Iakov Levi
Little Red Riding Hood
March 24, 2005
Freud has shown that in dreams “child” is the symbol of
the penis (1). Through his patients' analysis, Karl Abraham confirmed Freud's
findings: a woman sees in her husband's penis, and in her children, a compensation for her missing member (2).
Nietzsche' bright intuition hinted at the same thing: "Everything in woman is a riddle, and everything in woman hath one solution - it is called pregnancy.
Man is for woman a means: the purpose is always the child..."(Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 18)
In Biancaneve e altre vergini, I have sustained that
Snow - White's seven little dwarfs represent her missing virginal penis.
Children think that a dwarf is a little child, because they don’t know
anything about growth hormonal deficiency, which causes a grownup to remain
“little” in size. The seven little dwarfs, which represent Snow - White's virginal penis, are eventually substituted
by the Prince’s member through the very act of defloration. As long as
she is alone in the bush, she is surrounded by seven little dwarfs, but
when the Prince makes his appearance, she is deflowered, she owns her husband’s
penis, she does not need her dwarfs anymore, and they disappear.
Little Red Riding Hood, as her name emphasizes, is "little",
a child, like Snow - White's seven dwarfs. The illustrations, which usually
accompany the tale, always underline her "littlehood". Henceforth, she herself
represents a penis. Being a girl, she represents a virginal female penis.
Dreams, works of art, and tales' representations always work by condensation.
Red, as we already know, represents passion. It is a
color associated with excitement of the senses and eroticism, as is fire,
which is always colored in red.
Therefore, Little Red Riding Hood is an excited female
penis, wandering in the bush in her genital need, as every Oedipal little
girl. She picks up flowers which, as Freud has shown, are the symbol of
female virginity (Cf. On Trees and on Birds (and on Flowers)).
In the bush, she meets the object of her genital urge,
the wolf.
In bed with the enemy. This illustration by Gustave Dore
is more eloquent than one thousand words
As in Snow - White, whose mother asks the mirror who is the prettiest on earth, the element of the rivalry between mother and daughter finds its expression in the tale of Little Red Riding Hood, too. The little girl eliminates her mother twice. First, when she leaves her dumb on the threshold of the house, and secondly when she is killed by the wolf as grand - mother, who is a Grand - Mother, indeed. Then, the girl takes her place in bed with the wolf. In the same condensation, the girl kills the mother, takes her place in the marital bed, and she is herself devoured by the wolf (synonymous of being the passive object of intercourse with the father). Being devoured - killed condenses the erotic desire and
the Talion for the aggressive drive towards the parent of the same sex, which is never absent in every Oedipal position.
The wolf, as in other tales, is the image of the castrating
Father.
As Freud and Abraham have shown, children are convinced
that sexual intercourse is a violent act that the male inflicts on his
partner. A female is rendered such by an act of castration. Now, instead
of a penis, the female has a wound (3).
The male - child is induced into this conviction by his
own genital sadistic urge of castrating - penetrating the female, which is an instictual drive, and the female is
induced into the same thinking by her own urge of being possessed and penetrated.
Little Red Riding Hood meets in the wood her own genital
urge: a ferocious wolf who will possess her in a violent way, and who will
castrate her, and make of her a full female. In childish thinking, this instinctual drive translates into the fantasy of being
devoured by the wolf. Snow - White resurrects after having been kissed
- deflowered by the Prince (children think that a female could become pregnant
by a simple kiss, or being fed by the father with something through the mouth), and Little Red Riding Hood resurrects from the wolf's womb, after having been devoured by him. The kissing by the prince, which not casually is an acting out consummated through the mouth, is equivalent to the devouring by the wolf.
In puberty rites of males, the novices resurrect from the father, denying
their biological birth from the mother, and also denying their incestuous drive, which is strictly associated with their previous maternal dependence. Now they belong to the fathers, they identify with them, and are granted sexual licence.
For girls is different. Death in the bush is associated with a latency period during which the incestuous drive towards the father is re -worked and transfered into another object, which represents a socially accepted father - substitute: a Prince or, as in the case of Little Cap, the Hunter.
