First Things First…
I’ve only read one or two of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. From what I remember, they’re weird, and dark, and aren’t too worried about details. We’ll see if that holds true here. I’ve never read this one (at least not that I can remember). But I’ve seen the Disney version of Snow White a few times, and I’m going to review it later this week, so I wanted to check out the original story first.
2 Things I Like
2. A Murderous Plot
Of course, everyone knows the plot of this story is very dark. The queen wants to have her stepdaughter, Snow-White, murdered out of jealousy, because the stepdaughter’s beauty has now surpassed her own.
Hiring a huntsman to commit the act is another sign of how wicked she is. And in this original version, she not only tasks him with bringing back her liver and lungs as proof that she’s dead—she then eats them. (Well, they belonged to a boar the huntsman kills instead, but still—pretty nasty.)
For a dark fairy tale, this is a fun jumping off point.
1. Mirror, Mirror
Of all the Brothers Grimm’s creations, the magic mirror on the wall is one of the most iconic. There’s something so cool about this mirror the queen talks to.
Granted, all it seems capable of is telling her whether or not she’s the fairest of all the women in the land.
I have to wonder—could it actually tell her anything? Is the only reason it focuses on that one thing because that’s the only question the queen ever asks? I mean, it could be a hell of a lot more valuable. It knows whether or not Snow-White is alive, so it stands to reason that it knows a lot of other things not perceptible to the queen.
1 Thing I’m Mixed On
1. The Seven Dwarfs
For awhile, the dwarfs seem like the best people in this story.
Snow-White, of course, is innocent. And the huntsman chooses not to kill her. But I don’t give him too much credit, because as soon as he lets her go, he thinks to himself…
“The wild animals will soon devour you anyway.”
So it’s not like he goes out of his way to help her. He leaves her to fend for herself, alone and afraid in the forest. He just doesn’t want to have to kill her himself.
But the dwarfs find Snow-White asleep in their cottage, having eaten and drank some of their food and wine. And they take her in and basically give her a job in exchange for free room and board.
(Of course, at seven years old, she’s a little young for a job. More on the age thing in a minute…)
They seem to love her. They look out for her and tell her to beware her stepmother’s evil plans. They warn her not to let anyone in the house or open the door for anyone (which she continues to ignore, so she gets poisoned more than most.
Then, when on the queen’s third poisoning attempt, it appears she finally succeeds in killing Snow-White, the dwarfs are grief-stricken. They entomb her in a glass coffin. But since her beauty remains, they won’t bury her, and one of them always remains with her.
But here’s where they lose me…
They give the coffin away to a prince who wanders into their forest, out of pity, simply because he falls in love with this seeming corpse. They actually say…
“We will not sell it for all the gold in the world.”
And technically, they keep their promise, because they don’t sell it. But they change their mind pretty quickly and just give it away.
I don’t think they’re meant to come off looking bad here. Everything up until this point shows they love Snow-White and want the best for her.
But just giving away her body in this coffin to some stranger—prince or not—is a bad look.
2 Things I Don’t Like
2. Two Royal Deaths
The story starts with Snow White’s mother, the OG queen, wishing for a baby like Snow-White. Then…
“Soon afterward she had a little daughter who was as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as ebony wood, and therefore they called her Little Snow-White. And as soon as the child was born, the queen died.”
Just like that!
No explanation… nothing terrible during childbirth… no sickness… she just dies.
I get that the story’s conflict doesn’t start until we have a new queen as the evil stepmother. But I couldn’t help but laugh at how the first queen’s death happens so suddenly and is treated like nothing.
Then we go all the way to the final line of the story to get to the evil queen’s death. This one happens at Snow-White’s wedding to the prince. It also comes out of nowhere, and it’s written in such a way that it’s unclear who is being talked about.
Basically, they put iron shoes in a fire, then take them out and force the queen to dance in them until she dies.
It’s kind of a bizarre way to go. And it just says “they” force her… so, does that mean Snow-White and the prince, our innocent couple? I don’t know who else it could mean, but that seems like a knock against their innocence.
And how exactly do they force her? She’s the one with dark magic at her disposal, not them. This seems like a detail the authors didn’t care about because it gets in the way of the point they want to make.
1. Child Bride
Snow-White is SEVEN.
Was this not gross 200 years ago?
Thankfully Disney aged her up at least a little. But it’s disturbing that everyone in this story is fixated on the beauty of a child. And that the prince just has to have her, even though she’s a child AND she’s believed to be dead when he first lays eyes on her.
The weird thing is, if they never mentioned Snow-White’s age, you could read the story and easily imagine her to be older. Nothing makes her seem overly childlike.
Why didn’t these weirdos just do that?
Tim Matassa
