peachcollective: Arya Stark as Little Red Riding Hood & the Big Bad Wolf They thought t
peachcollective: Arya Stark as Little Red Riding Hood & the Big Bad Wolf They thought they were hunting her, she knew with all the strange sharp certainty of dreams, but they were wrong. She was hunting them. (Arya I, ASOS)In the earliest version by Charles Perrault, Little Red Riding Hood, through her ignorance and disobedience, is overpowered and eaten by the wolf. In the Brothers Grimm version, the helpless girl and her grandmother are still eaten by the wolf but saved by a heroic huntsman. The story is heavily imbued with sexual references and allusions, their intensity varying from version to version. The story as we know it today is a cautionary tale warning little girls of the perils of disobedience, but older versions reveal a more complex story of female initiative and maturity. Modern retellings, influenced by feminist critique, return to the early oral traditions by having the young heroine assert her power in various ways: in one retelling Little Red kills the wolf using a gun, while in others Little Red weaponizes her sexuality to outwit and kill the wolf.I think even as a kid I responded to the werewolf legends and the wolves in the wood and, you know, Little Red Riding Hood and all of that. – George Martin, Mashable (November 2014)In ASOIAF, George Martin has incorporated themes of other popular fairy tales in his work, such as the Beauty and the Beast, Robin Hood and the Evil Stepmother’s mirror. Likewise, variations of Little Red Riding Hood show up as an extended metaphor in Arya Stark’s story, with her journey alternating between that of the girl and that of the wolf. In retellings such as “Once Upon a Time”, Little Red and the wolf are the same person. In that story, we don’t see Little Red’s journey through the woods as dangerous, or her interactions with the wolf as sinful. The journey is one of growth, maturity, and finding herself, with the wolf symbolizing her inner strength and power. That is the version of Little Red Riding Hood that Martin is telling with Arya’s story.ARYA AS LITTLE REDIn Sansa I AGOT, Arya is presented as a Little Red figure rejecting instructions given to her by Sansa, who acts as the adult female figure (with Ned as the indulgent figure):Arya was wearing the same riding leathers she had worn yesterday and the day before.“You better put on something pretty,” Sansa told her. “Septa Mordane said so. We’re traveling in the queen’s wheelhouse with Princess Myrcella today.”“I’m not,” Arya said, trying to brush a tangle out of Nymeria’s matted grey fur. “Mycah and I are going to ride upstream and look for rubies at the ford.”[…]Sansa regarded her scrawny little sister in disbelief. “You can’t look for rubies, the princess is expecting us. The queen invited us both.”“I don’t care,” Arya said. “The wheelhouse doesn’t even have windows, you can’t see a thing.”[…]None of which stopped Arya, of course. One day she came back grinning her horsey grin, her hair all tangled and her clothes covered in mud, clutching a raggedy bunch of purple and green flowers for Father. Sansa kept hoping he would tell Arya to behave herself and act like the highborn lady she was supposed to be, but he never did, he only hugged her and thanked her for the flowers. That just made her worse.[…]“You’re not supposed to leave the column,” Sansa reminded her. “Father said so.”Arya shrugged. “I didn’t go far. Anyway, Nymeria was with me the whole time. I don’t always go off, either. Sometimes it’s fun just to ride along with the wagons and talk to people.”[…]Sansa was running out of patience now. “You have to come with me,” she told her sister firmly. “You can’t refuse the queen. Septa Mordane will expect you.”[…]Arya grabbed Nymeria around her neck, but the moment she pulled out the brush again the direwolf wriggled free and bounded off. Frustrated, Arya threw down the brush. “Bad wolf!” she shouted.Sansa appeals to authority and calls to stay “on the path”, while Arya prefers to ride out “into the woods” and pick flowers like Little Red. Near the end, Nymeria, who symbolizes her human, gets called a “bad wolf”. And as we know, it all ends badly.The chapter builds on the dichotomy of the older, obedient “good girl” Sansa in contrast to the childlike, playful and “disobedient girl” Arya, who is Little Red. Arya and Little Red are both rebellious young girls on a journey through the woods to find their family. Later on in her journey, like Little Red, when Arya finally reaches her family at the Red Wedding, she is too late. Little Red’s grandmother was eaten and replaced by the wolf, and Arya’s brother was murdered and his wolf’s head was sewn on to him. In another version, Little Red and her grandmother filled the wolf’s stomach with stones and threw