Snow White


"Snow White" is a 19th-century German fairy tale that is today known widely across the Western world. The Brothers Grimm published it in 1812 in the first edition of their collection Grimms' Fairy Tales and numbered as Tale 53. The original German title was Sneewittchen, a Low German form, but the first version gave the High German translation Schneeweißchen, and the tale has become known in German by the mixed form Schneewittchen.
The Grimms completed their final revision of the story in 1854.
The fairy tale features such elements as the magic mirror, the poisoned apple, the glass coffin, and the characters of the Evil Queen and the Seven Dwarfs. The seven dwarfs were first given individual names in the 1912 Broadway play Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and then given different names in Walt Disney's 1937 film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The Grimm story, which is commonly referred to as "Snow White", should not be confused with the story of "Snow-White and Rose-Red", another fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm.
In the Aarne–Thompson folklore classification, tales of this kind are grouped together as type 709, Snow White. Others of this kind include "Bella Venezia", "Myrsina", "Nourie Hadig", "Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree", "The Young Slave", and "La petite Toute-Belle".

Plot

At the beginning of the story, a queen sits sewing at an open window during a winter snowfall when she pricks her finger with her needle, causing three drops of red blood to drip onto the freshly fallen white snow on the black windowsill. Then, she says to herself, "How I wish that I had a daughter that had skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood and hair as black as ebony." Some time later, the queen gives birth to a baby daughter whom she names Snow White, but the queen dies in childbirth a short while later.
A year later, Snow White's father, the king, marries again. His new wife is very beautiful, but she is a vain and wicked woman who practices witchcraft. The new queen possesses a magic mirror, which she asks every morning, "Magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?" The mirror always tells the queen that she is the fairest. The queen is always pleased with that, because the magic mirror never lies. But when Snow White was seven years old, her fairness has surpassed her stepmother's fairness in the process. For example, when the queen asks her mirror, it tells her that Snow White is the fairest.
This gives the queen a great shock. She becomes envious, and from that moment on, her heart turns against Snow White, whom the queen grows to hate increasingly with time. Eventually, the angry queen orders a huntsman to take Snow White into the forest to be killed; as proof that Snow White is dead, the queen demands that he returns with her heart, which she will consume in order to become immortal. The huntsman takes Snow White into the forest, but after raising his knife he finds himself unable to kill her when Snow White finds out about her stepmother's evil plan, tearfully begging, "Spare me this mockery of justice! I will run away into the forest and never come home again!"; after seeing the tears in the princess's eyes, the huntsman reluctantly agrees to spare Snow White and brings the queen the heart of a wild animal instead.
After wandering through the forest for hours, Snow White discovers a tiny cottage belonging to a group of seven dwarfs. Since no one is at home, she eats some of the tiny meals, drinks some of their wine, and then tests all the beds. Finally, the last bed is comfortable enough for her and she falls asleep. When the dwarfs return home, they immediately become aware that there is a burglar in their house, because everything in their home is in disorder. Prowling about frantically, they head upstairs and discover the sleeping Snow White. She wakes up and explains to them about her stepmother's assassination attempt, and the dwarfs take pity on her and let her stay with them in exchange for a job as a housemaid. They warn her to be careful when alone at home and to let no one in while they are working in the mountains.
10 years later, Snow White grows into a beautiful young maiden. Meanwhile, the queen, who already had gotten rid of Snow White after a decade, asks her mirror once again: "Magic mirror on the wall, who now is the fairest one of all?" The mirror tells her that not only is Snow White still the fairest in the land, she is currently hiding with the dwarfs. The queen is furious when she learns that Snow White used her wits to fake her death by tricking the huntsman, and decides to kill the girl herself with three attempts: First, she appears at the dwarfs' cottage, disguised as an old peddler, and offers Snow White colorful, silky laced bodices as a present; the queen laces her up so tightly that Snow White collapses; the dwarfs return just in time, and Snow White revives when the dwarfs loosen the laces; Next, the queen dresses up as a comb seller and convinces Snow White to take a beautiful comb as a present; she brushes Snow White's hair with the poisoned comb; the girl gets knocked out by the poison from the comb, but she is again revived by the dwarfs when they remove the comb from her hair; finally, the queen disguises herself as a farmer's wife and offers Snow White a poisoned apple. Snow White is hesitant to accept it, so the queen cuts the apple in half, eating the white half and giving the red poisoned half to Snow White; the girl eagerly takes a bite, and then falls into a state of suspended animation, causing the Queen to finally triumph. This time, the dwarfs are unable to revive Snow White, and assuming that the queen has finally assassinated her after a decade, they place her in a glass casket as a funeral for her.
A few days later, a prince stumbles upon a dead Snow White lying in her glass coffin during a hunting trip. After hearing her story from the Seven Dwarfs, the prince is allowed to take Snow White to her proper resting place back at her father's castle. All of a sudden, while While Snow White is being transported, one of the prince's servants trips and loses his balance. This dislodges the piece of the poisoned apple from Snow White's throat, magically reviving her. The Prince soon becomes overjoyed over this miracle, and declares his love for the alive and well Snow White, who, surprised to meet him face to face, humbly accepts his marriage proposal. Soon, the prince invites everyone in the land to their wedding, excluding Snow White's stepmother.
The queen, finally happy to be rid of Snow White after ten years, again asks her magic mirror who is the fairest in the land. The mirror says that there was a bride of a prince, who is more fairer than her. Unaware that the bride is her stepdaughter herself, the queen decides to visit the wedding and investigate. Once she arrives, the Queen becomes frozen with rage and fear when she finds out that the prince's bride is her stepdaughter, Snow White herself. The finally fed-up Queen tries to sow chaos and assassinate her again, but the prince recognizes her as a threat to Snow White after he learns the truth from his bride; as a punishment for the attempted murder of Snow White, the prince orders for the Queen to wear a pair of red-hot iron slippers and dance in them until she drops dead. With the evil Queen finally defeated and dead, Snow White's wedding with the prince can peacefully continue.

