Snow White

It takes the wicked stepmother more than one try to kill Snow White.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
School of Humans. This episode discusses sensitive topics. Please listen
with care. My name is Miranda Hawkins. Welcome to the
Deep Dark Woods. Today's story is at U seven O

(00:30):
nine or snow White.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Once upon a time in midwinter, when the snowflakes were
falling like feathers from heaven, a queen sat sewing at
her window, which had a frame of black ebony wood.
As she sewed, she looked up at the snow and
pricked her finger with the needle. Three drops of blood
fell into the snow. The red on the white looked

(01:00):
so beautiful that she thought to herself, if only I
had a child as white as snow, as red as blood,
and as black as the wood in this frame. Soon
afterwards 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.

(01:22):
And as soon as the child was born, the queen died.
A year later, the king took himself another wife. She
was a beautiful woman, but she was proud and arrogant,
and she could not stand it if anyone might surpass
her in beauty. She had a magic mirror. Every morning
she stood before it, looked at herself and said, mirror,

(01:45):
mirror on the wall, who in this land is fairest
of all? To this the mirror answered you, my Queen,
are fairest of all. Then she was satisfied, for she
knew that the mirror spoke the truth. Snow White grew
up and became ever more beautiful. When she was seven

(02:06):
years old, she was as beautiful as the light of day,
even more beautiful than the Queen herself. One day, when
the Queen asked her mirror, nearer, nearer on the wall,
who in this land is fairest of all? It answered you,
my Queen, are fair, It's true, But snow White is
a thousand times fairer than you.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
The Queen took.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
Fright and turned yellow and green with envy. From that
hour on, whenever she looked at snow White, her heart
turned over inside her body. So great was her hatred
for the girl.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
The envy and.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
Pride grew even greater, like a weed in her heart,
until she had no peace day and night. Then she
summoned the huntsman and said to him, take snow White
into the woods. I never want to see her again.
Kill her, and as proof that she is dead, bring
her lungs and her liver back to me. The huntsman

(03:07):
obeyed and took snow White into the woods. He took
out his hunting knife and was about to stab it
into her innocent heart when she began to cry, saying, oh,
dear huntsmand, let me live. I will run into the
wild woods and never come back. Because she was so beautiful,
the huntsman took pity on her and said, run away,
you poor child. He thought the wild animals will soon

(03:31):
devour you anyway. But still it was as if a
stone had fallen from his heart, for he would not
have to kill her. Just then, a young boar came
running by. He killed it, cut out its lungs and liver,
and took them back to the queen As proof of
snow White's death.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
The cook had to boil.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
Them with salt, and the wicked woman ate them, supposing
that she had eaten snow whites lungs and liver.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
As a kid, I always had short hair. If I'm
being honest, It was a bowl cut. It was downright awful,
but I loved the feeling of getting my hair cut.
So every time my mother, who loved to keep her
hair short, got her hair trimmed, so did I, and
this is why whenever my friends and I played princess,

(04:25):
they always stuck me with snow White, even though I
looked absolutely nothing like her. Although snow White has different
versions across the globe, there are two real life people
the story may be based on. In nineteen ninety four,
German historian Eckered Xander published his book snow White, Is

(04:48):
It a fairy Tale? He said snow White was based
on Philip the forces daughter. Born in fifteen thirty three,
the German countess was named Marguerite von Waldeck. When she
turned sixteen, her stepmother, Katharina of Hotsfeld, forced her to
move to wild Yfe and Brussels. Von Waldock fell in

(05:09):
love with Prince Philip, who would later become King Philip
the Second of Spain, but her father and stepmother disapproved
of their relationship for political reasons, and then at twenty one,
von Waldeck died from poison. According to Sander, historical accounts
say the King of Spain might have sent Spanish agent

(05:30):
to murder the young woman. Doctor Claudia Schwabe is a
German professor from Utah, State University. She says, von Waldeck
knew she was going to die, and that's why she
wrote her will.

