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Author
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Comment
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poole3
Registered User
(9/10/05 6:40 pm)
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The Little Red Hen
Hello everybody.
I currently am a college student taking Childrens Literature 155. Right now I have to analze a tale and get feedback. I would appreciate any feedback you can give me about the story of [u]The Little Red Hen[/u]. Any thing about how you feel about the story, comments, suggestions, etc...
Any help is appreciated. Thank you!
--Celina
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Writerpatrick
Registered User
(9/11/05 9:29 am)
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Re: The Little Red Hen
Communist propoganda. :)The basic message of the story is that if one doesn't work one doesn't enjoy the benefits.
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AliceCEB
Registered User
(9/11/05 6:32 pm)
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Re: The Little Red Hen
My favorite version is from Scieszka and Lane's The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales where the little red hen is portrayed as a loud, obnoxious, attention-hogging pain in the rear that gets her just desserts at the hands of Jack's giant. It made me wonder, "what's her problem anyway," which has always been my response to the traditional version of the tale. I know the moral of the traditional tale is supposed to be that you have to put in the work if you want the rewards, but whenever I've read the story I've more often felt that the point was: I got it, and you don't, so nyah-nyah-nyah. She was altogether uncharitable and reminded me of some awful primary school teachers I had the misfortune of having.
Good luck with your paper.
Best,
Alice
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swood
Unregistered User
(9/12/05 11:22 am)
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Feminism & Little Red Hen
The Little Red Hen reminds me of most women I know, who don't know how to delegate efficiently, and suffocate under their enormous workloads and responsibilities. To me it underlines one of the central problems of feminism: the value of "women's work" and the question of who will do it.
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Rosemary Lake
Registered User
(9/13/05 1:13 am)
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feedback on what?
[[ Right now I have to analze a tale and get feedback. ]]
Feedback on your analysis of the tale? Comments on the tale itself wouldn't exactly be feedback. :-)
Anyway, my analysis of the tale, as I remember it from long ago....
Well, for one thing, I had it conflated with a story about a little boy getting a new suit, which told about shearing the sheep for the wool and took it through several stages. What I saw in both stories was mostly self-sufficiency, being close to nature. Sort of like the homesteading ideal of the 1970s. The fact that the hen could do all this stuff by herself, without needing any help or permission, in spite of people being uncooperative or discouraging.
www.ongoing-tales.com/SER...edhen.html
LITTLE Red Hen found a grain of wheat.
"Who will plant this?" she asked.
"Not I," said the cat.
"Not I," said the goose.
"Not I," said the rat.
"Then I will," said Little Red Hen.
So she buried the wheat in the ground. After a while it grew up yellow and ripe.
"The wheat is ripe now," said Little Red Hen. "Who will cut and thresh it?"
"Not I," said the cat.
"Not I," said the goose.
"Not I," said the rat.
"Then I will," said Little Red Hen.
So she cut it with her bill and threshed it with her wings.
Then she asked, "Who will take this wheat to the mill?"
"Not I," said the cat.
"Not I," said the goose.
"Not I," said the rat.
"Then I will," said Little Red Hen.
So she took the wheat to the mill, where it was ground.
Then she carried the flour home.
"Who will make me some bread from this flour?" she asked.
"Not I," said the cat.
"Not I," said the goose.
"Not I," said the rat.
"Then I will," said Little Red Hen.
So she made and baked the bread.
Then she said, "Now we shall see who will eat this bread."
"We will," said cat, goose, and rat.
"I am quite sure you would," said Little Red Hen, "if you could get it."
Then she called her chicks, and they ate up all the bread.
There was none left at all for the cat, or the goose, or the rat.
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(9/13/05 8:08 am)
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Re: feedback on what?
Aw. I'd forgotten all about this tale. I think it's rather sweet, as the idea isn't the obnoxious grasshopper-and-ant moral, where the idea is that if you fritter your time away doing something so useless as making music and dancing, your neighbors will be morally justified in watching you freeze/starve to death, but is about valuing persistence and work and providing for your children. And I agree that there is a message there about the value of women's work, especially given that the hen is not only specifically female but that she is also a mother.
Rosemary: I loved Pelle's New Suit too and made my poor great-grandmother read it to me over and over and over again. I'm not sure why, looking back on it.
