Customer Reviews

Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: Sex, Morality, And The Evolution Of A Fairy Tale

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This book puts a unique spin on a common children's fairy tale that many of us grew up with. As she states in the book this story starts out rather baudy and morphs as our morality changes through time. Little Red Riding Hood becomes younger and younger through the years with first starting out as a young woman undressing and crawling into bed with the wolf, until now where the woman singlehandedly defeats the wolf herself.
I like this book because she brings in historical context of this tale. It is amazing how many tales may have originated from the French Court during its heyday. Cinderella, which also started out much differently, Rapunzell, are all noted in this book. I hope the author continues writing about other tales as she did this one. Her style makes it hard to put this one down.

This was a fun little ride through one of the more iconic fairy tales - tracing its original publication as a morality fable about high-society sexual escapades and traipsing on down through the twentieth century. Along the way, the book addresses old Bugs Bunny cartoons, Sam the Sham and the Pharohs ("Little Red Riding Hood ... you sure are looking good ... you're everything a big bad wolf could want ...") and Kim Cattrall in the Pepsi commercial where the wolf/woman roles are exaggerated and fused. Lots of good analysis going on here; much of it is fairly obvious, but every now and again the author surprises you with a little moment of, "Huh. I never thought about it that way."

Definitely a fun pop culture read. I might even go so far as to say it's one of the better ones I've gotten my hands on in awhile.

Catherine Orenstein has a real hit here. A fast, engaging, "can't put it down" read, "Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked" is smart and funny and sexy and engaging all the way along. Her research is deep, the analysis powerful, and she turns a nice phrase too! ("Like a prism that refracts light and delivers the spectrum of the rainbow, 'Little Red Riding Hood' splits and reveals the various elements of human identity"). She uses the story as a window into so many aspects of culture, society and the human psyche. I Loved it!

Though just reduced to writing within the past three hundred years, little red riding hood existed even earlier as an oral tradition.

Interestingly enough, there's evidence to show that little red riding hood was widely told and retold in both the east and west with both oriental and European versions.

A good scholar, Orenstein faithfully recounts ten versions of the story as it has been retold in the west over the past three hundred years. Though some forms have been more baudy and violent, throughout Orenstein has seen the story as a sort of potential myth of female empowerment.

As one reads this book, one is reminded of the various versions of the flood story as told and retold through the world's religious traditions. Just as each religion took the story and retold it in its own distinctive fashion, each culture and time has taken the little red riding hood story retelling it in its own distinctive fashion.

In this sense, the retellings say more about the culture or individual doing the talking than they do about any intrinsic pedagogic value the story may have in its own right.

Though like many commentators, Orenstein referenced Joseph Campbell when discussing the imponderables of why certain stories seem to have such pan cultural staying power, it should be noted that great strides have taken place in behavioral psychology in the past fifty years since Campbell's Hero With a Thousand Faces. So, those interested in really learning why certain stories have staying power over others would be wise to consult the works of Pascal Boyer.

For her part though, Orenstein has produced a great book that essentially tells the story by letting the story speak for itself.

As a layman to the fairy tale culture, I found Catherine Orenstein's book fascinating. She brings the eqique tale, which we all know in detail, to the forefront explaining its cultural and historical context. For instance, the initial yarn was told during Louie IV's courtyard as a warning for young girls to protect their virginity. Its usefulness continues today and is now seen promoting products around the world. Catherine Orenstein makes a powerful case for Red, and other fairy tales, impact on society.

In the best tradition of interdisciplinary studies, this book covers a little bit of everything, first grounded in the well-known fairy tale of `Little Red Riding Hood', which evolved from a cautionary tale for young women in the court of Louis XIV in the 17th C. In this tale (which is revealed later to possibly be based on an even older story featuring the Grandmother - and a plot found in various Western and Eastern cultures), the `wolf' is not an animal to be avoided, but a wolfish man, intent on deflowering and ruining a young woman who is not wise enough to run away. From this point, the tale is discussed as it evolves into the sanitized - yet still remarkably gory - children's story of today. Every character is analyzed, and their transformations by the brothers Grimm to pornography to modern re-telling (the film `Freeway' [1996] is one example) shows how this story still registers in our present world. Orenstein is an entertaining writer, and the visuals included support her points well - the Heinz salad cream advert is a good example of our modern dark humor: it shows the wolf, still in Grandma's clothes (there's a whole chapter on the cross-dressing wolf), stating how "Any food tastes supreme" (177) with this condiment! There's so much material in this book, it's impossible to do it justice in a small review such as this: take my advice, and read this book!

Every woman who cares about how society sees her, or her mother, or her daughter, should read this book to find out how myths and fictions about women get created. This book does a wonderful job of investigating the history and symbolism behind one of the most popular stories of all time We should pay attention to the stories we tell, lest we get trapped by them. I loved this book, everyone with a daughter should read it.

"Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked" will surprise and delight you with its thorough research and insights into the most popular tale of all time. With wit and verve, Ms. Orenstein shows how a grown-up story became a fairy tale for children, then morphed back into versions intended for adults --sometimes the XXX kind of adult. My favorite anecdote is of the school that banned "Little Red Riding Hood" not because of the cross-dressing, violence and allusions to sex --but because Red had a bottle of wine in her picnic basket.

I felt the author gave a fairly in depth account of the many reincarnations of the so-called children's fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood [LRRH]. The language of the discourse was at college level and was fairly incisive, although as other reviewers have pointed out the author did repeat herself on some points. Yet, I found it more helpful in making her points well understood than merely belaboring a point. She discussed how fairy tales and especially LRRH were quite bawdy and written for adults originally. However, the author correctly points out the universality of the fairy tale theme crediting the Russian folklorist Vladimir Propp with pioneering the study of the fairy tale and breaking it down into a small number of central characters, a universal plot line, and all with similar endings. The fairy tale begins with a heroine [while a MYTH typically features a hero and is grander in scope] who leaves home; she is given an always given a warning about something or someone, she pays no attention to the warning, then the villain of the tale/myth attempts to contact the heroine/hero and obtain information about her/him which the villain uses to trick the heroine or hero further in the story. Invariably the heroine [read LRRH here] is harmed or injured by the villain. The endings to the tales/myths originally had gory conclusions, but were updated for modern tastes to include more saccharine finales. The endings vary with regard to whether the protagonist is a heroine of hero. The heroine is always helped by a male figure [as the hunter who cuts LRRH and granny out of the wolf's belly and fills it full of stones while he sleeps], while if a male is a protagonist, he must find a way through guile and tenacity to save himself. It was Charles Perrault who added the red scarf to the heroine of the original tale PETIT CHAPERON ROUGE, while the Grimm Brothers made it popular as LITTLE RED CAP, which has been morphed into the more modern LRRH.

As other reviewers have noted there have been numerous twists to the story over the years from bawdy and pornographic to the moralistic and doctrinaire. All in all, I thought the author did a great job in giving a brief synopsis 289pp including an index and extensive section of notes [for those wishing to study the topic further] to a story form which has certainly been the work of many masters thesis and doctoral dissertations. The author does give her own psychological interpretation to some of the works of Bruno Bettelheim and Erich Fromm and their take of the interpretation of fairy tales. I think the book is certainly worth a read for the serious minded adult wishing to do an intermediate level of study on fairy tales and LRRH, in particular. The book was quite enjoyable and enlightening at the same time, but is certainly not meant to entertain children.

If there's major fault in Uncloaked, it's not that Orenstien's examination is simplistic--but that it's not exhaustive. It may be surprising that a single fairy tale could offer too much content to cram into a single book, but with Red Riding Hood that's the case. In order simply to keep chapters and book a reasonable length, there's no room to examine every aspect of the tale's source material and multiple retellings--to say nothing of covering every single reinterpretation--so some aspects of the book lack sufficient exploration. But Orenstein provides a strong introduction to and overview of Red Riding Hood: The first few chapters cover early versions of the tale (Perrault, the brothers Grimm, and the old wive's tale that predates both), quoting the source material as well as providing commentary on each version's message and historical context. Latter chapters range from Tex Avery to Angela Carter, from second-wave feminism to folklore scholarship, studying how the tale has changed in more modern years. Some chapters near the tail end of the book begin to lag (in particular nine, The Punishment of Red Riding Hood: Fairy-Tale Fetish, an analysis of fairy-tale imagery in porn), and the texts which precede later chapters sometimes fail to be telling or iconic, but despite these weaknesses Orenstein's research, analysis, and arguments remain strong.

Uncloaked is imperfect, and the simple fact that it doesn't cover everything may leave the reader with dangling questions, but Orenstein's broad history of Red Riding Hood is nonetheless satisfying. It's a strong introduction to the roots of the fairy tale and a thoughtful overview of the various, changing roles it's played in modern culture, answering many questions and provoking future thought; the writing is solid, engaging, but never slick, making the book a swift read without sacrificing depth for style. The fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood has a lot to offer, and Orenstein delivers on much of it: in parts a warning and a lesson, a morality play and a teaching tool, chastising and empowering, misogynist and feminist, this one fairy tale has been appropriated to cover a gamut of human experience and emotion, and that wide-reaching content makes for a fascinating read. I would have preferred some different media selections and perhaps a different focus in later chapters, and would that Orenstein had provided a further reading list (although she does mention multiple resources in the course of the book), but I found the chapters on the tale's roots and Carter-style feminist retellings particularly fascinating and all told I got all I hoped for from Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: a broad, intelligent, approachable introduction to this fairy tale in all its guises. If Red Riding Hood intrigues, Uncloaked will satisfy. I recommend it.