Speaker 3 (05:45):
By the handwriting, you could see how trembling, how shaky
her hand was. And then there was a book of
death I don't know how you call it in Wildungen,
where she was from, and the mayor wrote in there
that she was poisoned. So that information we do have,
but it just shows you how some times fairy tales

(06:07):
are really very close to life. And I'm sure Margharitavonvaldek
is not the only aristocratic woman that ever happened to right,
I'm sure this happened throughout time in many different cultures
that we have a scenarios that very much resemble a
fairy tale story. But it just shows you that fairy

(06:29):
tales are just like stories that life rights.

Speaker 1 (06:35):
The second woman snow White might be based off is
Maria Sophia von Earthel. Fabulology is fairytale science. A fabulology
group did a study on Laura Bavaria, and that group
says von Earthel was born June fifteenth, seventeen twenty nine.
Her father, Prince Philip Christophon Earthel, was an eighteenth century

(06:58):
landowner married to Baroness von Bettendorf. After the Baroness died,
her father remarried Claudia Elizabeth Maria von Venningen, who was
the Countess of Reichenstein. Based on a letter, Claudia didn't
like her stepchildren, but that's the only evidence of her
relationship with her stepkids. Mirror's maid in Lare were considered

(07:22):
able to speak or tell the truth because they were
made so well they showed clear reflections. They also had
inscriptions on them. Today, the magic Mirror is displayed at
the von Earthel Castle, which is now referred to as
the Lore Castle and has been turned into a museum.

(07:43):
Here's what doctor Schwabe says about von Earthel.

Speaker 3 (07:47):
I have to say straight away from the very beginning,
So the whole story with Maria Sophia von Erta, that
was a hoax invented by a pharmacist called Karl Heinz
Bartels and it was a big hoax. And he came
up with a nonsense word for doing fairytale archaeology. He

(08:11):
called it fabu lology. And then the city officials they
decided to use this for profit for tourism, so they
could attract tourists to their town of Lore and then
tell them this story of the aristocratic woman who once lived.
But again, this is all a hoax.

Speaker 1 (08:34):
That's right, it was all made up for money. Well,
von Earth was real, but the details of her story
don't match up. There are many inconsistencies. Still, many believe
that von Earthel could be an inspiration for Snow White,
and this was reinforced after her grave was uncovered in
twenty nineteen. But back to von Waldeck, doctor Schwabe says

(08:59):
she and the Grim snow White had more similarities.

Speaker 3 (09:04):
For instance, my Garreta Vonvaldek had blonde hair, and now
you might say snow White had dark hair black hair. However,
in the very first unpublished version of the Grims, called
the Uhlenbergam Manuscript, they actually wrote that snow White had
blonde hair. The Waldek family owned several copper mines in

(09:26):
the northern Hessan regions, and eckert Sunder found out that
they employed children in these copper minds, children who wore
special headgear to protect them from rocks falling down. And
when they came out of the copper mines, it must
have looked like what we imagined dwarfs to look like.

Speaker 1 (09:47):
Also, historian ECKERD. Standers believes the Poisoned Apple from snow
White was based on a true story of a man
giving kids poisoned apples kids he thought were stealing from him.
But it's hard to believe one woman could inspire the
story of snow White when she pops up in stories
around the world time and time again. As I mentioned earlier,

(10:22):
snow White stories can be found all over the globe.
They might not have a magic mirror, but all stories
have the same setup. A family member envies a beautiful
young woman who is put into a suspended sleep. Mercina
is a Greek tale where the sun declares three times
the youngest of three sisters is the most beautiful, which

(10:44):
makes her two older sisters jealous. Nori Hadig is a
story from Armenia where the mother asks the moon who
is the prettiest in all the world. In the epic
Indian palm pod Novat from fifteen forty, the queen asks
a truth telling parrot if she or the princess Podmavat
is more beautiful. There's this epic Indonesian poem titled sayer

(11:09):
Bit Asari. It's believed to have been written around seventeen fifty.
I like this story simply because we haven't heard an
Indonesian story yet, but also because of their depiction of beauty.
In the eighteenth century, in the Palm, a merchant finds
a young girl in a basket floating down the river.

