of marriage, she chooses it for herself (it is not imposed upon her as a marriage duty or as an act of rape), she acts without deference to anyone, and with no thought for society's sanctions. And there are no consequences for her actions, no societally enforced punishment for being a “loose” woman.
Importantly, when she does break her “unbroken membrane,” she does not become a broken or ruined “thing.” Her virginity is not an economic asset, the removal of which devalues her. Carter's heroine exchanges the power of a virgin for that of a knowing woman—her “power in potentia” has been realised. She retains the core of who she is; sex has merely added to her experience, not soiled her in any way—she has not lessened.
Sex, desire, and independent female action, hinted at in the oral tradition, primly covered and clothed by the patriarchy, are all on glorious, rapturous, almost pornographic display in Carter's works. There is no room for the “good” girl in her revisionist fairy tale.
I like to think that Carter reclaimed Little Red and gave her the chance to be more Buffy and less Little Bo Peep. She reclaimed the idea of “power in potentia,” precisely the thing that
frightened men: female independence and power and freedom of choice. These were precisely the things that were stripped away over time through editing and re-writing by patriarchal transcribers. Blackwell writes: “...when the brothers wrote down the tales, they omitted some of the magic words, and they jumbled up parts of the plots. They even left the wise women out of the stories they told, or changed them to be wicked, bossy, and ugly. Still, they left some of the magic in the stories."xxxiv There is still magic left in the tales, and Carter found it—Little Red is now back on the path less travelled, and having a better time for it.
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Bibliography
Carter, A. 1979. The Bloody Chamber. London: Vintage.
Blackwell, J. 2001. Fractured Fairytales: German Women Authors and the Grimm Tradition. The Germanic Review, 162-174.
Johnson, S. P. 2003. The Toleration and Erotization of Rape: Interpreting Charles Perrault's ‘Le Petit Chaperon Rouge’ within Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Jurisprudence. Women's Studies, 32: 325-352.
Rowe, K. E. (1986) “Feminism and Fairy Tales", in Zipes, J. (ed.) Don't Bet on the Prince: Contemporary Feminist Fairy Tales in North America and England, Aldershot, England: Gower, pp. 209-226.
Verdier, Y. 1978. Grands-meres, si vous saviez ... : Le Petit Chaperon Rouge dans la tradition orale. www.expositions.bnf.fr/contes/cles/verdier.htm (accessed 22/12/2005).
Warner, M. 1995. From the Beast to the Blonde: on Fairytales and Their Tellers. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Windling, T. 1997. Women and Fairytales. www.endicott-studio.com/rdrm/forblind.html (accessed 7/05/2005).
Windling, T. 2004. The Path of Needles or Pins: Little Red Riding Hood. www.endicott-studio.com/rdrm/rrPathNeedles.html
(accessed 18/04/2006).
Zipes, J. 1986. Don't Bet on the Prince: Contemporary Feminist Fairytales in North America and England. Aldershot, England: Gower.
i Windling, 2004, p.3
ii Verdier cited in Windling, 2004, p.4
iii Windling, 2004, p.4
iv Zipes, 1986, p.229
v Carter, 1995, p.97
vi Zipes, 1986, p.227
vii Windling, 1997, p.2
viii Warner, 1990, p.4
ix ibid
x Warner, 1995, p.181
xi Zipes, 1986, p.229
xii ibid
xiii Johnson, 2003, p.329
xiv cited in Zipes, 1986, p.242
xv Johnson, 2003, p.326
xvi ibid
xvii Warner, 1995, pp.181-2
xviii ibid
xix Zipes, 1986, p.230
xx ibid
xxi Blackwell, 2001, p.165
xxii ibid
xxiii Blackwell, 1986, p.164
xxiv ibid
xxv Blackwell, 2001, p.165
xxvi Rowe, 1986, p.214
xxvii Warner, 1995, p.308
xxviii ibid
xxix Carter, 1995, p.114
xxx ibid
xxxi Carter, 1995, p.118
Xxxii ibid
Xxxiii ibid
Xxxiv Blackwell, 2001, p.162
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Bio
Angela Slatter is a Brisbane-based writer. Her short fiction has appeared in Australia, the UK, US, and Canada, in publications such as Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, On Spec, and Shimmer. She is currently studying for a PhD in Creative Writing.
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Maurice Broaddus is a writer, scientist, and lay leader at The Dwelling Place Church. In addition to being a regular blogger for Indy.com Magazine, he is the comic books reviews editor for Hollywood Jesus. He's been published in dozens of markets, including Dark Dreams II and III, Horror Literature Quarterly, and Weird Tales. Visit his site at www.MauriceBroaddus.com. Most importantly, read his blog. He loves that. A lot.
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Broken Strand
by Maurice Broaddus
I brought my hand up to the doorbell simply to watch it hang in mid-air then fall back to my side. My balled hand tapped my thigh before I checked my watch. 2:55 p.m. Still time to come up with an excuse to back out of the reunion; at best, the professor would get a half hour of my time. I didn't know why I'd even agreed to the meeting. Yeah I did. Her. The possibility of seeing her.
