The Greedy Daughter

I'm not sure if this would be classified as a "Little Red Riding Hood" variant. It almost reads like a more modern subversion of the classic tale, but is an Italian Folktale included in the Tudor Publishing Company's 1930 Folk Tales of All Nations. The cast is pretty much the same, with a mother instead of a grandmother, but the role of each character is completely changed. Yet the message is still clearly didactic, and this story does not include a happy ending for the young girl.

Jennie Harbour

The Greedy Daughter

"There was a mother who had a daughter so greedy that she did not know what to do with her. Everything in the house she would eat up. When the poor mother came home from work there was nothing left.

G. P. Jacomb Hood

But the girl had a godfather-wolf. The wolf had a frying-pan, and the girl's mother was too poor to possess such an article; whenever she wanted to fry anything she sent her daughter to the wolf to borrow his frying-pan, and he always sent a nice omelette in it by way of not sending it empty. But the girl was so greedy and so selfish that she not only always ate the omelette on the way, but when she took the frying-pan back she filled it with all manner of nasty things.

At last the wolf got hurt at this way of going on, and he came to the house to inquire into the matter.

\

Jennie Harbour

Godfather-wolf met the mother on the step of the door, returning from work.

"How do you like my omelettes?" asked the wolf.
"I am sure they would be good if made by our godfather-wolf," replied the poor woman, "but I never had the honour of tasting them."

"Never tasted them! Why, how many times have you sent to borrow my frying-pan?"
"I am ashamed to say how many times; a great many, certainly."

"And every time I sent you an omelette in it."
"Never one reached me."

"Then that hussy of a girl must have eaten them by the way."

John Deffett Francis

The poor mother, anxious to screen her daughter, burst into all manner of excuses, but the wolf now saw how it all was. To make sure, however, he added: "The omelettes would have been better had the frying-pan not always been full of such nasty things. I did my best always to clean it, but it was not easy."

"Oh, godfather-wolf, you are joking! I always cleaned it, inside and out, as bright as silver, every time before I sent it back!"

The wolf now knew all, and he said no more to the mother; but the next day, when she was out, he came back.

Ethel Franklin Betts

When the girl saw him coming she was so frightened that she ran under the bed to hide herself. But to the wolf it was as easy to go under a bed as anywhere else; so under he went, and he dragged her out and devoured her. And that was the end of the Greedy Daughter."