it into the river, but it is Arya’s wolf Nymeria who drags her mother’s body out of the river. LITERARY TOTEMIn both the Perrault and Grimm versions, Little Red is presented as a sweet child doted on by her mother and grandmother, and is gifted with a red cape seen as a token of indulgence. Accordingly, Arya receives an item from her beloved brother that serves to preserve, encourage and empower her inner wolf, which then becomes her personal literary totem: Needle. In one of the older versions of the story, Little Red chooses the Path of Needles, thus saving herself with her wit and improvisation, mirroring the way Arya uses her own wit and improvisation skills to survive throughout her journey.COMING OF AGEAn important aspect of Little Red’s cape is the symbolism of the color red. In many analyses the red symbolizes the blood of menstruation, sexual awakening and transformation from a young girl into an adult woman.Arya’s story reads as a rather atypical coming of age story. She becomes disillusioned with her childhood notions and beliefs, loses all she holds dear, and starts to grow emotionally, mentally, and physically. Her chapters are charged with explicit sexual references and metaphors, and she is due to get her moonblood soon, marking the end of her girlhood. The swan motif is also present in Arya’s chapters, symbolizing her gradual transformation from an awkward young girl into a graceful woman.Arya is associated with blood, but not her own: it’s the blood that she spills in her Big Bad Wolf capacity that has earned her the “blood child” moniker.GUEST RIGHTAn important piece of lore in ASOIAF is the idea of “guest right.” The rule of guest right is that when you partake in bread and salt and food in someone’s home, you are guaranteed safety from them and they are guaranteed safety from you. It’s believed that House Frey is cursed for forsaking guest right. The Starks ate with them in good faith and they were murdered. The basket of goodies in Little Red’s story is a good symbol for guest right. The wolf wants those goodies, dresses up like the grandmother to get them, and then eats Little Red as well, forsaking that guest right. The earliest versions of Little Red Riding Hood includes the wolf tricking Little Red into eating the flesh of her grandmother. In ASOIAF, cannibalism is an abomination, but as explained by Old Nan, breaking guest right is even worse.“It was not for murder that the gods cursed him,” Old Nan said, “nor for serving the Andal king his son in a pie. A man has a right to vengeance. But he slew a guest beneath his roof, and that the gods cannot forgive.” (Bran IV, ASOS)The Frey pies in the books act as an allusion to the cannibalism in Little Red Riding Hood, and the breaking of guest right in that story. In the books, it’s strongly suggested that Wyman Manderly served Walder Frey pies of his sons at a feast in Winterfell as a form of revenge. The Red Wedding is one of the biggest turning points in ASOIAF. This event takes out Robb and Catelyn Stark as players of the game, and is the true end of Arya’s innocence. Without family remaining to her, and being unable to gain passage to Jon Snow at the wall, Arya’s motivation temporarily shifts from finding her family to exacting justice on her family’s killers. THE HUNTSMANThe huntsman is the original distributor of punishment for breaking guest right on behalf of Little Red, but in this reinterpretation Arya will be enacting her own justice, following the teachings of her father Ned Stark: The blood of the First Men still flows in the veins of the Starks, and we hold to the belief that the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. If you would take a man’s life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die. (Bran I, AGOT)Sandor Clegane is most closely paralleled to the huntsman in Arya’s journey. Sandor saves Arya from her state of shock during the Red Wedding, and just like the huntsman, fights to protect her. However, his time in her story is limited. Similarly to how Little Red leaves the wolf’s body in the river, Arya leaves Sandor to die after he gets injured during a skirmish. ARYA AS THE BIG BAD WOLFHe’s more wolf than man, and so am I. (Arya VIII, ACOK)I am a direwolf, and done with wooden teeth. (Arya X, ACOK)I am a wolf, and will not be afraid. (Arya I, AFFC)While Arya is Little Red, she also embodies the wolf, the sigil of her house. She calls herself the ‘night wolf’ and draws on her wolf identity throughout the series as a source of empowerment, strength and a reminder of who she truly is. And like the wolf, Arya sometimes takes on the role of a predator, enacting justice on evil men as seen through the kills on her list.The antagonist in Little Red Riding Hood is not always a wolf in every version, but sometimes an ogre or a ‘bzou’ (werewolf). Rather than being a werewolf, Arya is a warg and skinchanger, and in control of the wolf Nymeria. Arya and Nymeria are one and the same, and Nymeria proudly owns the Big Bad title:Some will tell you that they are demons. They say the pack is led by a monstrous she-wolf, a stalking shadow grim and grey and huge. They will tell you that she has been known to bring aurochs down all by herself, that no trap nor snare can hold her, that she fears neither steel nor fire, slays any wolf that tries to mount her, and devours no other flesh but man. (Brienne V, AFFC)But contrary to the classic fairy tale, the Big Bad Wolf has repeatedly been protecting the little girl, be it against Joffrey in early AGOT or the hunting squad in ASOS after she escaped Harrenhal, to preserving her identity against becoming No One in the HoBaW in Braavos.The wolf in Little Red Riding Hood dresses up as the grandmother to trick Little Red. Arya disguises herself several times in the series, and with the Faceless Men she does it specifically to kill people. Identity is a giant question mark in both stories. We don’t know Little Red’s real name – she’s called that because she’s always wearing a little red hood. To stay safe, Arya slips on a myriad of identities and personas like a protective hood. With the Faceless Men, she struggles to let go of Arya Stark the wolf girl because that’s who she really is. In Sansa I AGOT, Arya took on the role of the “disobedient” Little Red we see in the original tale where she gets separated from her family and loses her innocence. However, another variation of Little Red Riding Hood is almost fully performed from beginning to end in TWOW’s chapter Mercy, with Arya now subverting the gender stereotypes of earlier tales. In Mercy, Arya first takes on the role of the unwitting young girl but soon reveals herself as the Big Bad Wolf, killing the man pursuing her. In a chapter heavy in sexual symbolism and explicit references, Raff the Sweetling, a murderer and sexual predator, represents the stranger danger symbolized by the Big Bad Wolf in the original tale. Arya, acting as mummer, dons a cloak lined in red silk with a hood, invoking Little Red’s famous imagery. With a hint of irony, she reflects that she’ll be raped and murdered that night, harkening the fate of Little Red in the original tale. Ignoring her older friend’s advice as Little Red did her mother, Mercy disobeys and follows her own impulses. She lures Raff into the deep forest of Braavos’ crooked alleys and canals to a secluded place. This is where their roles are suddenly reversed, as Arya sheds her Little Red persona to reveal herself as the Big Bad Wolf, and kills Raff for his crimes. This variation of Little Red Riding Hood is in line with modern feminist retellings of the story where Little Red asserts her power by using her wit, and often times her sexuality, to kill the wolf.EMBRACING THE INNER WOLFIn Roald Dahl’s version of Little Red Riding Hood, the value of traditional gender roles is also subverted. Little Red acts as a strong heroine, combating and killing the wolf as Arya does. Both Little Red and Arya are rewarded for their boldness – Little Red with a ‘wolf skin’ coat, and Arya with Needle, which encourages and empowers her wolfish wild nature. The breaking of such gender stereotypes in both Martin and Dahl’s versions honors equality reflected in the modern world, in sharp contrast to Perrault’s version that warns against breaking gender roles, where doing so will result in condemnation. The absence of a liberating male force in both Martin and Dahl’s versions act as a method for the female protagonist to assume the prominent role in her story and alter stereotypes to fit the contextual changes of time.Her mother told she could grow up to be anything she wanted to be, so she grew up to become the strongest of the strong, the strangest of the strange, the wildest of the wild, the wolf leading wolves.– For The Red Riding Hood Who Was The Wolf, inspired by Arya Stark, Nikita Gill. Arya goes through the story of Little Red Riding Hood a few times over to support a greater, overarching Little Red narrative that aligns with Nikita’s. Throughout her story, Arya has been chased by beasts (lions, hounds) and seduced by monsters (dragons, death itself) in her attempt to get home to Winterfell (where she got her literary totem Needle). She had to go through the narrative multiple times before growing into her role as both girl and wolf, combining the two story roles under her own power as a complex individual and character. In Martin’s modern retelling, Little Red goes from unwittingly leading the beast to her family home where he will victimize them, to luring the beast into a trap of her own making, because she is actually the strongest monster of all. -- source link