The adoption of these elements, informed as they were by sophisticated upper-class taste, sought to provide “behavioural patterns and models for children which were intended to reinforce the prestige and superiority of bourgeois-aristocratic values and styles” (30). As a member of the haute bourgeoisie, or the French upper middle-class, Perrault participated in what Jack Zipes calls the “unique capacity to adopt and use the best elements of other classes” (28) characteristic of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century French aristocracy. Perrault, however, was also writing for a particular audience and framed the literary tale within distinctly pedagogical and moralistic terms. While much of this dialogue situates the red riding hood as a signifier of provocative sexuality in some fashion, a closer reading of Perrault’s text and his specification that the red hood is like “the ones that fine ladieswear” (emphasis mine) suggests a provocation of another kind-that of transgressive social mobility.Ĭharles Perrault is often credited with helping to create and commercialise the form we now recognise as the literary tale, adapting popular folklore and oral tales and translating them into a literary format. But why did Perrault choose the riding hood? And why did he choose to make it red? The garment and colour choice have and continue to be topics of much deliberation, with academics and adaptors alike offering interpretations of nascent puberty, female objectification, or taboo sensuality. Since its inception in Perrault’s “Le Petit Chaperon Rouge” (1697) and its rapid proliferation by the likes of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm with their adaptation “Rotkäppchen” (1812/15) or James N Barker’s “Little Red Riding Hood” (1827), the iconographic legacy of the eponymous red riding hood has seen a vast and diverse global history of canonisation and circulation. The hood suited the child so much that soon everybody was calling her Little Red Riding Hood” (33).
This good woman made her a red hood like the ones that fine ladies wear when they go riding. “Once upon a time, deep in the heart of the country,” begins Charles Perrault, “there lived a pretty little girl whose mother adored her, and her grandmother adored her even more.
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