The Brothers Grimm and The Story of Snow White

Jan 21, 2012
Lara Smith

Illustration by Franz Juttner - Public Domain [PD:US]

As the Brothers Grimm tuned into a widening audience for fairy tales, stories like Snow White were softened to appeal to families, children and lay readers.

When the Brothers Grimm began recording folk tales in the early nineteenth century, their target audience was a scholarly one. As they became more in tune to the growing appeal of fairy tales, they softened certain dark elements in the tales to conform to the widespread Christian and social values of the time. By adding and removing certain elements, the Brothers set the story of Snow White on a path that would culminate in the well-known Walt Disney version, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

The Brothers Grimm and Little Snow-White

Little Snow-White begins with a barren queen sewing and gazing out the window at snow softly falling like feathers. As she pricks her finger on the needle and bleeds into the snow, she utters her fateful wish for a child: "If only I had a child as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as the wood in this [window] frame" (Berlin, 1857). The queen gives birth to the child she longed for, only to die immediately.

One of the Most Famous Villains in Folkloric History is Cast

The Grimms' earlier versions of the story cast Snow White's natural mother as the villain whose malicious envy drives the story. In versions after 1819, however, the psychologically disturbing element of the 'evil mother' is replaced by the 'evil stepmother' most known today. In Snow, Glass, Apples: The Story of Snow White, Terri Windling understands this change as the desire for the "Mother to flourish as a symbol of the eternal feminine, the motherland, and the family itself as the highest social desideratum."

The All-Knowing Mirror

A year after the queen's death, the king marries a beautiful, but arrogant woman. The new queen cannot stand the thought that anyone's beauty could surpass her own. With the Brothers' introduction of the magic mirror comes one of the best-known lines of the fairy tale genre: "Mirror, mirror on the wall, Who in this land is fairest of all?" When Snow White's beauty surpasses the queen's at the age of seven, the enchanted mirror, who only speaks the truth, delivers the dire news.

The Stepmother's Lecherous Envy Takes Over

The queen orders a huntsman to take the girl into the woods, kill her, and return with her lungs and liver. The huntsman, assuming wild animals will kill her, takes pity and lets Snow White run into the woods. He returns to the queen with a clear conscience and the lungs and liver of a boar he killed instead. The queen eats the grisly lungs and liver, believing that by doing so she will absord some of the child's essence and become more beautiful herself.

Snow White Meets her Dwarfs

After running through the woods wild with fear, Snow White stumbles upon a tiny house inhabited by dwarfs. While they were absent from many of the tale's earlier versions, these tiny men held a special place in the lore of Germanic and Nordic cultures. In another departure from earlier tales, the Brothers have the dwarfs demanding domestic servitude in exchange for her lodging priviledges. This alteration reinforced the dominant social ideal of women as householders.

The Magic Mirror Spills the Beans

When the mirror states that Snow White is still the most beautiful in the land, the queen's insidious envy is rekindled. In disguise, she sets out to kill the child herself. Her first attempts are made with a poisonous comb and a suffocating dress. After these fail, she succeeds with the infamous poisoned apple - invoking the powerful imagery of the Old Testament's story of Adam and Eve.

Snow White and Her Casket of Glass

After the death of Snow White, the dwarfs decide that she is too beautiful to be buried and place her in a glass casket upon a hill. Even in death, she remains as "white as snow, as red as blood, and as black-haired as ebony wood."

Enter, the Prince

When a prince happens upon the casket in the woods, he is awestuck by the beauty within and begs the dwarfs to release the corpse into his care. As the servants are carrying the casket on their shoulders, one stumbles and the jolt shakes loose the piece of apple lodged in Snow White's mouth. She immediately returns to life. In bypassing the prolonged period where the young corpse is in possession of the prince, the Brothers remove the dark necrophilic overtones in some earlier versions.

Justice Prevails

In what has got to be one of the most perfect examples of macabre fairy tale justice, the evil stepmother faces a cruel and darkly humorous punishment. As the queen hears rumors of the prince's betrothal to a young beauty, her curiosity leads her to the wedding of Snow White. When she recognizes the young bride as her stepdaughter, she freezes in fear. After a pair of iron shoes are placed into burning coals, "They were brought forth with tongs and placed before her. She was forced to step into the red-hot shoes and dance until she fell down dead."

In Little Snow-White, the Brothers Grimm adapt elements from earlier tales to reflect societal preoccupations of the time, as well as making the tale more marketable to the general public. Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs follows this pattern to the extreme as the tale is further removed from its dark and chilling ancestry.

Sources:

Davies, Gill. (Ed.) The Joy of Fairy Tales. Cambridge: Worth Press, 2011.
Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm. Sneewittchen. (Little Snow-White) Kinder-und Hausmarchen. (Children's and Household Tales - Grimms' Fairy Tales). Final Edition. Berlin: 1857, no 53.
Hallett, Martin & Karasek, Barbara. (Eds.) Folk and Fairy Tales. Ontario: Broadview Press, 1991.
Windling, Terri. Snow, Glass, Apples: The Story of Snow White. Endicott Studio. Accessed January 11, 2012.