From word of mouth to books, comics, and film, Snow White has been portrayed with great diversity. I'd say everyone tends to have a different focus and often favour certain aspects over others. Certainly most versions tend to add more colour and give a lighter tone, which, of course, being a story intended for extremely small children, really shouldn't come to any surprise. Then again, really I should say
supposedly intended for small children, after all, what is deemed suitable for children has changed drastically over the years. Also, the tales collected by the Brothers Grimm are descendant from stories passed down from word of mouth and may have been used on any occasion to pass the time.
The 'Kinder- und Hausmärchen' ('Children's and Household Tales') was revised several times, with numerous alterations and additions. It's been a long time since actually reading the Grimm version, so naturally it can be the only place to begin. I would've liked to start off with a look into the version in the earliest edition and then compare to see if any significant alterations had been made in the latest. But since it's proving a little trickier to find it'll have to be the other way around.
And so, let us revisit the 1886 Grimm's version (one from The Project Gutenberg, see
here):
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Since there's quite a bit of text in this blog I thought I'd add a coloured version from the Project Gutenberg for fun...and admittedly got a little carried away.
I used some images taken from wiki of grass, forest, frost, ebony (I suppose because why not) and the painting 'The Roses of Heliogabalus'.
*note to self (cause I'll likely forget): used pin light setting for layer
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The tale begins with the birth mother desiring a child with three traits: snow white skin, blood red lips and ebony black hair. She comes upon this desire after accidentally pricking her finger and the blood falls onto the snow out room the ebony window frame.
Is it just me or do a lot of adaptations tend to skip over that bit?
I find this symbolism very important so I'd like to talk about this later, but for now note, these all concern aesthetics.
Moving onto another train of thought, it's pretty much established in the notes of the Grimm's that the mother and step-mother were originally one figure.
Of course, it was probably too dark for children to have a mother wanting to kill her own child. With a step-mother you have a pretty good scapegoat (at the expense of step-mother's around the world) but when considering it, in the end I do think it was a smart change overall.
Snow White runs aways from her predicament through what the Grimm's call "the wild woods". She the woods is full of dangers and things that would do her harm "
sharp stones and through the thorn bushes, and the wild beasts after her". She is incredibly afraid, however, they do her no harm. This brings me the reasoning of Bruno Bettelheim in 'The Uses of Enchantment'. He argues that the woods are a metaphysical representation of the fears of our protagonist and the child.
Fear of abandonment. Fear of death. Fear of ones own fate.
And it's interesting how the woods are never mentioned again. The queen has to travel over the seven hills to get to the dwarves house and back. So to me that further highlights that the woods belong to Snow White that they are hers to travel alone.
It is a trail that she must go to to reach the safety of the house.
Here's another point of interest: any items of the house are described as white.
"Everything there was very small, but as pretty and clean as possible. There stood the little table ready laid, and covered with a white cloth, and seven little plates, and seven knives and forks, and drinking-cups. By the wall stood seven little beds, side by side, covered with clean white quilts."
To me this is especially interesting because this is a house of dwarves. Dwarves who go away to dig in the mines all day. They (should) come back quite dirty but their house is noted for being very clean.
It's the perfect safe haven for Snow White's fears. And the dwarves are her guardians.
Upon finding the intruder, the dwarves allow her to stay but only in exchange for a long list of domestic chores. This could be to give her (and therefore the child reader) something to make her feel self supporting/reliant and therefore confident. And in some ways an excellent life lesson but it also has it's problems. Problems to do with feminist theory which should be really obvious so I will not bore you with.
And then the chores might also be a distraction from her troubles.
You could also read between the lines, since the house was likely already very clean and the dwarves go to mine and bring back gold which is a pretty strong hint that Snow might help make life easier for them but they could easily do without her being there. They take pity on her and learn to like her, incorporating her into their family.
When the Queen discovers the truth she uses tricks in order to enter the safe haven. First corset laces and hair combs before the white-red apple. It's interesting how obvious the uses of the comb and the corset laces are and how they highlight the meaning of the apple. I'm afraid I'll probably have to discuss this at greater length later.
Moving on to the coffin, which is really a very interesting part of the story. Reasons are given in the story but it's still a question I ask myself for the psychological side:
Why is she put on display?
It's mentioned in other versions of the tale that she was buried or hidden away, treated like a dead body. I'm pretty certain that the Grimm's wrote in the glass coffin to explain how the Prince came across the body. But what if the Dwarves cannot bear to bury the child for another reason.
What if Snow White isn't truly dead in the story?
To explain, lets look at what Joseph Campbell has to say because he explains it so well. Here is a page from his
'Hero With a Thousand Faces':
The literature of psychoanalysis abounds in examples of such desperate fixations. What they represent is an impotence to put off the infantile ego, with its sphere of emotional relationships and ideals. One is bound in by the walls of childhood; the Father and mother stand as threshold guardians, and the timorous soul, fearful of some punishment,* fails to make the passage through the door and come to birth in the world without.
Dr. Jung has reported a dream that resembles very closely the image of the myth of Daphne. The dreamer is the same young man who found himself (see above, p. 46) in the land of the sheep-the land, that is to say, of unindependence. A voice within him says, “I must first get away from the father”; then a few nights later: “a snake draws a circle about the dreamer, and he stands like a tree, grown fast to the earth.” This is an image of the magic circle drawn about the personality by the dragon power of the fixating parent** Brynhild, in the same way, was protected in her virginity, arrested in her daughter state for years, by the circle of the fire of all-father Wotan. She slept in timelessness until the coming of Siegfried.
Little Briar-rose (Sleeping Beauty) was put to sleep by a jealous hag (an unconscious evil-mother image). And not only the child, her entire world went off to sleep; but at last, “after long, long years,” there came a prince to wake her.
