Passive vs. Active Characters in Little Red Riding Hood

Little Red Riding Hood is a fairy tale told from generation to generation. In this fairy tale, the reader can see a deceiving wolf and an innocent girl on her way to her ill grandmother’s house. Once the girl encounters the wolf, the wolf convinces the girl to tell him where she is going and her intentions. In this story, there are two types of characters: passive and active. Both Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother are presented as passive characters, unlike the wolf, who is considered an active character. Although Little Red Riding Hood is taken as an active character by the readers, she is presented as a passive character in the fairy tale.

Throughout the story, both Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother are presented as passive. Little Red Riding Hood is a passive character because she shows her innocence throughout the story. For instance, the story demonstrates how she was easily tricked by the wolf when they cross paths. As said in the story, “Why don’t you look around? I believe you haven’t even noticed how lovely the birds are singing. You march along as if you were going straight to school in the village, and yet it’s so delightful out here in the woods… So she plunged into the woods to look for flowers… But the wolf went straight to the grandmother’s house and knocked at the door” (Grimm 86). This quote shows how Little Red Riding Hood was easily deceived and distracted by the wolf. The wolf took advantage of her innocence by disrupting her journey to her grandmother’s house. As said by Johnson and Carrol, Grimm’s story has a prevailing notion of innocence that is exemplified through Little Red Riding Hood’s character.

Similarly, the grandmother is also shown as a passive character because, in the story, it shows the wolf also takes advantage of the grandmother’s innocence and illness. As shown in the text, the grandmother says, “‘Just lift the latch,’ the grandmother called. ‘I’m too weak and can’t get up’… The wolf lifted the latch, and the door swang open…straight to the grandmother’s bed and gobbled her up” (Grimm 86). This quotation demonstrates how the wolf took advantage of the grandmother’s illness, and he passed himself as Little Red Riding Hood. Because of the grandmother’s illness and Little Red Riding Hood’s distraction, the wolf took advantage of both of these characters and showed their passive traits. As Jack Zipes states in “Once Upon a Time: Changing the World through Storytelling,” Little Red Riding Hood is naive and disobedient (Zipes 43). Because of this, she caused the wolf to take advantage of her and reach her grandmother’s house faster, which he would then kill and eat up the ill and defenseless grandmother.

On the other hand, Little Red Riding Hood is considered an active character by readers. For instance, Jack Zipes wrote in “A Second Gaze at LRRHs Trials and Tribulations” how Little Red Riding Hood is responsible for her death for talking to the wolf for being naive and following what the wolf said for her to do. Jack Zipes shows active characteristics for Little Red Riding Hood because she is taking control of what she is doing. Meaning that Little Red Riding Hood should have been aware of what the wolf was up to and prevent herself from putting her and her grandmother in great danger. Similarly, Jack Zipes then adds an illustration in which he shows how Little Red Riding Hood seems friendly to the wolf, knowing that she shouldn’t be. She should have ignored the wolf and kept walking, but as the figure shows, she is smiling at the wolf, and the wolf is shown as an innocent animal. Zipes also shows the wolf’s characteristics as an active character because he is deceiving Little Red Riding Hood by posing as an innocent animal just looking for friends.

Although she is considered an active character by readers, she is presented as a passive character in the fairy tale. As shown by Charles Perrault, before getting eaten, Little Red Riding Hood says,“‘Oh grandmama, what great big teeth you have!’ ‘And they are all the better to eat you with!’ And as he said these words, the wicked Wolf flung himself on Little Red Riding-Hood, and ate her up” (Perrault 103). This quote shows her Little Red Riding Hood’s innocence because she missed the fact that her grandmother was dead and talked to the wolf. This quote further explains how Little Red Riding Hood’s innocence is exposed to the reader because the wolf managed to persuade Little Red Riding Hood that he was her grandmother to make her get into bed with him.  Jennifer Orme said she believes that Little Red Riding Hood’s vulnerability is used to show how Perrault views little kids as innocent and how she did not get saved by a huntsman is Perrault’s way of showing that there are consequences to someone’s actions. Orme supports the fact that Little Red Riding Hood is presented as naive because she doesn’t seem to understand the predicament she got herself in. Also, it demonstrates that Little Red Riding Hood is a passive character since, in fairy tales, passive characters are continually being attacked by active characters. In this case, Little Red Riding Hood is being attacked by the wolf.

The striptease shown in Perrault’s version of Little Red Riding Hood describes his beliefs that innocent girls will do anything that a “wolf” tells them too. In the tale, the striptease is shown when Little Red Riding Hood took off her clothes and got into bed with the wolf. According to Elizabeth Marshall, she believes Little Red Riding Hood’s innocence is exposed to the reader when she decides to striptease and get into bed with the wolf, and that she is responsible for her own rape/murder. Marshall means that Little Red Riding Hood’s innocence led to her downfall and death because she could have prevented this outcome at the beginning of the fairy tale when she first talked with the wolf. Little Red Riding Hood’s passive characteristic (innocence) demonstrates how she can easily be fooled or tricked into doing something that is not right. In both Perrault’s and Grimms’ version of the tale, it shows how her innocence led to a tragic ending–her grandmother’s death and her own murder.

To conclude, throughout the tale Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother are presented as passive characters, unlike the wolf who is considered active. Although readers say that Little Red Riding Hood is presented as a dynamic character, she is not because there are several examples in the fairy tale that show her passive characteristics. Little Red Riding Hood is portrayed as a passive character because of her innocence when she encounters the wolf. She is also seen as a passive character when she is defenseless when the wolf disguised himself as her grandmother. Little Red Riding Hood’s innocence was shown for a third time when she decided to get into bed with the wolf. Finally, Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother is also a passive character because she is ill, and the wolf takes advantage of this opportunity to eat her.