(11:30):
A fish is swimming beside her, and the merchant realizes
that if you take the fish out of the water,
then the girl stops breathing. The merchant decides to adopt
the girl, uses a vase to scoop the fish out
of the water, and then takes both the girl and
the fish home. Later, the king of the land marries
for the second time. The new queen is secretly a witch,

(11:54):
and she has a magic mirror. The queen asks the
magic mirror who's the prettiest in all the land. Normally
it says the queen, but this time it says bit Asari,
whose cheeks are the color of the bill of a
flying bird, her nose like a jasmine bud, her face
is like the yellow of an egg, and her teeth

(12:15):
like a bright pomegranate, which is like a reddish brown.
The queen brings Bitasari to the palace as a servant.
She hopes that her beauty will fade, but it doesn't,
so the queen decides to burn her face off, but
when she sets the girl on fire, she doesn't burn
and the fire is magically extinguished. Bitasari tells the queen

(12:38):
she can't hurt her that her life is tied to
a fish at home. So the queen finds the fish,
and when she removes it from the base, the girl
falls down dead. The queen then keeps the fish in
a locket around her neck. Bitasari's father is devastated. He

(12:58):
builds a tomb where he lays bit Asari to rest.
During this time, the queen's step son has and having
visions of Bitasari. He believes he's in love with her.
One day, he stumbles across the painting of her and
asks who she is. He's told she has died, and
he decides to visit her tomb. When he arrives, Bitasari

(13:24):
wakes up, but she doesn't wake up because of him,
but because at that moment, the queen is taking a bath,
and as she bathes, the fish falls out of the
locket into the water, alive. Bitasari uses that time to
tell the prince about his stepmother and how she needs
that fish to live. While Bitasari fills the prince in,

(13:48):
the queen notices the fish has fallen out of her
locket and scoops it up to put it back in
her necklace. Bitasari falls dead again. The step son rushes
home to confront his stepmother. The two fight, and the
prince kills the queen and puts the fish back in water.
That Assari comes back to life, and she and the

(14:10):
prince Mary. French author Charles Perraut may not have a
version of snow White, but Italian author John Batiste Basilee
doesn't disappoint. In sixteen thirty four he published The Young Slave,
which is not a great title. A baron has a

(14:33):
younger sister named Celia, and she goes to the garden
to play games with other young maidens. That day, a
rose tree has a beautiful new bloom. The maidens make
a wager to see who can jump over the tree
without damaging the bloom. All the maidens try to no avail.
When it was Celia's turn, she jumps over the tree

(14:56):
but knocks a single leaf off the bloom. She quickly
swallows the leaf before anyone notices. With her deception, she
wins the bet. Three days later, Celia feels she's pregnant. Worried,
she visits some fairy friends and they confirm her suspicions.
They say she is quote with child of the leaf

(15:18):
she had swallowed. Celia hides her magical pregnancy, and on
the fourteenth night, she gives birth in secret. Her daughter
is born with a face like the moon. Celia names
her Lisa, and then sends her daughter to be raised
by the fairies. Each of the fairies want to give
Lisa a charm, but the final fairy, who runs to

(15:41):
meet the child, twists her foot. In her anguish, she
curses Lisa, saying that when she turns seven, her mother
will forget a comb in Lisa's hair, which would cause
the girl to die. The fairy's curse comes to pass.
In her devastation, Celia has Lisa placed in a casket
made of seven crystals, one inside the other and locks

(16:05):
it in a distant chamber of the baron's castle. Celia
then keeps the key in her pocket. But not long
after Celia is on her deathbed, she entrusts all her
possessions to her brother. When she gives him the key,
she makes him promise he will never open the distant chamber.
He assures her he won't. A year later, the baron

(16:29):
marries while away on a hunt, the baron puts his
new wife in charge of the house and tells her
not to open the chamber. Of course, as soon as
the baron leaves, she searches a castle, finds the key
in his desk, and opens the room. The new wife
sees a girl in a casket made of seven crystals.