The weather report called for a high of 64o. A little on the cool side for spring, the overcast sky—bleak, impenetrable, and cold, with a slight breeze—falling under the weatherman's definition of partly sunny. Underneath my overcoat, I flexed and puffed a bit to further fill out my expensive cream-colored business suit. 3:00 p.m. Before ringing the doorbell, I adjusted my tie one last time and smoothed out a crease only I would've noticed.
"Wendal Tolliver.” The professor's voice attempted to mask not just the hint of shock that I'd actually shown up, but any trace of the frantic furtiveness that pled for a meeting.
"Professor Roush.” I moved to clap him on the shoulder, which I suspect he took as an opening for a hug. The awkward tango ended in a cautious handshake.
"Martin, please.” The professor put his hands in his pocket, suddenly fascinated with his shoes. “Come in, come in."
Time had changed Professor Roush into something less than the teacher I remembered. Dark circles ringed each of his eyes. Although he still walked with a meandering shamble, he now had a pronounced slouch. He ran his calloused fingers through his full but disheveled mop of graying hair. The modest home smelled of astringent chemicals, dirty socks, and the kind of “air freshener sprayed over body odor” scent best left uncommented upon in polite conversation. Wallpaper curled along the wall, as if the paper longed to peel free. The paint beneath chipped and flaked in spots under the erosion of neglect; an emptiness soaked into the walls, rotting the wood framing and baseboards in a mold of despair. A Spartan feng shui ordered the spacious living room: we huddled in the corner on the sole two chairs. A lone shelf with a picture of the professor and a young woman fought off a sense of complete loneliness about the room.
"Piece of gum?” I didn't care how obvious it appeared that the professor's rank breath bothered me. Foul was foul and I didn't want to have to put up with anymore than I absolutely had to.
"No thanks."
I kept holding out the package of gum. If I held it out long enough, some people felt compelled to take a piece, a sign that they'd crack under pressure. A handy thing to know in business.
Professor Roush took a piece.
"It's been a long time."
"Too long, too long indeed.” The professor's face again took a sudden sheepish turn, as if he fumbled to start the conversation. “Do you know why I chose you to be my assistant?"
"No.” I lied. I suspected it had something to do with the fact that I was the only black student in his class.
"Because you weren't like the others around there. You cared,” the professor explained.
"I don't understand."
"Things, real things, mattered to you. People mattered to you. Knowing mattered to you. Not ass-kissing and your precious GPA."
I wish he had offered me a drink. A glass of anything to fidget with or sip from would help pass the awkward pauses that tended to accompany conversations with Professor Roush. The weight of his stare made me uncomfortable, so I checked my watch. 3:10 p.m. Though I was no longer the guppy-eyed, eager-to-please student, part of me still wanted the professor's approval. He meant a lot to me, having become more than a mentor, despite the rocky start to our relationship: he'd accused me of cheating. Not quite the case, though I assumed that was what the professor thought. Never the most focused of students, I never bothered to take notes during the lectures, nor particularly applied myself during study groups, yet I aced the first test. Professor Roush immediately revised how he handled test day seating arrangements and kept his eyes on me. I aced the second test. His suspicions assuaged, Professor Roush gave me a lab job.
I spied a Bible on the end table. “Have you found religion?"
"Sometimes we can't bring ourselves to part with attachments to our past.” Professor Roush loomed nearer, peered at me from just above his hawkish nose, and waited for a reaction. “By one man sin entered into the world and by sin, death; and so death passed upon all men."
"I see.” It had been nine years since I'd escaped my absurdly religious family. Nine years since I'd had to suffer their strict interpretation of the Bible and a church with its swaying choir and preacher-inspired emotion. I knew the fire, the frenzy, the ecstasy of faith; but disconnected from the ridiculous children's tales presented as fact. And, because their beliefs never became my own (I couldn't even parrot them in high school), I grew up alongside strangers in the same home. Shuffled to school as obligation, not parenting, I never looked back once I got to college. I couldn't even find the emotional resources to rub their noses in my success, though I doubt they'd have the emotional resources to be jealous. Or proud. Nine years with nothing to say besides the occasional strained phone call where the first two questions were “are you praying?” and “have you found a good girl to settle down with?” They were lucky I didn't also develop a resentment toward women; the professor was lucky all he got was a polite-as-I-could-muster “I see."
"I doubt you do,” he said. “Anyway, as you know, the human genome project has completed. Do you know what I see? Within the myriad, disparate, convoluted genetic information is man's sin nature. A person's entire identity balled up in a few nanograms of matter."
"Assuming one's whole identity can be quantified entirely by our DNA.” Sitting forward, I peered at he professor through my bridged fingers. To be fair, as far as I was concerned, there were only three tiers of intellect: genius, above average, and the rest. My theory was that true genius saw patterns where others didn't. I never once doubted the professor's genius.
"Let me put this in terms you might understand; some people are just born bad. No amount of nurture, no amount of loving parents and stimulating environment can help them. ‘A bad tree bears bad fruit.’”