Freud’s Wolf Man and “Little Red Riding Hood”

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In my course on fairy tales and fantasy literature, we had a session on “Little Red Riding Hood.”  I contrasted Dickens’ love of the girl in red ( “Little Red Riding Hood was my first love.  I felt that if I could have married Little Red Riding Hood, I should have known perfect bliss.”) with the anxieties of Freud’s Wolf Man (Sergei Pankejeff), who read the story as a child.  The Wolf Man, as Freud tells us, was haunted by a dream about wolves, creatures connected with the predator in “Little Red Riding Hood”:

He had always connected this dream with the recollection that during those years of his childhood he was most tremendously afraid of the picture of a wolf in a book of fairy tales.  His elder sister, who was very much his superior, used to tease him by holding up this particular picture in front of him so that he was terrified and began to scream.  In this picture the wolf was standing upright, striding out with one foot, with its claws stretched out and its ears pricked.  He thought this picture must have been an illustration to the story of Little Red Riding Hood.

I have always been on the lookout for that illustration, and I’m wondering if it might not be the one above.  I had always pictured the Wolf Man’s creature as full frontal, but now I realize that the description fits Dore’s illustration, even if the wolf has its back turned to us.

Any other candidates?

6 thoughts on “Freud’s Wolf Man and “Little Red Riding Hood””

  2. I really can’t think of another one that would work from a different illustrator in the time period or earlier. This one might not seem as terrifying to our modern sensibilities but I could see it causing nightmares for a few modern kids and lots of them from 100+ years ago. Reminds me how my dad had nightmares from watching the Superman series with George Reeves in the 50s because he had never seen anything with such menacing villains before living on a farm in Wyoming. All a matter of experience and perspective–that wolf may be more terrifying to a child being read to while in bed and that grandmother’s face is rather scary, too.

  3. Hi, I don’t normally jump right in with my own stuff but the synchronicity is too much fun to ignore. My art partner and I have just begun a blog creating work around fairytales – a new one each month- we chose Little Red Riding Hood as our first story. The wolf has become my focus- he’s always been my favorite character. Please do visit – I’d love your opinion.

    I just found this blog and I’m continuing to sample your enteries- it certainly is a beautiful site. I share your interest in and love of the tales.

    Pictures can be amazingly powerful- my bugaboo was a German tale about Fraulinchen who played with matches and burned to death. Flames shot out of her fingernails and the tips of her hair- still makes my stomach clench when I picture it.

  4. When I was littlish (9, 10?) I remember I had a series of books called: The Book of Giants, The Book of Wizards, The Book of Dwarfs, The Book of Princes, The Book of Witches. (There was no Book of Princesses, it occurs to me now). My impression is that they might have come from England (via my father who lived there and mailed things to us in the States). They were all uniform in size (8 1/2 x 11″-ish) and thickness and I remember black and white ink drawings every several pages…

    I loved them so much that I would force myself not to read them for a while so I could have the pleasure of reading them fresh. These books don’t appear on any Google searches and I have NO idea who compiled/wrote published them. There was a mixture of familiar tales (Jack and the Beanstalk) and tales I’d never heard before and have never heard since…including one about a frightened petite giant who hides in a baby carriage to avoid a bigger, scary giant…

    Does this ring bells any bells? With anyone? If so, I would love to find these books, and now, thirty years later, they will be fresh again. And I would love to share them with my kids…Sincerely, KD

  6. A slight obsession with Little Red Riding Hood caused me to write a novel filled with Grimms’ Characters called “Little Red Wolf” – by Paul Schumacher. While I was working on that first novel, I created a multi-part character analysis of that story which can still be found on my BLOG.

    Catagory 1 = Little Red & Not-So-Little Red
    Catagory 2 = Victim, Friend or Ward, Avenger

    Start Here:

    http://littleredwolf-faolan.blogspot.com/2012/03/little-red-victim.html

    Then feel free to read on!

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