(16:51):
Lisa has grown as time has passed, and the caskets
have grown with her. The woman is filled with rage
and jealousy, believing her husband comes into this room to
worship the beautiful girl. In a fit, she yanks the
girl out of the casket by her hair, and doing so,
the comb falls out, and the girl wakes up crying

(17:11):
for her mom. The baroness answers, I'll give thee mama
and Papa, and proceeds to beat Lisa, cut her hair,
dress her in rags, and make her a slave. The
story says, every day the baroness beats on her head,
gives her black eyes, scratches her face and makes her

(17:31):
mouth bleed, as if she'd just eaten raw pigeons. When
the baron returns, he asks the baroness why the young
girl is being treated so poorly. The baroness lies, saying
her aunt had sent the child to her and she
needs to punish her to keep her in line. After

(17:52):
some time, the baron goes to the country fair. Being
kind hearted, he asks all the servants what they would like.
When it's Lisa's turn, The baroness tells him to ignore her,
but he would not. Lisa asks for a doll, a knife,
and a pummice stone. She also says that if he forgets,
he will not be able to cross over the river

(18:14):
on his way home, and so the baron heads to
the fair but forgets Lisa's items. When he tries to
cross the river, he can't. Then he remembers the slave
girl's request and goes back for her items. Once Lisa
has her gifts, she retires to the kitchen and tells
the doll her life's story. She asks the doll if

(18:34):
she hears her, and when the doll doesn't answer, she
begins sharpening the knife on the pummice stone. Saying she
will take her own life. At that, the doll grows
and answers, yes, I did hear thee I am not deaf.
This goes on for several days until one day the
baron overhears the servant girl crying and talking. He puts

(18:56):
his eye to the keyhole to see Lisa recounting her
story once again and sharpening her knife on the pummice stone.
At this point, the baron kicks down the door, snatches
the knife, and has Lisa tell him her story. When
he understands who she is and what she's been through,
the baron hugs his niece, then sends her to live

(19:17):
with other relatives and commands that she be well treated.
After a couple months, Lisa becomes as beautiful as a goddess,
and her uncle throws a great feast for her in
his castle. During this feast, he presents Lisa as his
niece and has her recount her tale to the guests.

(19:37):
Everyone weeps hearing how the baroness treated Lisa. The baron
then sends his wife back to her family, declaring she
is not worthy to be his mate. Later, the baron
finds his niece a handsome husband who she loves. It's
a happy ending. In some of the stories, it's actually

(20:04):
snow whites by a lot mother who kills her for
her beauty, like in the Scottish tale Silvertree gold Tree.
The story was collected by Joseph Jacobs and published in
eighteen ninety two. In this tale, a king has a
wife named Silvertree and a daughter named gold Tree. One day,
Silvertree and gold Tree visit a glen with a well.

(20:26):
The well has a trout swimming in it. Silvertree asks
the trout is she the most beautiful queen in all
the world. The trout replies she is not. When the
queen asks who is, then the trout says it's her daughter,
gold Tree. The queen goes blind with rage. When she
returns from the glen, she climbs into bed, claiming to

(20:48):
be sick and vows she'll never be well until she
eats her daughter's heart and liver. When the king gets home,
he asks his wife what is wrong, and she tells
him she needs to eat gold Tree's heart and liver
to be well. Luckily, a prince from another kingdom has
asked the king to marry gold Tree, and the king
has agreed, so the king sends her away with the

(21:10):
prince to keep her safe. He then has some men
hunt down a goat. The king feeds the queen the
heart and liver of the goat, claiming they are gold Trees,
and once she eats, the queen is well and healthy
once more. A year later, Silvertree visits the glen again.
She asks the trout who's the most beautiful queen, and

