Red Cloaks, hats and Riding Hoods.

Little Red Riding Hood is one of our most well-known fairy tales.    As Zipes notes, ‘…it raises issues about gender identity, sexuality, violence and the civilizing process in a unique and succinct symbolic form that children and adults can understand in different levels’ (1993,  p343).  The tale has been written, rewritten and theorized many times.  Its’ origins have been lost, but it owes elements to many tales.   In Norse Mythology, Thor and Loci use virtually the same questions and answers that our heroine uses to the wolf, and in Celtic tales, the wolf devours the red sun to allow the moon to rise.  The wolf, one of fairy-tales most attractive villains, has signified seducer, rapist, night terrors and the plague (Opie and Opie, 1974).  

The first written version is Charles Perrault’s Tale of ‘Little Red Cap’ published in 1679.  Riding hoods became a popular item of dress not long after, and the name changed.  She can be little red cap, little red hood, little golden hood.  The main character of this tale is nothing without her defining piece of clothing.  She has no other outstanding characteristics.    As the Opie’s point out, in fairy tales ‘there is no evolution of character.  They (the heroines) are referred to by generic or descriptive names…..Fairy tales are more concerned with situation than character.”  (1974, p15).  Todorov argued that all tales start with an equilibrium that is disrupted, and that the tale cannot end until a new equilibrium has been reached. (Branston and Stafford, 1996) This red item of clothing is as disruptive as an artifact can get.  No self-respecting wolf would notice a girl in a brown or green cloak.  Red, the colour of danger, puts our heroine in danger the moment she leaves the civilized safety of the village and enters the forest.

Whilst we have very little information about Red Riding hood, we do know one definite thing about her- we know that she was well loved by the women in her family.  They fashion for her a noteworthy red cloak, or hat, or hood.  Red was an expensive, extravagant colour when Perrault was writing - and he is the writer credited with making her cap red.  Cochineal, the main ingredient for red dye was a costly import from the New World via Spain.  In the 18^th century, fabric and clothing were an investment in both time and money.  Clothing was so valued that it was mentioned in wills, fashions changed slowly and garments were re-modeled until they became thread bear. (Selvedge, 2011)   We know that Little Red Riding hood lived in a village environment, where her scarlet clothing would have marked her out as more prosperous than her neighbors in their homespun natural dyes.  Red was both a costly and exotic colour. (Delamare and Guineau, 2002)

 

A woman wearing red, however young she is, holds older and deeper connotations for us.  The original scarlet woman was the Whore of Babylon, as depicted by William Blake (see fig. 1), written of in the Book of Revelations, chapter 17:4  ‘…arrayed in purple and scarlet colour…. having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication:’  (Common Bible, 1952, p237).  Since biblical times Red has been associated with sexuality and sin.  Morally upright women would not wear the colour because of its association with sin and blood.  The less enlightened Little Red Riding Hood, according to Zipes  ‘…..is topped with a red hat, a chaperon, making her into a type of bourgeois girl tainted with sin, since red , like the scarlet letter A, recalls the devil and heresy.’  (1993, p349).  By dressing her in this colour, and by sending her out into the woods to act as a kind of go-between, it is as if the women in her family collude to send the naïve Red Riding Hood to her moral fall. (Bettelheim, 1991)

Fig. 1, William Blake () The Whore of Babylon

 

The colour of Red Riding Hood’s cloak also represents blood, but not the blood of wounds or violence but menstrual blood.   Carter suggests that the Red clothing that she wears  ‘…has the ominous if brilliant look of blood on snow………she has just started her woman’s bleeding, the clock inside her that will strike, henceforward, once a month.’ (1993 p286).   Historically, Little Red Riding Hood is a child moving into the adult world, she is a cautionary tale for young women.  We know from the tale that she is still under the control of the women in her household; she is little more than a child. (See fig. 2).  Bettleheim notes that ‘Not only is the red cap little, but also the girl.  She is too little, not for wearing the cap but for managing what this red cap symbolises, and what her wearing it invites.’ (1991, p173 ).

Word Count 794 

Fig 2, Margaret Ely Webb (1909) Little Red Riding Hood.

Golden Shoes and Glass Slippers

Cinderella is one of our oldest and most beloved fairy tales.   The tale is a by-word for the triumph of the oppressed over the oppressors.  Cinderella is a daughter who has had her status as first born child destroyed by her Stepmother and Stepsisters.  The Russian Folklorist, Vladimir Propp  categorised fairy tale characters into eight disctinct roles, which he called the spheres of action. (Branston and Stafford, 1996)   According to Propp’s theory Cinderella is both victim and hero at the same time.   Her name indicates more than her place at the kitchen hearth.  ‘Cinderella is a child in mourning for her mother,’ Warner writes, ‘as her name tells us; her potential garb is ash, dirty and low as a donkeyskin or a coat of grasses, but more particularly the sign of loss, the symbol of mortality.’  (1995, p206).   She is in a state of grieving for the woman who is so often absent in fairy tales, her mother, whilst her stepmother makes the perfect villain, who provides the interdictions and struggles that Cinderella has to overcome.