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DividedSelf
Registered User
(9/13/05 8:47 am)
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Re: Feminism & Little Red Hen
Do you think we could call this "domestic work"? If we're talking historically, fine, so long as that's made clear... But "women's work" even used in irony makes rather a lot of assumptions...
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Writerpatrick
Registered User
(9/13/05 10:16 am)
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Re: Feminism & Little Red Hen
The work in the story isn't all domestic, which refers specifically to work around the house. Planting and harvesting wheat is farming, while taking the wheat to be milled is definately not domestic and is something that either men or women could do. So it's not all domestic work and it's definately not just women's work.
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(9/13/05 10:55 am)
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work
We could, but I think that calling it "domestic work" rather than "women's work" effaces the fact that historically, it was been women who were responsible for doing that work, and that it was thanks to their often unrecognized labor that all people got by. Taking the gender out of the phrase does not take it out of the reality.
With respect to the other point, it depends on what society you're talking about. There are manny cultures in which agriculture was considered to be the province of women, and anthropologists often posit that in the development of human culture, agricultural labor, i.e. growing and threshing grain, was women's work, while men were engaged in hunting.
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DividedSelf
Registered User
(9/13/05 11:47 am)
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Re: work
Quote:
calling it "domestic work" rather than "women's work" effaces the fact that historically, it was been women who were responsible for doing that work
By this token, would it be acceptable to refer to economics, politics, hunting... as "men's work"?
I just feel gender language (like race language etc.), while it might sometimes have a legitimate function at the arrowhead of political change, reinforces traditional oppositions/polarities.
Quote:
Taking the gender out of the phrase does not take it out of the reality
This very much begs the question of whose reality we're talking about. If you're talking about historical reality - as I said, no argument, but this does need to be made clear.
I'm assuming the broad consensus here is that convenience, efficiency etc. are the most appropriate criteria for dividing labour roles, not gender... So I'm aware I'm probably being a bit tetchy - I just wouldn't want to devalue the labour of people (of both sexes) who have been challenging traditional roles the last 50-100 years.
(But sorry, a digression... Back to the Little Red Hen...)
Edited by: DividedSelf at: 9/13/05 11:52 am
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(9/13/05 12:10 pm)
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work
Quote:
By this token, would it be acceptable to refer to economics, politics, hunting... as "men's work"?
In the context of a discussion on gender roles and labor? Yes. That makes it clear that women who won entrance to such areas had fought against sexist conventions and disadvantages. To my knowledge, the vast majority of domestic labor in the western world is still done by women. It's not just a matter of history; it's a matter of recognizing disparity and injustice in the current world in order to better address it.
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DividedSelf
Registered User
(9/13/05 1:00 pm)
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Re: work
Quote:
In the context of a discussion on gender roles and labor? Yes.
The point was only that such contexts should be made explicit.
Quote:
To my knowledge, the vast majority of domestic labor in the western world is still done by women.
This may well be so, but in my personal knowledge it most certainly isn't a universal, either way around. I guess this may be a pretty modest level of progress, but I would've thought it was the sort of progress we'd want to encourage.
On the other hand, to continue to label something as belonging to one side of the gender divide, when in fact there are small but increasing numbers appropriating it on the other... only serves to perpetuate conflict, I think. Because, incredible as it may seem, there are in fact men who are choosing to do this sort of "domestic work" - and I believe some of them are even finding it quite rewarding!
Still, I guess society's still an adolescent in this regard, some parts growing faster than other parts and no part entirely consistent with any other.
(...you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining... So if you take the lid off one thing...)
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Rosemary Lake
Registered User
(9/13/05 2:50 pm)
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work
[[ anthropologists often posit that in the development of human culture, agricultural labor, i.e. growing and threshing grain, was women's work, while men were engaged in hunting. ]]
Hm. Domestic vs ... big deal mechanized commercial mass-produced somewhere else? Now it's machines and cash laborers who do the planting, harvesting, milling -- and bake most of the bread and deliver it to the supermarket.
We could see a pattern of more and more of the story's tasks being done outside the home; but to say 'done by men' would ignore the women who now work outside as cash labor.
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DividedSelf
Registered User
(9/13/05 4:01 pm)
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Re: work
Quote:
We could see a pattern of more and more of the story's tasks being done outside the home; but to say 'done by men' would ignore the women who now work outside as cash labor.
Yes, nice point... domestic work isn't what it was... But there are men even in cash labour - and even if they're a minority, it won't do to pretend they don't exist.