(21:32):
the trout responds gold Tree. The queen says it can't
be because gold Tree is dead. The trout then tells
her that her daughter isn't dead, but married to a
prince oversees. Silvertree begs the king to give her the
long ship to visit her daughter. For some reason, the
king agrees. The queen takes the long ship, which is

(21:53):
wide and stable but fast and light, and heads to
the kingdom across the sea. Gold Tree recognizes the long
ship as it's coming ashore. She tells her servants it's
her coming to kill her. The servants devise a plan
to lock gold Tree in a room where her mother
can't reach her. When Silvertree reaches the castle, she cries

(22:15):
out for Goldtree to come say hello to her. Mother.
Goldtree says she can't because she's locked in a room,
but Silvertree convinces her daughter to stick her finger through
the keyhole so that she could give it a kiss.
When Goldtree does, her mother puts a poisoned stab in
her daughter's finger. The prince is heartbroken when he returns

(22:36):
to find his wife dead, but she's too beautiful to bury,
so he locks her away in a room and keeps
the key on him. A while later, the prince remarries.
One day, he forgets to keep the key on him,
and his new wife takes it. It opens the room.
There she finds Goldtree, the most beautiful woman she's ever seen.

(22:58):
The new wife notices the stab in gold Tree's finger
and pulls it out. Goldtree awakens alive once again and
as beautiful as ever. The prince returns from hunting crestfallen.
His wife asks what's wrong, and he replies he wishes
gold Tree was alive. She tells him that gold Tree
is indeed alive once again, in the room he had

(23:20):
put her in. When the prince sees gold Tree, he
is overjoyed and can't stop kissing her. The new wife says,
since the prince married her first. She will leave, but
the prince says no, that he will have both of them,
and this turns out to be a good thing. At
the end of that same year, Silvertree visits the glen

(23:41):
for a third time and learns that gold Tree is
still alive. Once again, Silvertree convinces her husband to lend
her the longboat to visit gold Tree. The prince is
out hunting when gold Tree notices the longboat. She tells
the second wife it's her mother coming to kill her.
So the second wife joins gold Tree to meet Silvertree.

(24:03):
When Silvertree comes ashore, she tells gold Tree she has
a precious drink to share with her. The second wife
tells Silvertree it is customary in their country that the
person who offers the drink must take the first sip.
As Silvertree brings the cup to her lips, the second
wife knocks the cup so some of the liquid goes
down the queen's throat. The queen falls down dead, then

(24:27):
gold Tree and the second wife bury her corpse. The
prince and two wives then lived happily the rest of
their days. The story ends with the line I left
them there. I'm not sure what that line means or
why it's included in the tail, but I liked it.
It makes me feel like the narrator was watching from

(24:47):
a distant hill, and now that this tale has concluded,
they're off to find other stories. As discussed in previous episodes,
the Grimms heavily editorialize the stories they collected. Similar to Rumpelstilskin.
The brothers created their own version of snow White, including
making the biological mother a stepmother. Here's doctor Schwabe.

Speaker 3 (25:12):
In many versions, early versions of the Grim's fairy tales,
it was always biological mothers, and then with the second
edition and later, the Grims swapped them out for stepmothers
to preserve the good mother, the sanctity of the good mother,
and also they had a really good relationship with their
own mother, so I think there were might have been

(25:33):
also some complaints from mothers actually about these fairy tales,
and that's why they swapped that out.

Speaker 1 (25:41):
The brother's grim tail also reflects the beauty standards for
Western culture at the time. Doctor Schwabe explained what the
colors and snow white represent.