The king and queen (the conscious good-parent images), who had just come home and were entering the hall, began to fall asleep, and with them the whole estate. All the horses slept in the stalls, the dogs in the yard, the pigeons on the roof, the flies on the walls, yes, the fire that flickered on the hearth grew still and slumbered, and the roast ceased to simmer. And the cook, who was about to pull the hair of the scullery boy because he had for-gotten something, let him go and fell off to sleep. And the wind went down, and not a leaf stirred in the trees. Then around the Castle a hedge of thorns began to grow, which became taller every year, and finally shut off the whole estate. It grew up taller than the Castle. So that nothing more was seen, not even the weather-cock on the roof.”
A Persian city once was “enstoned to stone”-king and queen,
soldiers, inhabitants, and all-because its people refused the call
of Allah.“ Lot's wife became a pillar of salt for looking back, when
she had been summoned forth from her city by Jehovah.” And there
is the tale of the Wandering Jew, cursed to remain on earth until
the Day of Judgment, because when Christ had passed him carrying
the cross, this man among the people standing along the way called,
“Go faster! A little speed!” The unrecognised, insulted Savior turned
and said to him, “I go, but you shall be waiting here for me when I
return."
Some of the victims remain spellbound forever (at least, so far as we are told), but others are destined to be saved. Brynhild was preserved for her proper hero and little Briar-rose was rescued by a prince. Also, the young man transformed into a tree dreamed subsequently of the unknown woman who pointed the way, as a mysterious guide to paths unknown." Not all who hesitate are lost. The psyche has many secrets in reserve. And these are not disclosed unless required. So it is that sometimes the predicament following an obstinate refusal of the call proves to be the occasion of a providential revelation of some unsuspected principle of release.
Willed introversion, in fact, is one of the classic implements of creative genius and can be employed as a deliberate device. It drives the psychic energies into depth and activates the lost continent of unconscious infantile and archetypal images. The result, of course, may be a disintegration of consciousness more or less complete (neurosis, psychosis: the plight of spellbound Daphne); but on the other hand, if the personality is able to absorb and integrate the new forces, there will be experienced an almost super-human degree of self-consciousness and masterful control. This is a basic principle of the Indian disciplines of yoga. It has been the way, also, of many creative spirits in the West.” It cannot be described, quite, as an answer to any specific call. Rather, it is a deliberate, terrific refusal to respond to anything but the deepest, highest, richest answer to the as-yet-unknown demand of some waiting void within: a kind of total strike, or rejection of the offered terms of life, as a result of which some power of transformation carries the problem to a plane of new magnitudes, where it is suddenly and finally resolved.
*See Freud: castration complex.
** The serpent (in mythology a symbol of the terrestrial waters) corresponds precisely to
Daphne's father, the river Peneus.
Here's an interesting fragment I knew virtually nothing about. Apparently, Snow White is visited by three birds while in her coffin:"first an owl, then a raven, and lastly, a dove"
I don't know enough about bird symbolism. Off-hand I'd say the owl represents wisdom, the raven death and the dove peace.
However, the thing is, nowadays these symbols may mean something a little different now then they had before. So I'll come back and revisit this later.
And we finally come to the finale with the red hot shoes. Indeed, According to this Grimm version, the death of the Queen is definitely a well thought out plan for revenge. Premeditated.
"For they had ready red-hot iron shoes, in which she had to dance until she fell down dead."
It's a fragment that is continuously left out more and more. And from what I've seen, virtually left out completely from the film medium. Indeed, I had never heard of the red the shoes as a child and only ever found out about it when revisiting the tale and reading books on the subject of fairytales. The versions I read stated she feel down dead in a state of jealous rage or even left out the Queen altogether at the end, leaving me to wonder. I believe I remember one version stating she danced herself to death in a fit of rage.
But omitted the red-hot shoes.
It's no surprising. Nowadays children are taught revenge is a bad thing (which is good) and that is essentially what the wedding scene is in this version.
And so one final discussion regarding the passage of time in this version.
Snow White is incredibly young. She is seven when the mirror declares her the fairest and she is forced to run away. She is small enough to fit in the largest of the dwarfs beds. Then the wording makes passage of time between when Snow White runs away/ the mother eating the sacrificial heart and discovers Snow White is actually alive, as being one day. Then each of her visits takes an indeterminate amount of time, however long it takes her to get "across the seven mountains" to get to the house. Again it's presumably a single day round trip if she asks the mirror of Snow White's condition immediately upon her return.
So that would make...four days.
When she is dead to the dwarves they lament her death for three days and then decide to fashion a coffin of glass and gold. They set it upon the mountain.
Until that point Snow is undoubtedly seven years old.
The length of time for the creation of the coffin is variable. The length of time to set it upon the mountain and the length of time they individually guard her until the arrival of the prince: variable.
But "for a long while Snow-white lay in the coffin and never changed".
Meaning, for all intents and purposes, the Snow White of the Grimm version very likely marries at seven years of age.
It's an interesting bit of information. We know people did used to marry at a very young age and the aristocratic in particular. In this regard it leaves us with two things. Of course in our time and culture, this is a very unsettling way of looking at the tale. It does, however, give one a little more of a perspective of the period when the Grimm's envisioned the tale.
Of course, one could analyse and dispute the vision of the Grimm's tale. One could dispute, argue and wildly search for the original tale, it's meaning and it's roots. The truth is the land of fairytale is fickle, variable and forever changing with today. What I'm looking for doesn't exist in a complete form. There is no one true version of Snow White. But searching for it's roots and understanding it's original meaning will inevitably give me the tools I need.
For my own interpretation.
