Charles Perrault
Life and career
Charles Perrault (1628–1703) was a Parisian writer whose career included poetry, literary argument and service to the court of Louis XIV. Working under Colbert, he helped advise on monuments and other projects celebrating royal power. His fairy tales therefore belong beside a sophisticated professional knowledge of courtly culture, rather than outside it. Their apparent simplicity leaves room for calculations about status, conduct and the kinds of advantage a story can make seem natural.
Familiar stories with sharp social edges
Perrault's tales are often encountered as stories already known, which can make their distinctive choices easy to overlook. Their treatment of danger, appearance, wealth and marriage belongs to a literary setting in which a tale can entertain while exposing practical inequalities. A moral may sharpen the story's lesson or complicate it with irony. The apparent simplicity of the narrative does not mean that every consequence is fair, or that every attractive promise deserves trust.
Perrault's Fairy Tales
Little Red Riding-Hood, Blue Beard and The Master Cat; or, Puss in Boots show different relations between trust, danger and ingenuity. This supplied collection has Thomas Bodkin's 1922 introduction and references to Harry Clarke's illustrations; those references do not guarantee that the text reader displays the original images. The tales reward attention to their particular wording and endings rather than substitution of a later remembered version. A familiar name can conceal significant differences in how danger develops and what the concluding moral emphasizes.
Read the moral after the story
Before accepting the final lesson, describe what actually enabled the outcome. Was it courage, obedience, luck, wealth or somebody else's intervention? Then compare your account with the moral's emphasis. Notice details that a simplified retelling might omit. The contrast between narrative pleasure and practical advice makes these tales useful for readers who want to revisit childhood material without assuming it has only one meaning.