Animal tales are found in the folklore of any nation. They also exist in the Russian tradition. The wolf occupies a special place among the characters in these tales.
Animals in fairy tales represent certain human types: a cunning fox, a kind and defenseless hare, a strong but stupid bear. The relationship between such characters is a human relationship, a person as such in this world is "superfluous", and people, as a rule, do not appear in such tales.
On the other hand, animals that behave like people (say, make decisions, give advice, etc.) often appear in fairy tales about people. They seem to become intermediaries between two fabulous "universes" - the world of animals and the world of people. Most often, either a horse or a wolf acts as such a "mediator". In fairy tales entirely devoted to animals, the wolf appears much more often than the horse.
It is noteworthy that the interpretation of the image of a wolf in Russian fairy tales practically does not differ from its embodiment in the folklore of other peoples, which speaks of the antiquity of the plots associated with it. Therefore, speaking about the image of a wolf in Russian fairy tales, one should not be isolated within the limits of Russian folklore proper.
Wolf as a negative character
In fairy tales about animals, the wolf most often appears as an aggressive, dangerous creature - a real robber who should be feared. One of the most famous examples of this kind is the fairy tale "The Wolf and the Seven Kids", known not only in the Russian tradition. A meeting with such a character does not bode well even for a person. It is no coincidence that in the plot about Little Red Riding Hood, also taken by C. Perrault from European folklore, it is the wolf that becomes the enemy of the main character.
If the wolf can be defeated, then this is done not by force, but by cunning. Most often, this is done by the fox, which is traditionally attributed to this quality. Thus, it is asserted that it is impossible to defeat force by force, aggression by aggression.
This perception of the wolf is not surprising. Fear of these animals arose long before the emergence of cattle breeding, for which they became "enemies No. 1". There was nothing irrational in this guard: the wolf is a predator, quite capable of gnawing a person.
The fear was compounded by the wolves' nocturnal lifestyle. The night has always frightened people. In the dark, vision does not work well - the main human "provider of information", a person becomes defenseless. Nocturnal animals, well oriented in an alien and dangerous environment for humans, have never inspired people to trust. This was especially true of dangerous predators, which had an advantage over humans at night.
Demonization of the wolf was aggravated by the binary opposition "friend or foe". Before the emergence of cattle breeding, any animal was "alien" from the point of view of man. But if the deer, for example, was to a certain extent “his own” because he could be eaten, then the wolf was not a food source. The ancients did not know that wolves are the orderlies of the forest, but they did not immediately realize that a wolf cub could be tamed, raised and used for hunting. They did not see any practical benefit from wolves, therefore wolves in their eyes were absolutely alien to the human world. A stranger means an enemy.
But, paradoxically, the wolf does not always appear in fairy tales as a negative character. And even such familiar stories from childhood as "The Wolf and the Seven Kids" and "Little Red Riding Hood" are not as straightforward as it might seem.
Wolf duality
If in fairy tales about animals the image of a wolf is more or less unambiguous - a cruel, but not endowed with intelligence, a robber, then in fairy tales about people the wolf often acts as a magical helper. It is about such a fabulous wolf that A. S. Pushkin mentions in the poem "Ruslan and Lyudmila":
“In the dungeon there the princess grieves, And the brown wolf serves her faithfully."
In the fairy tale "Ivan Tsarevich and the Gray Wolf" it is the wolf who comes to the aid of the hero, and here he can no longer be called a negative character.
The duality of the folklore image of the wolf becomes even more obvious if we go beyond the limits of the fairy tale itself and look at the image in a broader mythological context.
Remarkable in this regard is the famous birch bark notebook of the Novgorod boy Onfim, which opened the veil of secrecy over the inner world of a child from medieval Russia. The drawings in this notebook embody the usual boyish dreams of exploits and military glory. But one drawing causes bewilderment: a four-legged creature in which a wolf is guessed, and next to it there is an inscription - "I am a beast". If the boy identified himself with a werewolf, then this character was not negative in his eyes.
In "The Lay of Igor's Regiment" Vseslav, the prince of Polotsk, is mentioned, who "prowled like a wolf in the night." It is unlikely that this is a figurative literary expression: the chronicles mention that "the mother gave birth to this prince from sorcery", and the author of "Lay …" could well ascribe werewolf to such a person.
A werewolf is a creature that belongs to both the world of humans and the world of wild nature, which for ancient people was identified with the other world. The wolf, as already mentioned, due to its special "strangeness" to man, is the ideal expression of this world. It is his appearance that must be adopted in order to become involved in the other world. Therefore, werewolf (originally a kind of magical practice) is associated with a wolf form.
So the wolf turns into an intermediary between the human world and the other world. Such a mediator is necessary for a person who goes to the "other world" for the initiation ceremony. Many fairy-tale motives originate from this rite, including the motive of "difficult tasks". In this light, the origin of the fabulous wolf-magic assistant becomes clear.
The story of a wolf swallowing the heroes of a fairy tale can also go back to the rite of passage. As you know, goats swallowed by a wolf in the finale safely return to their mother-goat. And this is not at all a fake "happy ending" glued to the fairy tale so that the children do not cry. Teenagers who went to the "kingdom of the dead" for the rite of passage, in most cases, also happily returned to the village. Among many primitive peoples, ethnographers observed huts where a ritual was held, built in the form of an animal's head. This animal, as it were, "swallowed" the initiates. Probably, similar customs existed among the Proto-Slavic peoples. The wolf swallowing and then releasing the heroes of the tale is a distant echo of such customs.
The wolf in Russian fairy tales and in Russian folklore in general is a dual character, which cannot be unequivocally called either positive or negative. This duality is associated with the antiquity of the image, rooted in pagan times.
