The Most Popular Story Ever Told

Picking up Sandra L. Beckett's Red Riding Hood for All Ages, many readers will recall Jack Zipes's classic study, The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood. In its examination of contemporary retellings (in that word's broadest meaning), Red Riding Hood for All Ages seems to resume and update the "plight" of the tale, in all of its emotionally and ideologically fraught permutations, but it does not apply the historical, functionalist, and feminist perspectives of its celebrated predecessor, offering neither a theoretical guideline to negotiate the dense, sprawling universe of retellings (and untellings), nor a generative set of values or truths by which variations on the theme are presumably constructed. On the two crucial postulations of audience and meaning, Beckett is pointedly open—contemporary tales of Red Riding Hood are created for all age groups and for audiences of no particular age or disposition, and may elicit a variety of emotional and intellectual responses, some conditioned by the experiencing subject.

One of the most ingenious aspects of this ontologically neutral book is its construction of open, permeable, and heuristic categories, their improvisatory character mirroring the imagination invested in the stories themselves. This approach enables Beckett to emphasize the unique qualities of the stories, which include texts in twelve languages culled from twenty-one different countries, with illustrations from thirteen of them. Beckett lays out her categories in successive chapters: "Cautionary Tales for Modern Readers," "Contemporary Riding Hood Comes of Age," "The Wolf's Story," "The Wolf Within," and "Running with Wolves." Her first two chapters discuss more traditional perspectives, with the last three more innovative ones (9) decentering traditional notions of "wolfhood," or what Beckett is careful not to call otherness, maleness, or power. The sophisticated texts in the final chapters tend to solicit more savvy and experienced readers than the earlier ones, with notable exceptions. In addition, Beckett provides an epilogue in which she introduces us to riffs on Little Red Riding Hood in contemporary visual art.

Chapter one, "Cautionary Tales for Modern Readers," examines twentieth- and twenty-first-century retellings that "draw on the story's tradition as a warnmärchen, or warning tale" (9), and emphasize an urgency to warn girls against sexual predators. In this abundant category are some ironic tales as well by old friends such as the Ahlbergs and Tomi Ungerer. Some tales in this section can be quite demanding—either conceptually, as William Wegman's "caninical" version, or psychologically and emotionally. Tales by Éric Battut, Claude Clément (with mesmerizing illustrations by Forestier), Wim Hofman, and Roberto Innocenti confront child abuse and rape. Beckett devotes a subchapter to this deeply disturbing category, which I think readers will find the most affecting section of the book, and she shows off her considerable skills as a storyteller to their fullest advantage. Not only does she explore a range of provocative texts, among which also appears Sarah Moon's controversial urbanized retelling, treated sensitively and insightfully, but in describing the devastating force, finality, unavoidability, and amorality symbolized by the wolf, Beckett constructs a framework for understanding the subsequent analyses, for every retelling of the tale asks readers to negotiate a rational relationship to the primal terror symbolized by the wolf, and to rethink personal and communal coping strategies.

The first section does what traditional stories do: they move and stir us. In chapter two, "Contemporary Riding Hood Comes of Age," Beckett offers astute readings of texts (and films) that "highlight the initiatory nature of Little Red Riding Hood's adventure" (9), or have a primary connection to particular notions of initiation and ritual. The "Coming of Age" narrative, like the cautionary tale, suggests an early and somewhat naive model of children's literature, one involving familiar mythemes such as turning points, timeless moments, symbolic flight, and the shamanic character of the wise woman. The authors of these versions tend to portray Red's passage through the wood in terms of Arnold van Gennep's spatial model for...