I decided to look and see how "Little Red" is portrayed in pictures in children's books. I always had the depiction in my own head of a girl around six or seven with a bright red cape and blonde hair. She was always very innocent and naive.
The first four pictures I have included (#1, #2, #3, #4) all came from children's books and were what I expected. There were sweet looking girls in blue dresses and red capes with their hoods up. None of the girls appeared to be from this time period, they all looked like they were from the past with their modest dress and aprons. These girls seems to be the standard girl portrayed to children in picture books.
My ideas on why the girl is portrayed as young is that children of the age of this girl are able to identify with her. Despite the time difference the girl seems to be just like a normal 6, 7 or eight year old. This day in age children of the age of this girl could identify with the idea of "Never talk to strangers". This phrase is drilled into the heads of children in our society. I do not think the illustrators meant to portray any messages of puberty or sex. If they had I believe the girl would have been shown in a different light. Even in picture five (#5) the wolf is shown as a definite threat, but not as a sexual predator. Little Red is so young that the threat doesn't seem like it could possibly be related to sexuality.
These ideas can contribute to our discussion of Little Red Riding Hood because we must look at the reader's response to a story to obtain a current meaning of that story. The reader's response though, is greatly influenced by the way the character is portrayed. The reader has to make assumptions based on what they are given from the author (storyteller), illustrator, and his or her own life experiences.
It is difficult to tell if the illustrators grew up on the same portrayal of this character or if their own life experiences influenced their depiction of her. Did the illustrator draw a young girl because in his mind he saw her as six or because that is the age she tend to be portrayed? Did both things have an influence on the outcome of the picture?
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6 comments:
I think this is an interesting point you have brought up. I also have the same picture of Little Red in my mind - around the age of six, blonde hair, and very innocent looking.
After reading this blog, I decided to do a google image search for Little Red Riding Hood. Most of the images that came up were much like the pictures you posted. Im not sure when these images where created, but it made me wonder, if so many of the earlier critics thought of Little Red as a much older, more mature looking girl, they why aren't there any images of her dipicted to her in that way. I would think there would be a few paintings.
After going through 50 some pages of images, I only found one that I felt was close to what Bettelheim believed she was like - http://tn3-2.deviantart.com/fs9/300W/i/2006/142/e/b/Little_Red_Riding_Hood_by_fagashlil.jpg
the only other images I found were several revealing Halloween costumes that I won't waste your time to post, because I'm sure you have probably seen them before.
- Erica
the link in my comment was cut off, and I'm not too up in blogging so I'm not sure how to post pics. If you want to see the image that I found, go to google images and type in little red riding hood. The image is on the first page in balck and white.
It's really funny to me how we come up with our own mental picture of what we imagine the characters we read about when were little look like. brown hair with blue eyes is always what came to mind personally, but these different pictures change so drastically from one to the next.
I definitely agree that these pictures seem very safe, and non threatening. I'm curious as to the time frame these illustrations were created. and which version of "Little Red Riding Hood" they belong to. Do you think there are any pictures that show the sexual and more crude stories we've been talking about in class. I am curious, but feel like if I saw "Little Red Riding Hood" in that way I'd be freaked out. Although, I have to say I may already be there just by our conversations in class! (:
Nicely done at any rate.
Danielle Roost
I too performed the image search that Erica first mentioned, and obviously found the same type of innocent young images discussed in your post. However out of curiosity I added the key word comic to the end of my google image search and found a completly different set of pictures, One that stands out as exactly the opposite of the young and innocent is:link I think the images are based partialy on the time period they were created as well as being targeted to a specific audience.
This blog reminded me of one of my other classes where we were learning about Walt Disney and how he really was the one to put images in our minds of the fairy tales we all known and love as a child. Our teacher showed us an image of a "laugh o gram" which was a short play of sorts representing a fairy tale. She showed us the one for Little Red Riding Hood, and little red was dressed like a flapper! She had a short bob hair cut, shortened dress and was short and chubby. Not at all what most people think of when they hear little red riding hood!
I also find it interesting how everyone comes up with pictures in their mind of how Little Red Riding Hood looks like to them. I personally never thought any of the Little Red Riding Hood images in books I've seen were sexual. I took Indo European folktales this semester and we learned about the laugh 'o grams as well. I found it very interesting that Little Red Riding Hood was portrayed in a sexual way as a flapper.
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