Inspiration

Many scholars have theorized about the possible origins of the tale. In 1994, a German historian named Eckhard Sander published Schneewittchen: Märchen oder Wahrheit?, claiming he had uncovered an account that may have inspired the story that first appeared in Grimm’s Fairy Tales. According to Sander, the character of Snow White was based on the life of Margaretha von Waldeck, a German countess born to Philip IV in 1533. At the age of 16, Margarete was forced by her stepmother, Katharina of Hatzfeld, to move away to Brussels. There, Margarete fell in love with a prince who would later become Philip II of Spain. Margarete's father and stepmother disapproved of the relationship as it was ‘politically inconvenient’. Margarete mysteriously died at the age of 21, apparently having been poisoned. Historical accounts point to the King of Spain who, in opposing the romance, may have dispatched Spanish agents to murder Margarete.
Scholar Graham Anderson compares the story of Snow White to the Roman legend of Chione, recorded in Ovid's Metamorphoses. The name Chione means "Snow" in Greek and, in the story, she is described as the most beautiful woman in the land, so beautiful that the gods Apollo and Mercury both fell in love with her. Mercury put her to sleep with the touch of his caduceus and raped her in her sleep. Then Apollo, disguised as an old crone, approached her and raped her again. These affections led Chione to openly boast that she was more beautiful than the goddess Diana herself, resulting in Diana shooting her through the tongue with an arrow.
Karlheinz Bartels, a pharmacist and scholar from Lohr am Main, a town in northwestern Bavaria, found evidence that Snow White was Maria Sophia Margarethe Catharina, Baroness von und zu Erthal, who was born in Lohr on June 25, 1725. Her father, Philipp Christoph von und zu Erthal, was the local representative of the Prince Elector of Mainz. After the death of Maria Sophia's birth mother in 1738, her father remarried in 1743. The stepmother, Claudia Elisabeth von Reichenstein, was domineering and employed her new position to the advantage of her children from her first marriage. A magic mirror referred to as “The Talking Mirror”, known as always telling the truth, can still be viewed today in the Spessart Museum in the Lohr Castle, where Maria Sophia's stepmother lived. This mirror was presumably a present from Maria Sophia's father to his second wife. It was a product of the Lohr Mirror Manufacture. Her gravestone was found in 2019.

