| Chapter 1: | What Happens? What Is to Be Done? A Paean to Bricolage |
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The very notion of the hidden is made redundant by what is present: It is as though depths were compelled to the surface…so that it becomes unnecessary to search for them.
The reader taking the story in an associational way will be likely to feel (for example) the following:
- 1. The fact that Little Red-Cap is a “nice girl” makes it natural that her grandmother should want to reward her. Little Red-Cap’s vanity is revelatory of her character in a way consistent with previous information about her.
- 2. The filial piety of Little Red-Cap arises naturally from the information we already have about her. Taking cake and wine to the grandmother to help her healing complements the earlier information about her goodness. (Such actions are part of the reason everyone thinks of her as “sweet”.)
- 3. Little Red-Cap’s ignorance of the wolf’s wickedness entails her lack of fear of him: The second thing is consequent upon the first. Her gullibility in providing the wolf with directions to her grandmother’s house is entailed from the information given in the story to that point (i.e., her innocence). The items presented in the surface details of the story ‘take care of’ the story as a whole as one piece of information is added to the next.
- 4. Little Red-Cap’s disobedience—her picking flowers to help her grandmother’s recovery—is comprehensible in terms of the previously given information about her goodness. The flowers are the realisation by association of flowers with her innocence and good-naturedness.
- 5. Little Red-Cap’s surprise at her grandmother’s strange appearance confirms her naivety. The ‘explanation’ for her feelings of strangeness upon entering the house is contained in the information given at the level of the story. There is neither invitation nor need to move below and beyond that level.