Dear Reader,
Below you will find my intellectual journey as I have undergone a critical reflection on various forms of interpretations of children’s literature. This paper is essentially an academic endeavor, but it does differ from an academic essay in that the conclusion is reached in the same way an insight is formed: by starting out with an idea, thesis, antithesis and finally sublation. The resolution is an epiphany of sorts that, like a quest, comes only at the end, after having undergone various trials. I would like to think that this piece of writing exhibits the point I wish to instill: the necessity of imaginative freedom in myth.
Let Absurdity Reign
Erich Fromm interprets the story of Little Red Riding Hood as the “expression of a deep antagonism against men and sex” (TFL 241). Men (who are represented by the wolf) are seen as “ruthless and cunning animals, who turn the sexual act into a cannibalistic ritual” (CFT 7). A man is a heartless animal driven by the two most primary animal faculties: lust and hunger. Susan Brownmiller contrasts this position with her interpretation of the same tale as a “cultural story that holds the gender bottom line by perpetuating the notion that women are at once victims of male violence even as they must position themselves as beneficiaries of male protection”(CFT 8). Thus, according to Fromm, it is the wolf himself that symbolizes men, whilst for Brownmiller the story itself perpetuates a message of gender prejudice and stereotyping. On top of these two interpretations one could heap psychoanalytic interpretations of womb envy by the wolf (Anne Sexton), the succumbing of a young innocent youth through lies and trickery, thereby straying from the idealized Christian path, the loss of virginity and innocence as symbolized by that pivotal symbolic breaking of the bottle and so on and so on and so on.
Interpretations