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Lansen Zhao
Lynda Haas
Writing 39B
Rhetorical Analysis First Draft
Cultural Situations Behind Fairy Tales
Fairy tales is an ancient literary genre; mostly reflects the real life through the
imagination, fantasy and exaggeration, and let people get entertained and educated. It is a special
art form to capture the authentic lifestyles in different time periods, so fairy tales writers would
consider about the audiences and the society they lived in to create the fairy tales that are capable
to transmit their purposes and opinions. The origins of fairy tales were from the legends and
myths all over the world. They were transmitted orally, and then collectors gathered those oral
stories to make them organized. With the development of the literature, the diversity of literature
brings the fairy tales more attractive and relevant conventions. Also those representative
conventions changed along with the time and culture background changes. In the 21st century,
people have read a lot of fairy tales in different versions since they were very little. Parents let
their children read those educational stories to help them form the consciousness of good
qualities and behaviors. Like the critic Catherine Storr describes the strength of fairy tales:
When we tell or read our children folk or fairy tales, we are setting before them examples not
only of the priceless power of imagination, but also of the human ability to make patterns, to
structure events which might, separately, seem to have no significance or relevance, into a
connected whole. Now the fairy tales still play an important role in childrens life, and mostly
popular fairy tales still are the classic ones with a long history.

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Conventions in the fairy tales help define the fairy tale morals and they are reshaped by
writers to be tools that make stories closer to audiences real life. Writers reshaped them to cater
to the taste of audiences of the day, and achieve the goal to educate and entertain the specific
group of audiences. With the development of the fairy tales over decades, many fairy tale writers
restored tales traditional conventions in the new versions, but reshaped them in the base of
cultural and historical background. Writers need to save the uniqueness of fairy tales genre, and
also make sure they have specific and stationary reader groups. So the convention, which became
the symbol of fairy tales genre, was considered as a tool to connect the fairy tales and the readers
more closely. Even though fairy tales appeared around the whole world by different writers with
different purposes, their authors restored the genre conventions more or less to manifest their
writing style and purpose.
Writers use conventions in fairy tales to express their ideas and achieve their creative
objectives. Their choices of conventions depend on the audiences and the historical background.
The rescuing by heroes and the villainy are common conventions in the fairy tale. The
connection between gender roles is always an important part of literary artwork and raises a
wave of discussion in the field of literature, but not every tale would put emphasis on same
conventions. In many famous fairy tales, strong and brave male characters save the female in
distress and they finally get married, such as the Snow White and the Cinderella. And the
Little Red Cap is the classic one representing the villainy. It is a typical fairy tale originally
collected by Brothers Grimm, and many editions of it appeared due to the different cultural
backgrounds and time periods. In the original version of Le Petit Chaperon Rouge (Little Red
Riding Hood) written by Charles Perrault, he talks about a beautiful little girl who wears a red
hood strays from the path to visit her grandmother alone. She is tricked by a wicked wolf, and

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then the wolf eats up little red hood and her grandmother. Perrault says: And, saying these
words, this wicked wolf fell upon Little Red Riding Hood, and ate her all up in the end. There is
no hero in the original version; wolf eats up both the little girl and her grandmother, which is a
brutal ending and totally different with the common fairy tales with happy endings. But when we
look at the more common version Little Red Cap of this classic fairy tale by Brothers Grimm,
in the end of the story, a huntsman hears the wolfs loud snoring and then finds out the truth. He
cuts off the wolfs belly, and then saves them out. The huntsman is considered as a hero, who is
brave and clever enough to save the two female characters in the distress, and help them kill the
wolf. Readers can see the conventions changed in the different versions of this fairy tale,
especially in the part of the huntsman character.
Not like the traditional fairy tales to transmit the beauty and love to readers, for example, the
huntsman saved little red cap as a wonderful ending, Perraults version shows the child-friendly
side of the 16th and 17th European society. Based on the cultural situation, Perraults version
without the appearance of the hero was once considered as a fable of sex. An American feminist
author Susan Brownmiller declared, Red Riding Hood is a parable of rape in her own book
Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape. She thinks that this story serves as a warning to
young ladies and is an indicator of rape culture. Critics say that it means a deal because there
are several hints to reveal the sexual sense in the story. For example, when the Little Red Riding
Hood enters the room, the wolf says: Put the cake and the little pot of butter upon the stool, and
come get into bed with me. And then she took off her clothes and got into bed. Those scenes
imply the strong sexual connotations, which make a noticeable effect on the reading experience.
Bruno Bettelheim argued in his classic work The Uses of Enchantment, the imagery of fairy tale
helps children better than anything else in achieving mature consciousness (23). This version is

