Different Versions of Red Riding Hood

This is the most popular version.

• grandmother is sick and her granddaughter carries a basket of goods to her home in the woods,
• the girl is tricked by the wolf who overtakes her, eats her granny, and puts the old lady's clothes on,
• the wolf eats the girl too, falls asleep, is found by a hunter who opens his stomach, and saves both of the victims,
• they fill the wolf's body with stones, the beast dies, and the humans have a feast.

Only a very small percentage of readers knows that the Brothers Grimm wrote two versions of the same story. The second one doesn't end with the feast.

• the girl sometime later visits her granny again and meets another wolf,
• she is not tricked and with her granny's help, they kill the beast.

The absence of the hunter is not the only difference from the variations above. Of course, the end with the grandmother and the girl being eaten at the end sends a completely different moral, but we should point at a few other not-so-unimportant details as well:

• the girl wears a red hood, not a cap, which is worn in versions by the Grimms,
• while the mother at Grimms is presented as an authority who was not respected by the girl, Perrault presents the mother as a person who didn't warn her child,
• while the girl is the wolf's primary target at Perrault, at Grimms he wants to eat both from the very beginning,
• Perrault mentions woodcutters as the reason for not eating the girl right at the first encounter with the wolf, Grimms uses the hunter as the savior, but only after the wolf already committed double murder.

So far you may already notice that most of us actually know Red Riding Hood as the mix of variations by the Grimm Brothers and Charles Perrault. Before you proceed we must warn you that some way more horrifying plots follow.

The Grandmother is just one of many variations you may find if you start digging. In this one the sickness of the granny is not an excuse for the girl's (she doesn't wear anything red or at least this color is not mentioned) visit. Her mother just made a loaf of bread and tells her to carry some to the granny. The wood is also not mentioned. The wolf still meets the girl, overtakes her, and kills the granny. Then the juicy stuff happens.

• the girl enters the house where the wolf waits for her in the bed but offers her to eat and drink at first,
• she eats and drinks the remains of her own grandmother,
• the wolf insists that she take off her clothes and joins him in the bed,
• she goes to the bed but eventually escapes.

This offers a completely opposite view as expected, huh?

Little Red Hat shares many similarities with the French version above, so we will only present the main deviations.

• the red color dominates the story all over: the girl wears a red hat, her food is red, her drink is red as well,
• instead of the wolf, an ogre attacks the granny, partly eats her, and offers the remains to her granddaughter,
• the girl doesn't escape and there is no rescuer.

Charles Marelles took Perrault's Little Red Riding Hood and rewrote it with some criticism of Perrault's messages. Little Golden-Hood suggests already with a title that we should expect more magic in his retelling yet the presented result from the 19th century fails to really deliver.

• the golden (not red) hood is given by grandmother who has some magical powers and made the hood as a protecting object,
• the girl is named: Blanchette,
• the hood stops the wolf from the attack on the girl and the grandmother kills him just a bit later.

We can find several retellings of Red Riding Hood in Irish collections of folk tales and fairy tales. Their common characteristic is that they are on average much shorter than versions in other countries. The one we selected is special for a few reasons worth mentioning.

• the wolf sees the girl with the basket and rund to her granny's house where he eats her and waits for the next victim,
• the girl talks to the wolf wandering about big ears etc. but he never answers,
• when the wolf attacks, the girl screams, and woodcutters enter and kill the beast.

This American writer, translator, illustrator, and teacher wrote her own version of Red Riding Hood which is very special in its shape (officially the first book so-called doll-book, a book, shaped like a human). While the book was a great commercial success, the retelling of the story is mediocre, at best.

• the granny is not at home, so one of the conflicts is missing,
• the hunter kills the wolf before he gets a chance to hurt the girl, so the second conflict is missing as well,
• the explicitly written moral at the end warns readers against all wolves and all men, which sends, mildly speaking, a very questioning message.

W. W. Denslow is best known as the original illustrator of Wizard of Oz but he also wrote and illustrated a whole series of picture books based on classic fairy tales and nursery rhymes. While his writing was nearly as good as his illustration, his take on Red Riding Hood is quite interesting:

• the granny is not at home in this case either (Denslow always tries to avoid conflicts, especially physical ones, in his retellings, yet he often fails to meet his own standards),
• when the wolf tries to attack the girl, he tangles up in the gown and falls on the floor,
• the granny enters, gives him a good beating, and locks him in the backyard,
• Red Riding Hood starts re-educating the wolf who eventually becomes the first domesticated wolf and a role model for many more.

Yes, this is how the domestication of wild beasts led to - dogs.

Another retelling of the classic fairy tale by the author/illustrator uses the well-known plot and expands it originally.

• instead of the wolf, we have a fox, instead of the girl, we have a duck (with still impressive hat, though),
• she wants to lay eggs in a safe place outside the farm and the fox offers her his woodshed, instantly planning the feast with omelets,
• the dogs saved her from the fox but destroyed the eggs,
• eventually, she laid more eggs and became a mother.

Image credits:

https://topillustrations.wordpress.com/2013/12/02/little-red-riding-hood-in-pictures/
https://pravljice.wordpress.com/2017/07/29/se-ena-razlicica-rdece-kapice-in-zakaj-mi-ni-vsec/ (Slovene language)
https://wwdenslow.weebly.com/little-red-riding-hood.html
http://artyoushouldknow.canalblog.com/archives/2023/08/11/40005667.html