The most important artefact to affect Cinderella is her dropped glass slipper.   Her fairy Godmother assumes the characteristics of Propp’s donor in this tale, providing the shoes that secure Cinderella’s happy-ever-after.  This godmother is in fact the spirit of Cinderella’s dead mother.  In Scottish tales, she is a calf, in Chinese tales, a magic carp, and in Russian tales a birch tree.  Her function is to provide the nurture that Cinderella is denied and to help her secure the best possible marriage.  (Heiner, 2007)

No other foot can fit Cinderella’s slipper, her small dainty feet symbolise her perfection and femininity, as it did in Chinese culture.  (See fig. 1).  Her more masculine Stepsisters are prepared to mutilate their feet in order to be fit for a royal marriage and with the help of their greedy mother lop off their toes and heels.  Shoes not only show our status and wealth but affect the way our bodies move.

Fig 1,  Taber (Date unknown) Little Girl with Bound Feet.

 Aristocratic Chinese women were not expected to walk on their bound feet – they were wealthy enough to be carried.  On the occasions when they did move, they balanced on their crushed feet by acquiring a swaying gait that was seen as feminine and desirable to their husbands.  There are many different versions of Cinderella, but one of the oldest comes from China where a Warlord tries to find the owner of a golden shoe dropped by the heroine Yeh-hsien.   As Warner writes ‘the tiny, precious golden shoe, a treasure among country people who would have gone barefoot or worn bark or straw pattens also reverberates with the fetishism of bound feet.’ (1995, p203).  The photograph of the shoe and plaster cast (see fig. 2) shows how limiting, controlling and painful the process of foot binding was. 

Fig 2 Unknown (date unknown) Lotus shoe and plaster foot

By losing her shoe as the clock strikes Midnight, Cinderella sets a chain of events in motion that will lead to the identification of her worth and beauty by the Prince.  Were she to accept his offer of marriage whilst she was dressed in all her finery, the Prince would never appreciate the struggle and hardships she has had to endure.  Finding the owner of the slipper gives the Prince his own quest to follow, changing his status to that of Propp’s Hero, and Cinderella’s to that of the prize.  By the end of his quest, the Prince looks outside of his own social class but still finds a bride worthy to be a queen.  As Bettelheim  writes, ‘By handing her the slipper to put her foot into, the prince symbolically expresses that he accepts her the way she is, dirty and degraded.’ (1991, p270)  Cinderella’s slipper becomes a symbol of her betrothal to the prince, as binding as a wedding ring on her finger.

Word Count 634

The Enchanted Mirror

Fig 1 Desborough Mirror (50BC - 50AD) British Museum

Mirrors have long held a fascination for humanity.  Requiring skill and knowledge to make, they have been the prized possessions of wealthy and important people, and could be buried with them, as the beautiful Desborough mirror appears to have been. (See fig.1).  Early mirrors were of polished stone or metal and usually belonged to healers, shaman or witchdoctors in primitive cultures.  The idea of contacting spirits through mirrors or of having your soul captured behind the shiny surface has come down through antiquity.   Superstitions surround them, soulless vampires are invisible in them, the dead communicate through them.  In Ancient times, mirrors were dangerous.  As a punishment, Narcissus was enchanted by his own reflection and wasted away, Archimedes scorched an invading Roman fleet with mirrors, and Methuselah was turned to stone by her own reflection.  (Ancient-mythology.com)  Disney’s mirror in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves talks through the mask of Tragedy, providing a classical visual twist.  (see fig. 2).

Fig 2 Artist Unknown (Unknown) Mirror from Snow White.

Bertin notes that mirrors were ‘employed by sorcerers, necromancers, astrologers and charlatans and by means of which spirits were invoked and the future predicted.’  (1881, p416)  The enchanted mirror in the tale of Snow White does exactly this.  It predicts the Queen aging and the young Snow white stepping into her position of beauty and domestic power.  Levi-Strauss explored narrative through the use of Binary Oppositions (Branston and Stafford, 1996)  and would argue that this tale shows us the conflict between youth and age, good and evil.

We view mirrors as narcissistic and encouraging vanity.  Allegorical paintings of vanity show aging women in front of their mirrors, a laughable but disturbing figure in her low-cut dresses surrounded by cosmetics. (See fig. 3).  In times when a woman had limited power within her household, the loss of her youth, and her eclipse by a young fertile bride lead to frequent power-battles and conflicts.  Within this arena of older and younger women, second spouses are particularly likely to be cast as villainous.  As Warner points out, ‘History is bespattered with the blood of possible heirs, done away with by consorts ambitious for their own progeny’. (1996, p213) In the tale of Snow White, Levi Strauss’s theory of opposition can again be applied to the female characters in the idea of what makes a good and bad mother.  The Queen, influenced by the mirror turns into an unnatural murderous mother as opposed to Snow Whites deceased, natural mother who we assume would have protected and nurtured her offspring.  The Queen’s dependence on her enchanted mirror reveals her as occult and evil.  In his book, Witches and Neighbours, Brigs writes ‘the classic image of the witch is that of the bad mother.  She was supposed to kill children, even sometimes eat them, rather than protect and nourish them.’  

Fig 3 Vanitas, engraved by Jerimias Falck after Bernardo Strozzi

Mirrors, enchanted or otherwise do not lie.  They show the truth, or reflect life as it is at that moment in time.   The mirror in this tale is no exception.  We may take the Queen’s repeated consultations of her mirror as a sign of vanity and desperation, but neither she nor us the listener doubts the mirrors truthfulness.   But the truth, like ancient mirrors, can be dangerous.  When the mirror tells the Queen that Snow White will eclipse her in beauty and worth, The Queen acts upon the information and makes plans to eliminate her rival.  The mirror is itself motiveless, but acts as both informant and catalyst.  It has no loyalty to either the Queen or Snow white, inciting one, and betraying the other.


Word Count 587