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a lesson for young girls to warn them the importance of their virginity. By reading the Perraults
version that the girl was finally eaten brutally by the wolf without any turning point, readers
would infer the information that Perrault intended to convey through the particular scenarios
provided by the presuppositions that once a lady lost her virginity, she will lose it forever and no
chance to have it again.
Whats more, Perraults aim of creation directly influenced the conventions to cater the taste
of audiences. He gives a moral in the end of the story: Children, especially attractive, well bred
young ladies, should never talk to strangers, for if they should do so, they may well provide
dinner for a wolf. I say wolf, but there are various kinds of wolves. There are also those who
are charming, quiet, polite, unassuming, complacent, and sweet, who pursue young women at
home and in the streets. And unfortunately, it is these gentle wolves who are the most dangerous
ones of all . From the moral he revealed, Perrault conveyed his idea to girls that never get
tricked by archetypal character wolf, which implied those charming high-rank people good at
seducing young ladies. Perrault reshaped the villainy conventions in this fairy tale to warn young
ladies, and also make it more relevant and closely fit the actual historical situations of the day.
If writers are inclined to satisfy the taste of different groups of readers, they reshape
conventions to meet their purposes of creation. Describing the purpose of Perrault version is to
warn young ladies; Brothers Grimms creation aimed to educate and entertain the children. At the
beginning of each version, Perrault described the little red riding hood is a good-looking young
girl under the family protection. She is inexperienced with everything around her and becomes
lack of awareness and resistance of temptation, but Brothers Grimm shaped the little red riding
hood as a lovely and innocent little girl. They built different role characteristics to target different
types of audiences. Grimms also enhanced the expression of convention of heroism and villainy

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to make a sharper contrast between them. The wolf and the huntsman are both male images, but
the wolf is evil, negative to threat heroines, while the huntsman is good, justice to save heroines
lives. In the context, several hints show the persona of the two sides of moralities. Firstly, the
huntsman passes by and thinks, That was the old womans snoring, youd better see if
somethings wrong (Grimms). This scene highlights the huntsmans kindness that he is willing
to care about a strange old woman. Secondly, when he realizes the wolf eats up the grandmother,
Perhaps she can still be saved, I wont shoot (Grimms). His mental activity shows his sagacity.
He tries to save the old lady and avoids shooting the wolf directly; on the other hand, the
huntsman had been searching for the wolf for a long time (Grimms). It highlights the evilness
of the wolf that maybe the wolf already did all kinds of evil so the huntsman has been
searching for a long time (Grimms). Grimms tended to compare these two positive and negative
characters to teach children distinguish between right and wrong and to achieve their goal to
educate and entertain the children.
Perrault and Brothers Grimm deliberately decided their creation purposes on the basis of the
cultural background they lived in. In the 16th and 17th century of France, the virginity of women
was highly valuable, and women need to learn about protecting themselves. So Perrault chose the
audience for the story, and clearly pointed out the importance of virginity of women. Because the
audiences were young women with adult consciousness, so he made a severe and tragic end to
give them an alert. In another cultural situation, Brothers Grimm intended to create fairy tales
and dedicate themselves for children. Children are innocent and fragile, so Grimms have to be
careful to educate children and let them believe the hope in their lives. We can see they convey
that opinion to children that once the children made mistakes, as long as they correct their ways,
there is the remedial occasion for them. So Grimms created a saver, the huntsman in their version

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of Little Red Cap, to give the little red riding hood a chance to correct herself after she
encountered the danger and experienced the fear, finally realized the dangerous situation she was
in. The purpose of Grimms version was not only to teach children to listen to their mothers, but
also to help them have a positive faith in life. Due to this positive cultural background, this
version made readers feel more hopeful than Perraults version.
Comparing the Perraults and Brother Grimms versions, we can see the writers created due
to the society of they live in and the specific audiences they aimed at. Cultural background
influences the living situation of authors and makes them create different types of literature with
purposes. Charles Perrault created new fairy tales based on the pre-existing folk tales and also
reflected the awareness of earlier fairy tales written in the salons by Madam dAulnoy. He knew
how these stories spread and how to express his ideas to the young ladies in the story. Now, in
the 21st century, the audience of most fairy tales is the children and young adults, but at that time,
Perrault did not intend to create stories for entertaining and educating children. By contrast,
Brother Grimm collected fairy tales for children to read, in the Little Red Cap, it contains more
details about how the hero huntsman saves little red cap and her grandmother, and how they
come up with a wonderful idea to kill the wolf after they are saved. Grimms aimed to show his
expertise of educating and entertaining his readers and to help them contribute their
Emphasizing the cleverness and braveness of the hero and good characters would cheer up the
readers and satisfy their expectations. So we can see the society situation and time period
through their works and tell that the cultural situations change writers purposes of writing fairy
tales.
The multiple creative objectives of fairy tales create various reshaped conventions to keep
pace with the times. Some fairy tales are created to educate young children, such as the Le Petit

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Chaperon Rouge teaching them to listen to their mother; some of them mainly focused on
adults, like the Little Red Riding Hood by Perrault. Most of them are able to reflect the
historical and cultural situation of the authors with genre conventions. For any literary work, the
audiences are participants and cooperators in the literature, their reading processes bring the
words to life. It is an interesting process when readers read the classic fairy tales and also learn
about different cultures and living styles at that time period because they can see a part of the
society, which produces both the creators and the readers. So the author of fairy tales created
their masterpieces, which closely fit their readers lifestyle, by reshaping the conventions and
motifs to cater to the taste of audiences of the day, and reach the goal to educate audiences.

Works Cited:
Little Red Riding Hood, Charles Perrault: N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Mar 2016
Little Red Cap, Grimm, Jacob, and Wilhelm Grimm. N.P., n.d. Web. 06 Mar 2016
Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, Susan Brownmiller: People.com. N.p., 10 Nov. 1975.
Web. 06 Mar 2016
The Uses of Enchantment, Bruno Bettelheim, N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Mar 2016
Evolution of Fairy Tales, Childrens Literature Review: N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Mar 2016