The Evolution of Snow White
Fairest Of Them All: The Evolution of Snow White
The modern world may initially view the story of Snow White as a simple fairy tale. Woven by the demigods of Disney as a mystical and fully-colored narrative fraught with slightly zaftig princesses dressed in bawdy threads, sentient mirrors, aptly-named dwarves, evil—yet oddly alluring—stepmothers, poison-laced fruit, pristine glass coffins and the singular, ultimate and redeeming kiss from your own personal Prince Charming. Reflecting the female zeitgeist of the mid 1930s with the reactionary antifeminist undertones brought about by the overindulgence of the Roaring Twenties, the Disney film still leaves much to be desired in the realm of children’s indoctrination. The original Brothers Grimm version first established these moralistic formulae, but it did so in a particularly gruesome fashion. Gone were the morbid details of murderous narcissism, witchcraft, prepubescent sexual ripening, and ritual cannibalism, originally indispensible story elements to better reinforce the all-too-important Protestant values the brothers Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm held so dear. The target demographic was very different as well; while the Disney version was conceptualized with the General Patronage rating in mind, the Grimms’ version was formerly written and published for scholars and teachers in various editions abounding with annotations and notes.
The pilot German edition was entitled “Snow-drop” and published in Kinder–und Hausmarchen in 1812. The rumored early drafts supposedly were a darker and more sinister tale, much more so than the edited version. However, this was not the first appearance of the Snow White character. The Grimms collected the elements of their stories from old midwives, nurses, sewing circle members and the like, owing to the deeply-steeped oral folk traditions of the time.
The earliest known written version of the tale may be a derivation of Giambattista Basile’s “The Young Slave,” published in the
The modern world may initially view the story of Snow White as a simple fairy tale. Woven by the demigods of Disney as a mystical and fully-colored narrative fraught with slightly zaftig princesses dressed in bawdy threads, sentient mirrors, aptly-named dwarves, evil—yet oddly alluring—stepmothers, poison-laced fruit, pristine glass coffins and the singular, ultimate and redeeming kiss from your own personal Prince Charming. Reflecting the female zeitgeist of the mid 1930s with the reactionary antifeminist undertones brought about by the overindulgence of the Roaring Twenties, the Disney film still leaves much to be desired in the realm of children’s indoctrination. The original Brothers Grimm version first established these moralistic formulae, but it did so in a particularly gruesome fashion. Gone were the morbid details of murderous narcissism, witchcraft, prepubescent sexual ripening, and ritual cannibalism, originally indispensible story elements to better reinforce the all-too-important Protestant values the brothers Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm held so dear. The target demographic was very different as well; while the Disney version was conceptualized with the General Patronage rating in mind, the Grimms’ version was formerly written and published for scholars and teachers in various editions abounding with annotations and notes.
The pilot German edition was entitled “Snow-drop” and published in Kinder–und Hausmarchen in 1812. The rumored early drafts supposedly were a darker and more sinister tale, much more so than the edited version. However, this was not the first appearance of the Snow White character. The Grimms collected the elements of their stories from old midwives, nurses, sewing circle members and the like, owing to the deeply-steeped oral folk traditions of the time.
The earliest known written version of the tale may be a derivation of Giambattista Basile’s “The Young Slave,” published in the
Cited: Basile, Giambattista “The Pentamerone” translated from the Italian of Benedetto Croce by N. M. Penzer (New York: Dutton, 1932), day 2, tale 8. Broumas, Olga. “Disenchantments: An Anthology of Modern Fairy Tale Poetry.” Wolfgang Mieder, ed. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1985. Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm. “Kinder- und Hausmärchen.” 1st ed. (Berlin, 1812), v. 1, no. 53. Sale, Roger. “Fairy Tales and After: From Snow White to E. B. White.” Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1978. Sherman, Delia. “Snow White to the Prince.” 2 August 2008. <http://www.endicott-studio.com/cofhs/cofsnowt.html> Windling, Terry. “Snow, Glass, Apples: The Story of Snow White”. 2 August 2008. <http://www.endicott-studio.com/rdrm/forsga3.html>