I wanted to write about Neil Gaimen's "Snow, Glass, Apples" this week, but last minute I realized the word "historical" was in parenthesis in the assignment explanation and I was bummed out. I am completely fascinated by any story retold in another voice, especially that of a supposed villain, and I will certainly be using this one in my classroom when teaching about voice and the problem with one-sided narratives. This thought about the importance of voice made me realize that it was important to study the voice of the more historical narratives, so that is what I will loosely attempt here, allowing me to inadvertently stick to my first plan, with help from Gilbert and Guber.
As with most traditional tales, Basile and The Brothers Grimm tell of Snow White from the third person perspective. This makes sense as the tellings of these stories can be thought of in the same vein as fireside or bedside stories—telling a story as it was passed down to and heard by he who tells it, making for more overt symbolism, as Tatar points out, “The mirror and the glass coffin are important as both aesthetic artifacts and psychological symbols. The looking glass can be a trope for vanity and narcissism, and for the wicked queen it is also the voice of judgment. On the one hand the mirror reflects back an image of beauty and integrity, but it is also a reminder of self-division and temporality—the image that looks back at us is subject to change” (87). Or as the Brothers Grimm so blatantly put it, “Then she was satisfied, for she knew that the mirror always spoke the truth” (95). In the two historic versions, the mirror reminds the queen she is the best (or not, depending on Snow White's mortal status); in Gaimen's retelling, the mirror serves to show the Queen that her evil vampire stepchild, though heartless, is still living, seducing monks in the forest and whatnot (110). Historically, it is a reflection, with Snow White making the queen uglier; the modern sentiment is the opposite—the Queen lies in a positive lies as the mirror shows us the ugliness that is Snow White. In Gaimen's retelling, the first person narrative places far more importance on Snow White's hanging, (sometimes) beating heart than it does on the historically important mirror. In both stories, these objects haunt the queen. (They remind me of Poe's raven. And I was pleased to note that in the Grimm tale, on page 101, a Raven appears to mourn Snow White.) Symbolism seems more literal in the third...first person perspective is a bit more subjective when it comes to symbolism. Gilbert and Guber have much to say on this idea of the mirror, relating it to the absence of the King in the Grimm version (I'm sure in the Basile version, too. I mean, who needs a guy when you can get knocked up by a rose bush leaf?). They assert that, “...the conflict in the mirror [is] between mother and daughter, woman and woman, self and self. At the same time, though, there is clearly at least one way in which the King is present. His, surely, is the voice of the looking glass, the patriarchal voice of judgment that rules the Queen's—and every woman's—self-evaluation” (389). Thus they equate the looking glass as necessary only because in the society surrounding the historical background of the Grimm's story, a woman need only be beautiful because this is a necessity for its men. Gilbert and Gubar go on to point out that in sending the huntsman to do her dirty work and kill Snow White, he serves as “...a surrogate for the King...In a sense, then, the queen has foolishly asked her patriarchal master to act for her in doing the subversive deed she wants to do in part to retain power over him and in part to steal his power from him” (390). This point is reminiscent of some of our earlier readings, especially the “Wife of Bath's Tale.” There seems to be this trend traditionally of women forced to be submissive but also secretly attempting to overcome this in the best way possible—that age-old struggle between the feminine and the patriarchal. I'd like to suggest that more modern literature attempts to find a balance and that a first person narrative works well in this regard. The King in “Snow, Glass, Apples” is a victim. Though the Queen gladly submits to him early on, he is outdone by his evil daughter and even, in a sense, emasculated by her: “There were scars on my love, her father's thighs, and on his ballock-pouch, and on his male member, when he died” (108). Snow White robs him of his sexual ability before she robs him of his life; she is no longer the Grimm's perfect little housewife—Gaimen paints her as quite the antithesis of this, in fact. The first person narrative he employs lends itself well to this. Through the voice of the queen, we feel her power. She is the ruler. She is the wise one, despite her unhappy fate.
Which of the stories is more credible: the historical or the modern? I'm not sure I have the answer. I think a case can be made for either, though I must say I am far more intrigued by Gaimen's. There is something I don't trust about a story in which a prince meets a dead girl and decides they are in love and will be married in one paragraph (101). As a child, this paragraph would be all I need, the Disney feel-good film worked just fine for my innocent heart. As an adult, the traditional doesn't quite work for me. A first-person telling of a story, for me, is art. There is more room for reflection, even without a literal mirror, and insight into regret, internal struggle, and fear. How often do we villainize someone or something without hearing their side of things? There is something liberating about telling our story—that is the purpose for Gaimen and I suppose the villain/victim within us all is his audience, whereas the historical Snow White audience is simply that part of us ever looking for someone to blame.