Speaker 3 (25:51):
We think of the white as snow. We always think
of skin and red as blood, we think of the lips,
and then you know, for the black as ebony, would
we think of the hair, But that if you read closely,
that is not emphasized in the tail, and in some
versions it's also the eyes are black as ebony, or

(26:15):
the cheeks are as red as blood. The body parts
are not labeled specifically when you ask yourself what do
these colors represent. So white is, at least in Western culture,
associated with innocence, and we can tie it to birth.
Red represents life and passion, and black represents death, so

(26:40):
we can really go full circle. Also, they allude to
the triple goddess, the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone.
And I don't know if you know that, but that
came way after the Grims, So between eighteen sixty seven
and nineteen eighty, the flag of the German Empire was
also black, white, and red. So I just wanted to

(27:04):
point that out. It's an interesting parallel.

Speaker 1 (27:10):
Now let's pick up the grim Snow White story where
we left off. At the beginning of the episode. The
queen has just eaten lungs and a liver, believing them
to be snow whites. But snow White is still alive. Terrified,
snow White runs through the woods until she stumbles upon
a little house where seven little doarves live. It's empty. Exhausted,

(27:32):
snow White falls asleep in one of their beds. When
the seven dwarfs arrive home from the mine, they notice
their food has been eaten, their wine has been drunk,
and there is a girl sleeping in one of their beds.
When she wakes up, she tells the dwarves what's happened
to her. They agree to let her stay as long
as she DOA's chores. Snow agrees, but the dwarves also

(27:54):
warn her she will be alone all day while they work,
so she must be cautious. The next morning, the Queen
asks the mirror about being the fairest in the land.
The Queen is startled to learn it's still snow. She
realizes the huntsmen lied. The Queen knows the dwarfs must
have saved snow White because they're the only ones who

(28:17):
live in the seven Mountains, so she dresses up as
an old peddler woman. The Queen arrives at the dwarf's home,
calling out for someone to open up. Snow asks the
disguised queen what she's selling, and the queen says, bodice laces. Snow,
believing the queen's costume, opens the door to let the
woman help relace her bodice. The queen ties the bodice's

(28:40):
lace so tightly that Snow can't breathe and falls to
the ground, seemingly dead. The queen leaves satisfied. As night falls,
the doors return home to find snow on the floor.
They realize the lace bodice is too tight and cut
it off. She is revived. They then warn her about

(29:01):
letting people inside the house. The next time, the queen
asks the mirror who's the fairest and all the land.
She is shocked again that it's still snow, so the
queen spends the next day and a half devising a
new plan. She makes a poisoned comb and dons a
new disguise. She travels back to the dowarfs home and

(29:23):
knocks on their door. Snow tells the woman she's not
allowed to let anyone in, but when the Queen pulls
the comb out, Snow loves how beautifully it glistens and
opens the door. The moment the queen puts the coal
in Snow's hair. The girl falls down dead and the
queen leaves satisfied. The dowarves arrive home just in time

(29:44):
and remove the comb. When Snow wakes back up, they
warn her to not let anyone in, and Snow promises.
For the third time, the queen asks the mirror who's
the fairest and all the land, and yet again the
mirror responds Snow. The queen is furious and heads to

(30:05):
her secret room. There she creates an apple one half
is safe, but the other half is poisoned, and dresses
as a peasant woman. She then heads back to the
little house in the mountains. This time, Snow is more
suspicious and won't let the woman in, so the clever
queen cuts the apple in two and takes a bite

(30:25):
out of the non poisonous side. Snow's desire for the
apple grows so much that she lets the old woman
hand her the other half through the window. Snow barely
takes a bite before she falls down dead. This time.
When the doorves get home, they can't figure out what
is wrong with her and can't revive her. They lay

(30:46):
her on a beer and cry for three days. When
they notice her body remains fresh. They build her a
glass coffin with gold letters that spell her name and
have her ancestry, and one of them always remains by
her side. Time passes and snow remains in the coffin.

