Abstract
Theory of Fairy Tale: Psychoanalysis of Little Red Riding Hood tries to make clear that this tale can be interpreted in two main ways, depending on the presumed identity of the Wolf. He is 1) a (young) male or 2) the Mother in her night shape, the Ogress, the Witch.
Part one of the book contains commentaries on some important and classic texts from Alan Dundes' casebook (1989) and much more: such as V. Propp's theory of the fairy tales' origin, Freud and Oppenheim's article Träume im Foklore, Yvonne Verdier's reading of the French oral tale before Perrault and Grimm brothers, Carl-Heinz Mallet's interpretation, Jack Zipes' polemic feminist texts, Angela Carter's remake of the tale, the remakes by modern Czech children in their school essays...
The main versions of the Hood translated and analysed by my reading are: Le petit Chaperon rouge (Perrault), Rotkäppchen (Grimms), Conte de la mère-grand (oral version presented by Delarue), the Story of Grandaunt Tiger (modern Chinese versions collected by Eberhard), and Der Wolf und die sieben kleine Geißlein (Grimm).
I agree with Alan Dundes' conclusion, that the known version of Hood, was originally not a cautionary tale against raping males. The oral versions describe a girl not necessary in her adolescence; the fairy tale is full of infantile fantasies projected on the adult, such as cannibalism or defecation. I also agree with the conclusion, that the tale is about the heroine and her female foe, the Mother, and that Grimm brothers "have not been successful in stifling the underlying content of the oral tale" (Dundes, p. 227).
However, I find that the last statement should be demonstrated by the analysis of the Grimms' version. And A. Dundes' opinion that "the grandmother is an extended form of the mother imago" (p. 223) seems to me not appropriate for this demonstration (see the concept map of the Hood below).
Part two explores my, now fully revealed, choice of the Wolf's identity: Mother-Ogress. The moment the mother disappears from the scene, the Wolf appears in it.
I examine two possibilities for Mother-Wolf. The first represents the idea that the tale originated in an anxiety dream about a ritual which consisted of the ceremonial defloration of a virgin; only after this act was performed, the marital sex could legally follow. This alternative is based on Freud's article Das Tabu der Virginität, and then considered using Propp's schema of action (31 phases): The Hood fits in some points, but since the girl resists her defloration and escapes, she cannot get the social approval, a celebrated victory. Wolf here is Mother or a Servant of hers, entrusted with the mission of defloration the virgin.
After considering this reading of the fairy tale, I turn to the second, more plausible, "castration" alternative.
Here, the tale is based on a dream about the so called "archaic", "preœdipal", "phallic mother"; she can appear much earlier, in the infantile age near to the Œdipus complex. The most striking literary support for interpretation can be found in the Italian tale La finta nonna (The Faked Grandmother). The Girl in the bed feels with her hand la coda, the tail of the Grandmother, and knows it is an Orca, an Ogress. It seems absurd that a female creature could have a phallus, but it is exactly the phallus that this mother is lacking in her day life: she lives in state of Penisneid. Another possible objection: how could this nightly mother castrate the girl who is already "castrated", who has no phallus? But, according to the Lacanian concept, the child need not be a "phallophore", a wearer of the phallus for the mother: it is with its own person that it can represent a phallus, a toy for an unsatisfied mother. So, perhaps the girl was trying to escape her mother's oppressive dominance and love.
To support this hypothesis, I introduce a case of a child horse phobia. In fact, this phobia was developed by the patient to the form of a fairy tale, the phobic fairy tale of "little Hans". This phobia is the first child psychanalysis in history. It was undertaken by the father of the 5-year-old Hans (later known as Herbert Graf, a famous opera director), supervised and published by Freud (1909).
The boy fears the horses in the street: they will fall to the ground and bite him. He also fears a horse will enter his room during the night. To get out of this anxiety, he invents series of phantasies that serve him, as Lacan says, as an individual myth. Via these phantasies (with Proppian tasks for the hero, characters like false hero, helpers, and donors) Hans tries to transform himself from the mother-shape into a father-shape. For Freud and for the father, the Œdipus solution was successful; not so much for Lacan (not even for me) - but it does not matter now. It is obvious that the feared horse is always the boy's mother, aphallic, but "phallic" in the "horsepower" of her Penisneid.
It is astonishing; Hans' story fits very well to the scheme of Propp; in other words, if Lacan would have been familiar not only with his friend C. Lévi-Strauss, but also with V. Propp, perhaps he would have stressed some other aspects in the story.
The last part of the book presents its Conclusion. I translate here now a part of it, consisting of the concept map of the Grimms' Hood and the map's legend to bring the desired support for Dundes' statement that Grimm brothers "have not been successful in stifling the underlying content of the oral tale." By that I also mean to state, that it would be a pity to read to children Hood only in a cautionary manner, in place of a dream about the "phallic" mother and the nightmare.