Variations

The principal studies of traditional Snow White variants are Ernst Böklen's, Schneewittchen Studien of 1910, which prints fifty Snow White variants, and studies by Steven Swann Jones. In their first edition, the Brothers Grimm published the version they had first collected, in which the villain of the piece is Snow White's jealous biological mother. In a version sent to another folklorist prior to the first edition, additionally, she does not order a servant to take her to the woods, but takes her there herself to gather flowers and abandons her; in the first edition, this task was transferred to a servant. It is believed that the change to a stepmother in later editions was to tone down the story for children.
A popular version of Snow White is the 1937 American animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs by Walt Disney. Disney's variation of Snow White gave the dwarfs names and included a singing Snow White. The Disney film also is the only version in which Snow White and her prince meet before she bites the apple; in fact, it is this meeting that sets the plot in motion. Instead of her lungs and liver, as written in the original, the huntsman is asked by the queen to bring back Snow White's heart. While the heart is mentioned, it is never shown in the box. Snow White is much more mature. And she is discovered by the dwarfs after cleaning the house, not vandalizing it. Furthermore, in the Disney movie the evil queen tries only once to kill Snow White and fails. She then dies by falling down a cliff and being crushed by a boulder, after the dwarfs had chased her through the forest. In the original, the queen is forced to dance to death.
Many later versions omit the Queen's attempted cannibalism, eating what she believed to be the lungs and liver of Snow White. This may be a reference to old Slavic mythology which includes tales of witches eating human hearts.

In other traditions

Many other variations of the story exist across and outside Europe. In some of these variations the dwarfs are robbers, while the magic mirror is a dialogue with the sun or moon.

In film

In 2013, the United States Patent and Trademark Office issued a trademark to Disney Enterprises, Inc. for the name "Snow White" that covers all live and recorded movie, television, radio, stage, computer, Internet, news, and photographic entertainment uses, excluding literary works of fiction and nonfiction.

Religious interpretation

Erin Heys' "Religious Symbols" article at the website Religion & Snow White analyzes the use of numerous symbols in the story, their implications, and their Christian interpretations, such as the colours red, white, and black; the apple; the number seven; and resurrection.

Other interpretations

The Brothers Grimm story of "Snow White" takes an unusual turn from its other fairy-tale counterparts in that it can be interpreted as a story with a lesson centered around desirable qualities for women. This includes an interpretation of the fairy tale revolving around the "realization of absolute beauty" as an ideal sought by both the Queen and Snow White. The Queen's—Snow White's step-mother—defining characteristic is her cunning, or intelligence, whereas Snow White's is her beauty. Snow White consistently foils the Queen's jealous attempts to kill her because strangers pity and help her due to her childlike innocence and beauty. For example, the huntsman, who was ordered to kill Snow White, describes her as a "pretty child" and lets her go, which carries over to when the seven dwarfs decide not to cast her out when they find Snow White in their home. Even when the Queen devises the poison apple and kills Snow White, she is saved by the Prince because he finds her to be "the fairest of them all." The Queen dies at the end of the story while Snow White lives happily ever after with the Prince, implying that the Queen's cunning was not enough to counter the power of Snow White's elegance. This suggests that the moral of the story is that beauty is more desirable than intelligence. Despite the modern connotations of this concept, one must consider the time period at which the story was written; Snow White as told by the Brothers Grimm was first published in 1812, where at the time, it was arguably common place for people to live according to traditional gender roles.