(31:09):
One day, a prince rides through the mountains and comes
upon the dwarfs home. He asks for shelter for the night,
and they agree. In their parlor, he sees snow in
her coffin, and he learns she was a king's daughter.
He is so taken by her beauty he asks the
dorives to sell her to him so he can take
her home, but they refuse. Then he asks if they

(31:31):
would give her to him because he can't live without
seeing her, and he promises to cherish her as the
most valuable thing on earth. The dwarfs take pity and
give the prince the coffin. The prince takes the coffin
to his castle and places it in a room where
he watches it day and night. Anywhere he goes. He
has servants carry it because he could not bear to

(31:53):
be parted from snow. This angers the servants. One day,
one of the servants removes the lid and sits snow
upright saying we are plagued the whole day long just
because of such a dead girl, and hits her in
the back. This dislodges the piece of apple, and Snow
once again comes to life. Snow walks up to the prince,

(32:15):
who was filled with joy. The two then decide to marry.
Their wedding is set for the next day. Snow's stepmother
is invited. That morning, the queen steps in front of
the magic mirror again, only for it to tell her
the new Queen is a fairison all the land, but
she doesn't know it's Snow. The Queen is horrified, but

(32:36):
her jealousy drives her to attend the wedding anyway. When
the queen arrives, she sees the new Queen is snow white.
The Queen is afraid, and they make her put on
a pair of iron shoes that had been heated in
a fire and dance until she dies in the Grimm's tail.

(32:57):
The evil queen meets a violent end, and perhaps in
the Grim's eyes, this punishment was fair because not only
did she poison an inner sent woman multiple times, the
stepmother corrupted the idea of motherhood. Doctor Schwabe says the
Grims were big on protecting biological mothers.

Speaker 3 (33:16):
Snow White never really had a mother, and if you
read the text very closely, it's also things that a
mother would do. And she would say, oh, come, let
me brush your hair properly like a mother would do,
or let me lace you up properly, like a mother
would do to her daughter. And it's the there is
this tension or this parallel or the nourishing factor, you know,

(33:40):
and let me give you food. It's what the mother does.
And so she twists these things and distorts them because
it's the evil step mother.

Speaker 1 (33:51):
Doctor Schwabe brings up another huge theme of snow White beauty.
We have to think why was the queen so threatened
by the beauty of her stepdaughter, well, because beauty was
one of the only ways women could have.

Speaker 3 (34:05):
Power, especially at the end where we have the wedding
scene and she is so afraid that it's emphasized several
times that the queen is so afraid. You have to
ask yourself, why is she so afraid? Why is she
in such fear. Is it that they found out that
she tried to kill snow White or is it the

(34:26):
fact that her scheme didn't work out, and she's no
longer the most beautiful of all meanings. She's getting old
and she is going to die. The women didn't have
much power in those days, and the only power the
Wicked Queen has is her beauty. That's what gives her power.

(34:46):
That's why the king essentially picked her to be his queen.
And by the way, the king is completely absent in
the story, and we can talk about it later, but
that the mirror. We don't know the voice of the mirror,
if it's male or female, but in most adaptations it's
a male voice, and we can zoom that the mirror

(35:07):
stands representative for the king's voice or patriarchy if you
want so. Coming back to the queen, her beauty is
her only power. So when she finds out and the
mirror tells her that snow White is a thousand times
fairer than her, she knows this is the point where

(35:28):
snow White's beauty is taking over and she is in danger.
At that point that her power wanes and snow White
will be the new queen.

Speaker 1 (35:39):
And that theme of beauty still resonates today. Walt Disney's
nineteen thirty seven release of Snow White change the company
and the history of animation forever. Snow White was the

(36:02):
first US full length animated film, and although Disney had
used a multiplane camera to create depth on an animated
short before, snow White was the first time to use
that process for a feature length film. It was the
highest grossing film of its time. Disney Snow White and

(36:22):
the Seven Dwarfs also changed parts of the story. It
was the first time the doors were given names and personalities.
It's also when Truelove's Kiss to Wake snow was introduced
to the story, which, as I've talked about on the show,
comes with a range of issues. Here's doctor Schwabe.