But I wasn't really making a point about "the way things were" or "the way things are" or even "the way things should be"... It was more to do with a language which excludes... This is the language of confrontation - which certainly has its place, when a powerful challenge needs to be made to an existing system, for example... But I don't think this was the case here...
I just think dialogue and development occurs when language is inclusive... but, like I say, I was being tetchy...
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AliceCEB
Registered User
(9/13/05 4:02 pm)
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Re: work
You know, even if the little red hen represents the epitome in self-sufficiency, I still don't like her. That's because of the last thing she does: she offers something and then takes it away when the offer is accepted. That's a degree worse than being uncharitable. She's rubbing the other animals' noses in her riches, and pointedly not sharing them. I'm not saying she doesn't deserve her riches, nor am I suggesting that she shouldn't be allowed to do as she pleases with them. Rather, she shouldn't cause other people misery because she has gathered them--by wagging fresh bread under their noses and telling them, "Too bad."
Her story strikes me as a paen to modern capitalism: invest capital, work hard, flaunt your wealth. Ick.
Best,
Alice
P.S. I've always thought that the remedy to the Grasshopper and the Ant was Leo Leonni's Frederick--a story still dear to my heart. While his compatriots work hard to gather food and fodder during the summer months, Frederick gathers memories. Come winter, it's his sharing of those memories that comforts his cold, hungry compatriots during the lean times.
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(9/13/05 4:34 pm)
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Frederick
Oh, I remember Frederick! I had that book too, but I must say I never really understood it until I got older.
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poole3
Registered User
(9/13/05 5:46 pm)
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Re: Frederick
Hello everybody,
Thank you to everyone who responded. My paper is all typed up and ready to turn in tonight. It was interesting reading everyone's different point of views.
Thanks again!
Celina
P.S.: I like Frederick too! :) |
Rosemary Lake
Registered User
(9/14/05 11:21 am)
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Frederick ... and communism
FREDERICK sounds like a nice solution. I wonder if there's room for another version, where his fiddle playing would be what saves the day later.
If the following might get too political, I hope someone will delete it. But I wonder if stories like LITTLE RED HEN and THREE LITTLE PIGS are really as 'capitalistic' as they're sometimes labeled. Neither one has any rich investors in it, or even any self-made industrialists :-) No one seems to own the wheat or the land where it's planted, or the straw or the wood or the bricks or the land where the pigs' houses are built.
Maybe both stories are 'Distributist', and reflect an unfenced Commons? :-)
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darklingthrush
Registered User
(9/16/05 8:53 am)
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Re: Frederick ... and communism
I do love Frederick. I'm glad he was brought up. Isn't he a wonderful rebuttal to all of these stories? He shows the importance of the poet, writer and artist in the community. He revitalizes hope in his friends and electrifies their imaginations. I love the image of all the other mice circling around him in their little hovel just like a bard.
I have to agree with the reactions to the Little Red Hen. Is she red for a particular reason? *you would have insert an ironic chuckle in here.*
It is good I think to recognize and appreciate a healthy work ethic. However, I do not think ending is at all something I would want anyone, children included, to emulate. Emphasizing the hens right to deny the other animals food, just undermines any sense of compassion.
I don't usually hold for revisions of stories. But I do think the Little Red Hen could use a little face-lift. Have the story stay the same till the end, it's good to show the hens willingness to work hard for her food. However, when she has her leftover food and sees the other animals hungry. She decides to share. In this way, she shows that someone's deserving their just rewards is not greater than being kind and compassionate towards one's neighbors. This is a message I think that can never be emphasized enough.
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Rosemary Lake
Registered User
(9/16/05 8:01 pm)
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longer Little Red Hen?
I do like your Bolshievik hen. :-) Maybe I'm making too much distinction between the author's intent (which is obviously harsh, mean-spirited) and what's in the situation (which the author set up to support the moral). Well, speaking as tho this tale had a single author. :-)
For a nicer version, let's see.... It might need to be longer, more detailed. The other animals could have good reasons for not helping and could be nicer about it. Also for the communist/capitalist thing, she could find the flour mill has been bought by a big corporation and raised its prices, and another corporation has a patent on bread-making ... and there are government people wanting permits and taxes.... So maybe all the animals get the corporations and the government fighting each other, so they leave the animals alone.... And one dreamy little animal who hasn't helped with any of this, at the end figures out a way to make two stalks of wheat grow where only one has grown before, so there will be plenty for everyone....
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