After resurrecting
from the wolf - father, Little Red Riding Hood can consummate her full
femininity with the Prince - Hunter, the Savior, Vicar of all the young
novices. He is the substitute of the original object of the genital urge:
the wolf - Father. In the case of Little Cap the young hero (the hunter) even kills the Father, retracing one of the main elements of the deeds of the Heroes, who, killing the totemic beast, earn the right to possess the woman. The same element is present in puberty rites of savages, where the novice must kill an enemy, as completion of his puberty rite.
As Freud said: "The hero was a man who by himself had slain the father - the father who still appeared in the myth as a totemic monster" (4).
Now we can see that this sentence is valid for girls, too. Only the one who by himself had slain the father is entitled to earn the girl's love and admiration, and to be targeted by her libidinal flow. He killed him, and now he is entitled to be his substitute.
In the case of Little Cap, the wolf is the totemic monster, mentioned by Freud.
It is not casual that a Hunter saves Little Cap. He has a big rifle, symbol of the penis, and he represents a viable alternative to the devouring wolf.
The Dwarf
A penis among his "flowers"
The castrating Father
The Prince
Snow – White falls into a deep sleep, synonymous of “death”, and then is saved by the Prince through the kiss – defloration. In the same way, Little Red Riding Hood is devoured into the belly of the wolf, symbolizing a similar death, and then the Hunter saves her. Being devoured, or falling into a deep sleep – death, means castration, which, as Freud and Abraham have shown, is the precondition for femininity.
On the contrary, for males, Death is a way for resurrecting, purified from incestuous drives and in full identification with the fathers. The circumcision, or other mutilations inflicted during the puberty rite, which symbolize castration, is a warning, and at the same time a partial sacrifice of their own self, in the name of the reconciliation with the fathers. In short, while to girls castration is syn tonic with the natural libidinal flow, because it is a precondition for their own femininity, to boys it runs against the libidinal flow, and it is interpreted as a partial renunciation of their manhood. It is the price the novices pay for reconciliation with the generation of the fathers. Therefore, puberty rites are so traumatic for boys. Threats, tortures, and symbolic castration run against the natural libidinal need. They are perceived as a social and psychological need in the name of social stability. Nevertheless, they represent an inhibiting instance to the youngsters' instinctual drives.
As I have shown in Hamlet,
during the puberty rite, the novices temporarily assume a female connotation, as a consequence of having been symbolically castrated by their fathers.
It explains why, in primitive societies, puberty rites are considered a pivotal part of social order, while females' puberty rites remain in the background, and have no social relevance. The reason is that the instinctual drive of boys towards the fathers is aggressive and sadistic, and must be exorcised in the name of social order, while the instinctual drive of girls towards their fathers is basically masochistic (to be devoured - possessed), and therefore is syntonic to social acceptance. Nevertheless, the psychological need of girls is there, because they, too, must shift the libidinal drive from the incestuous object into another target. This need finds its expression in tales dealing with young girls who die and resurrect. To them, being devoured by the wolf and being deflowered – castrated by the Prince runs in the direction of the instinctual need. It means salvation from their condition of virginity, and, in the same condensation - as shown by Freud and Abraham - resolves the penis – envy conundrum of early infancy.
NOTES
(1) Sigmund Freud, "Symbolism in Dreams", in "Introductury Lectures on Psycho - Analysis", in The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, Ed. and Trans. J. Strachey, Hogarth Press, London 1964, Vol.XV, p. 157.
(2) Karl Abraham, "The Female Castration Complex" (1920), in in Selected Papers of Karl Abraham, edited by Ernest Jones, translated by Douglas Bryan and Alix Strachey, Hogart Press, London 1927, pp. 339 - 343.
(3)Op.cit., p.343.
(4)Group Psychology and the Analysis
of the Ego, Postscript XII(B).
The Father's imago as a totemic monster is found also in the tales The Beauty and the Beast, and The Frog King, which deals with a Princess who kisses a toad and this transforms into a Prince. It is the same story, as in Little Red Riding Hood, where the original target of the girl's genital urge transforms into its substitute.
Links:
The Path of Needles or Pins: Little Red Riding Hood by Terri Windling
Rapunzel and Other Stories of Beautiful Hair
Girls' Desire for Incest in Myth and in the Bible
Pinocchio: The Puberty Rite of a Puppet
Pinocchio and the Cult of the Trees
Cinderella and "The Puss with the Boots"
The Three Little Pigs and Bruno Bettelheim. How not to make an interpretation
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