Speaker 3 (36:42):
So the whole thing of a woman sleeping and then
being rescued by a hero savior. I think that goes
way back, and that's why we have it show up
in so many fairy tales, and it's just the typical
damsel in distress needs rescuing from a hero male figure.
But also in snow White, and this has been set before,

(37:06):
she really becomes an object of art if you want,
because she is in this class coffin, and remember the
name is written in golden letters, so she becomes the
still objects something to be admired and gazed at and
looked at. But she herself is static. She is comatose

(37:30):
or what you want to call it, and she can't
move and speak. She's silent. She is really an object
just to be looked at.

Speaker 1 (37:40):
Since Disney, there have been so many snow White variations,
approaching the story in different ways. Some tales day pretty
true to the brothers Grim snow White, with slight changes.

Speaker 3 (37:54):
We have a lot more emancipated female protagonists who fight
for their own destiny and don't need a male savior anymore,
like even you know snow White and the Huntsman, just
that she's a lot more like she's a warrior maiden.

Speaker 1 (38:11):
And then we have stories that turn the tail on
its head, like Neil Gaiman's snow Glass and Apples.

Speaker 3 (38:18):
The story is told from the perspective of the queen,
and snow White is a vampire and she kills her
father and she still gets together with the prince, but
they're the bad ones.

Speaker 1 (38:33):
Some even rework the evil stepmother to make her less evil.

Speaker 3 (38:37):
Because it's totally unfair to all the stepmothers out there
that they have to fight against the stereotype. And we
have to come to a new understanding of stepmothers as
a whole and try to get away from that stereotypical
evil stepmother.

Speaker 1 (38:54):
As we said, something all of these snow White tales
have in common is, of course, jealousy about another's beauty.
But many contemporary versions of the tale question not only
why beauty is so valuable, but where does that judgment
of our beauty come from. One way to understand this
idea is how newer versions of snow White have changed

(39:15):
the voice of the magic mirror. Take, for example, the
nineteen ninety seven feature length film titled snow White, A
Tale of Terror.

Speaker 3 (39:24):
There's one adaptation with Sigourney Weaver which I actually like
a lot, where she sees herself her reflection and she
speaks in a female voice and she sees her own reflection.
And that I always ask my students, so what do
we make of this? That we imagine the voice of
a mirror to be a male voice? And then usually

(39:47):
my students notice, well, maybe it's the judging of the
male or the king. It's the judgmental voice that because
the king is not present in the fairy tale, so
that the mirror is a stand in for the absent king,
and you know, women still look into the mirror or

(40:09):
their social media posts, and we are still recipients of
these judgmental voices.

Speaker 1 (40:18):
It's very much buying into the idea that our beauty
is based on the male gaze.

Speaker 3 (40:24):
It's the patriarchy or what do you want to call it?

Speaker 1 (40:29):
And the story I want to end today's episode with
challenges the modern standards of beauty. It's the twenty nineteen
Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarfs full length animation. The
Seven Dwarfs are actually seven princes who are cursed. They
were cursed by a princess who they thought was actually
a witch because they thought she was too ugly to

(40:51):
be a princess. The magic wielding princess says to break
the spell, they have to kiss the most beautiful girl, Snow,
who calls herself Red Shoes, is trying to save her father,
who has disappeared. She stumbles upon a pair of red
shoes that change her appearance from a regular everyday girl
to an unrealistic Barbie Dolph figure Doe eyes included, and

(41:14):
in the end, the characters learn beauty isn't defined by appearance.
Next time, an author who turned the Yellow Brick Road
upside down before tackling the brother's grum. The Deep Dark
Woods is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts.

(41:36):
It was created, written, and hosted by me Miranda Hawkins.
This episode was produced by mikel. June was senior producer
Gabby Watts. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, Elsie Crowley,
and Maya Howard. Stories were voiced by Julia Christgau. Theme
song was composed by Jesse Niswanger. This episode was sound

(41:59):
designed and mixed by Chris Childs. If you enjoyed this show,
please leave her review and you can follow along with
the show on Instagram at School of Humans