![]() The wolf is presented as the unsurprising, natural consequence of LRRH’s physical, feminine disobedience. The wolf, in Perrault’s version, is the socially sanctioned regulatory force, there to catch and eat all “young children” who “do wrong,” but “mainly pretty girls with charm” who “don’t do as they ought” (emphasis added). In case there was any doubt about the moral, he ends his tale with an explicit articulation of it: 6 His version ends abruptly when the wolf eats LRRH, and posits itself as a moral tale to reprimand young girls for violating social norms. Perrault “published the first written version” in 1697 after encountering the “many oral variants” of the tale told by European mothers. The two main “traditional” versions of the tale come from Charles Perrault (the author of The Tales of Mother Goose) and The Brothers Grimm. ![]() The “Little Red Riding Hood” story as we know it began as an oral folk tale, a genre that is extremely concerned with defining and reinforcing social codes, and expressing these codes through violent moments of external regulation. Ultimately, the Ruby storyline in Once Upon a Time utilizes medieval conceptions of monstrosity in order to articulate modern concerns about marginal identities, particularly those characterized as “monstrous” by society. ![]() While perhaps not deliberate on the part of the show’s writers, this reconstruction of a distinctly medieval narrative is evidence of a modern desire for the kind of hybridity which medieval texts articulate through figures like Bisclavret. 5 Thus, Ruby’s narrative constructs a societal definition of monstrosity similar to that in Marie’s lai. Just as Biscalvret’s clothes are hidden from him by his treacherous wife, in Episode 7 of Season 2 Ruby is framed for murder, and has her cloak hidden from her by the treacherous King Leopold so she can’t change back into her human form. Additionally, both Ruby’s and Bisclavret’s societies seem determined to regulate them to one side of the binary. 4 Ruby is left similarly helpless without her red hood. I’d be helpless / until I got them back” (lines 73-7). He says to his wife that “if I were to lose them, / and then be discovered, / I’d stay a werewolf forever. While the “earlier oral versions of the tale in France” do allow for such an interpretation (since the wolf in these oral versions “was referred to as the bzou which means werewolf”), 3 Once Upon a Time’s LRRH finds its most salient comparison, not in the original fairytales, but in medieval literature – particularly in Marie de France’s “Bisclavret.” Bisclavret’s transformation from monster to man is also dependent on his clothing. This re-imagining of LRRH is distinctly medieval in connotation. Thus, Ruby, rather than being a naïve young girl who is taught to stay on the path and away from the dangerous boundaries, is instead reimagined in Once Upon a Time as a werewolf who chooses to reside on that dangerous boundary, and embrace her marginal identity as hybrid monster. It is this act of embracing her hybrid “monstrous” identity that allows her to have control over her wolf form. However, both sides ultimately demand violence in order to reinforce the dichotomy between them, and so Ruby rejects this binary view of her hybridity, and (in Episode 7 of Season 2) embraces both sides of herself. Throughout Ruby’s storyline, different groups of people (namely, her jaded human Granny and her vengeful werewolf mother) try to force her to choose a side of her identity – either human, or werewolf. Her transformation from human to monstrous wolf is prevented only by her enchanted red hood. ![]() She’s actually ignorant of her werewolf identity for most of her life, since she can’t remember what she did when she wakes up, and as a result accidentally tears her “true love,” Peter, to shreds one night. ![]() 2 Rather than being threatened by an external monster should she “stray from the path,” Ruby is beset by an internal monstrosity – one that she does not gain control over until much later in her narrative. In Episode 15 of Season 1, it is revealed that the character Ruby (or LRRH) is, in fact, a werewolf. However, one of the characters who gets the most exciting re-imaginings is Little Red Riding Hood (LRRH). Snow White is reimagined as a bandit, Rumpelstiltskin is conflated with Belle’s “Beast,” and The Evil Queen Regina’s mother is the Queen of Hearts. Winner: Walden Prize for Outstanding Graduate Student Paper 1ĪBC’s hit show Once Upon a Time (ABC, 2011-2018) is known for its re-writing of popular fairytales. ![]()
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