Fairy Tales: Why the Wolf?

So far, A-Z List 7 has gone from Andersen to Arabian Nights to King Arthur.

Then, Goldilocks!

The change from alphabetical order to something else has a great deal to do with how libraries sort their Dewey Decimal numbers. Portland Public uses strict alphabetical order for folk tales and fairy tales, and that approach does make items easier to find. South Portland uses subject matter which means 398.2 becomes 398.2....

I'm mostly going with South Portland (for now--change in 2023!) because it makes the exercise (initially) more interesting. However, I often check South Portland against Portland or pick up extra books on a single subject, like books about Goldilocks, from Portland. 

Both libraries started out with Andersen and Arabian Nights. King Arthur was something of an outlier but fit my thematic scheme. 

But why Goldilocks next in terms of subject matter? 

Actually, what followed next were anthologies, including general fairy tales that appear to have no clear author or source. The Grimm Brothers are credited for a great many that they collected (and, frankly, rewrote) as are Lang and Perrault. 

Southey is tentatively given credit for Goldilocks but the attribution is less certain than with others.

One of the most delightful collections of general tales is There's a Wolf at the Door: Five Classic Tales, retold by Zoe B. Alley with pictures by R.W. Alley. The book uses a cartoon format. And it makes the point that the wolf plays an important role in many classic stories: The Three Little Pigs (to which I will return), The Boy Who Cried Wolf (or "The Boy Who Cried Continuously [after he was attacked by the wolf]," according to Rose from Golden Girls), Little Red Riding Hood, the Wolf's in Sheep's Clothing, and the Wolf and the Seven Little Goslings. 

Why the Wolf? 

Read enough fractured fairy tales and one realizes: the wolf is the most attractive character.

So much so that in some renditions, the wolf tells the story.

Why?

One obvious reason is that the wolf is a rogue and rogues are attractive (see Yul Brynner) but I think another reason is the reason Spike & Crowley were so useful to writers within those franchises: the wolf is the objective, wry outsider who can tell us things. 

Wolf narrators are Jane Austen, raising their brows at the foibles of others. Whenever we want a break from angst, we go to the wolf.

In Into the Woods, Broadway version, the wolf also plays Cinderella's prince. The Cinderella prince is less romantic than his brother. More crafty and cunning. Like Dracula and Lucifer, he mixes truth with falsehood. He is an ambiguous antagonist who requires an equally cunning protagonist--or a ruthless innocent like Castiel.

Also, the wolf looks good in nineteenth-century dress. 

The Wolf in Five Tales is a kind of con-artist in nineteenth-century dress and keeps moving from tale to tale in search of a meal. Although he is outwitted, he maintains his sangfroid--and his tendency to commentary. 

"I need food with less personality!" he states at the end. "Perhaps I'll become a vegetarian."

He gives the line while looking at a shortcut to Farmer McGregor's Garden.